Boutique Magazine

A Life Coach Tells You How to Live it

By Madeline O’Shea

Pap smears

 

On Friday I got my pap smear.

To say that I don’t like getting pap smears is like I saying I don’t like hanging upside down from my heels in an underground dungeon in Saudi Arabia being whipped because my hair showed in public. Not to equate the two, but you get the gist.

There are a myriad of reasons for my almost pathological distaste for this particular medical infringement, but I do it anyway.

Why? For my health.

In my doctor’s office, I slip into the blue and white cotton sheath thing. The back opens so my bottom is out and about, wriggling on its own, my boobs unfettered by a bra.  I read the gossip magazines while perched up on that brown padded table, something I never do because it is a waste of time and because the women look eerily, intimidatingly perfect. They are not perfect. Anyone with an army of professionally trained stylists, the exact lighting, and a photo shop crew can look wowza, trust me on this one. Still. The magazine women make other women feel ugly.

My doctor looks a bit like a crane. He is a benevolent crane, tall and lanky, with eyes like a giraffe, if a giraffe had blue eyes. Dr. Crane ambles in on spindly legs and we chit chat, but it is not long before he is asking me to lie back, spread ‘em, and put my feet in cold, silver stirrups. One day those stirrups will come to life and grab the feet of many a startled woman, I kid you not.

“You’re going to have to slide to the edge of the table,” Dr. Crane says, and he laughs. I imagine his crane wings spreading out behind him.

“No.” I am laying down, but I don’t yet feel like hanging my bare butt over the edge of a table so my lotus flower can be explored with cold metal salad tongs and pokey things.

He laughs. “Come on, Madeline, this won’t hurt.” He snaps on gloves.

I am sweating.

The nurse and the doctor wriggle me on down. The nurse has muscles.

“Let’s put your feet in the stirrups now, Madeline,” Dr. Crane says, like a cheerleader. “You can do it!”

“Let’s stab forks into my body first,” I tell him. “That sounds more relaxing.”

He laughs, he lifts my knees, I bring them, down, he brings them up, and puts my heels in the  stirrups. I squeeze my knees together, tight, like a clamp. A vagina clamp.

Dr. Crane laughs. Then he and the smiling nurse start using the pap language. “Pass me the spatula,” he says cheerily.

The spatula? I think of something that flips pancakes.

He asks for some other tool, too. It sounds like he’s asking for An Inserter. He shows me this groovy long thing that is going to do the job. He’s so excited about his new vaginal toy. It is plasticky and definitely doesn’t belong in me. Maybe you. But not me. I slam my knees shut again.

“I don’t think I need a pap,” I tell him, and try to get up.

Dr. Crane thinks I’m so funny! “Aw, come on now, it’s not so bad!”

The nurse smiles and pushes me down again.

“If someone wanted to look up your thingie with a spatula, you wouldn’t like it, either, buddy.”

Dr. Crane laughs again.

My knees are shaking. I stare up at the ceiling. Please tell me why doctors have not gotten smart enough to create a “woman’s ceiling,” where there are pictures of Jimmy Smits, so that you can gaze at him when a doctor is using a spatula and salad tongs on your lotus flower.  Surely this would be more relaxing than counting ceiling holes?

“I need Jimmy Smits,” I whisper.

Dr. Crane laughs.

“Me, too!” the chipper nurse chips out.

“No, I’m serious. I need Jimmy Smits.”

“I’ll warm things up!” Dr. Crane says, still so cheerful even though he spends much of his day peering up women’s woo – woos. “No one wants them cold! No one wants anything icy there!”

The salad tongs do their job, up and up, until I think they’ll poke out my nose.

The doctor is using a mini flashlight to peer up my lotus flower. “It looks splendid  in there!”

For heaven’s sakes.

Next it is time for test tube like things and cotton swabs and, drum roll, my favorite: The pelvic exam! Think: Gloves!

You might wonder what my pap smear has to do with my telling you how to get your act together. Ladies, your health is your business. Your health is your top priority. If you’re not healthy everything falls apart: Your body, your mental outlook, your attitude, your job, your marriage, your relationship with kids and family. Your sex life. Save your sex life at all costs.

So, from me, the meanest life coach in the world, get your “health – act” together. Get you together. You can’t plan for your future, focus on a promotion, get creative ideas, or start a new business if your health is in shambles. Exercise that bod. Eat healthy stuff. Get your pap smear.

And if you can get Jimmy Smits to come with you and hang from the ceiling while smiling, all the better. If not, bring a picture of his face and hold it above your head when the doctor is using a flashlight and a pancake flipper on your lotus flower.

 

I am asked all the time which of my books is my favorite.

My answer is always the same, Julia’s Chocolates.  That was the first book I sold and had that book not flown off into the wild blue publishing yonder, I was going to go back to teaching school.

I loved teaching but – and all you teachers out there will relate to this – it is an exhausting job on many fronts, and I had three very young kids at home.

I’d had an image in my head since college of a woman throwing a wedding dress into a dead, spindly old tree on a deserted street in North Dakota. I later had images of Breast Power Psychic Night, giant sized ceramic pigs, a pink house with a black door to ward off evil men, a free speaking aunt, and four new friends.

I threw all that together  to create the book I wanted to write.

When Julia’s Chocolates sold, I could not have been more thrilled. I had wanted to be a writer since I was sixteen, I had written my first book at 19, and FINALLY, after many rejections, one sold.

But here’s the REAL reason I was excited about that book being sold.

It has to do with my mother, Bette, and my father, Jim.

One summer day my dad, my three kids and I were in his Taurus pulling our very old, rickety tent trailer, which I had been camping in since I was eight, to Orcas Island.

My husband had to work, and my mother had died three years before of cancer. Neither one of us was “over” her death, neither of us ever would be.

But Orcas Island had been the family vacation spot for years and I wanted the kids to see it again. On the way up I told my dad that I was ready to give up on getting a book published. The rejections had been too many, it had gone on for too many years, and I felt like I was flat on my face on the ground, demoralized enough to eat dirt, plus a few spiders, maybe a worm.

My dad, a former Navy pilot, raised his fist up in the air and announced, loud enough to make the kids in the back seat jump, “You’re going to have a break, honey! I feel it, I really do! Something’s going to give. Keep going! Keep writing!”

Ah, fate. Ah, the love of a dear father and mother who had always, always supported my dream and truly believed that I could do it, even when I felt that I didn’t have the brain power, creativity, or story telling abilities to do it.

Two days later, as I lay in a sleeping bag in that rickety trailer under huge pine trees, the lake shining in the distance, a ranger came to our door and told me that I was to call my agent on the pay phone down the hill. My kids said later they had never seen me get up that quick.

I threw on a sweatshirt over my pajamas and mis-matched flip flops and sprinted to the phone, leaping over a log fence like a hurdler.

I called my agent and I was soon laughing and dancing around in the middle of a state park on an island in mis-matched flip flops. Julia’s Chocolates had sold, the publisher would also buy my next book, sight unseen.

I about wet my pants I was laughing so hard as I sprinted back up the hill to tell my dad and the kids. I spilled my news and my dad, sweet dad, got tears in his blue eyes.  He hugged me tight, the kids bopping around happily, then pulled away and said, in his usual calm manner, “Well, that’s just wonderful, honey. Now come and sit down. I’m going to make you some…” and he paused, building the suspense, “Buttermilk pancakes!”

And that was that. We all sat down, said grace, and ate buttermilk pancakes under those huge pine trees, the lake shining in the distance. We swam and hiked that day and watched the deer. It was a beautiful day.

He later read Julia’s Chocolates, and if you remember some of those scenes, “Your Hormones and You: Taking Over, Taking Cover, Taking Charge,” or “Getting To Know Your Vagina Psychic Night,” and you can imagine my father, a devout Catholic, honest and good and proper, with an old fashioned, gentlemanly attitude, you might get a vision of his reaction.

But he got it. He understood that the women were healing, together.

In 2006, before my book came out, my father was diagnosed with aggressive, metastasized prostate cancer.  We started going to endless appointments with doctors and to hospitals.  He had chemo and radiation to blow a tumor out of his head.

He would ride his US Mail bike  (his choice) to the doctors or my siblings or I would take him.  In between he played. He rode his bike in the country and ran. He traveled all over and visited family and friends.  He had parties and went to parties.  He made a baked Alaska and set it on fire for my fortieth birthday party.

He endured a brutal clinical trial, but not because he thought it would help him. He knew he was dying. He did it for my son. He did it for his two other grandsons. “If I can help someone else, just a little bit, by doing this trial, then it’s worth it.”

He came to my first reading at Powell’s for Julia’s Chocolates, and I know I saw tears in those blue eyes when I spoke.  Shortly after that, all treatments were stopped, it was pointless.

He was too busy to meet with the hospice nurses when the time came, so I met with them. Can you imagine? He was too busy living his life to stop to talk about his death.

He only had four bad days at the end, in the summer of 2007.  I shouldn’t even call them bad, though. I could tell by his blank, blue stare that he was gone. I call it halfway into heaven. His body was here, shutting down, his soul was up in heaven with God and my mother, whom he had never stopped missing.

One time, about a year after my mom died, I said to him, “Dad, it’s so neat that you have all these hobbies, running, biking, swimming, traveling…”

He said, “Honey, your mother was my hobby. Everything else is just to fill the time.”

He had never stopped missing her. I have never stopped missing both of them.

So now you know the true reason why Julia’s Chocolates is my favorite book. Not because it was first bought, although I will always be eternally grateful for that, but because of Jim and Bette, Orcas Island, a rickety trailer, pine trees and a shining lake.

When I eat buttermilk pancakes, I am telling you, I think of them every single time.

And I try real hard not to cry.

 

 

 

 

 

My friend, Karen Carman, of http://www.wallworksmurals.com/aboutus.html  painted this for me as a gift. We have been friends a long time…almost eighteen years. We have had a lot of laughs together and a lot of tears. She understands the Lamb Family.

This incredible painting is about four feet by four feet and hangs in our family room.  In a fire, after I got the kids, Innocent Husband and Crazy Cat out, I’d yank that sucker right off the wall and run.

Reminds me of a few quotes on friendship:

1) If I had a flower for every time you made me smile and laugh I’d have a garden to walk in forever.

2) A good friend will come bail you out of jail…but a true friend will be sitting beside you saying, “Damn. We screwed up.”

3) Friends help friends bury the body.  (Like in The Last Time I Was Me!)

Cheers to girlfriends! And thank you, Karen Carman.  You are a true friend. But let’s not “do” jail. It would be embarrassing and they do not allow Starbucks or personal chocolates inside the cells.

Since 2005 I have had many deadlines and I am absolutely grateful for every one of them.

I love writing novels and short stories. I love writing, period. It’s like words and letters live in my blood and I have to write. If I lost my arms, I am sure I would stick a pencil in my mouth and type with my teeth. No, I’m not kidding.

But the deadlines come pretty fast and I have to put My Thinker (Le Brain) to work and haul another story out of it on a regular basis, even if the story kicks and screams and throws fits.

I spend a lot of time drinking coffee and drawing out plot lines,  listening to music to find a literary rhythm and emotional depth for the book, staring into space while giving characters problems and personalities, and watching people (I know, odd, isn’t it? But I don’t watch people in a creepy way, I am just … studying them). I read, sometimes make collages before I start writing, talk to our cat who is in love with my husband, and listen to everything everyone says to me very closely. When the moon is blue and the stars are dancing, I start sketching out another character and a book is launched.

But during this process and the actual writing that goes into the wee hours of the morning, the endless editing/revising/drafting, deleting, the proofing, etc. my house accumulates an enormous amount of … stuff. That’s what it is, stuff.

Between sending my last novel, “A Different Kind of Normal” off in late December and now, I have taken off almost three weeks, which included Christmas, and ignored all the stuff. There were many kids here during that time period, some of whom we apparently own. There was lots of celebrating, and more pounds were added to my behind because the food was absolutely exquisite this year.

The kids, Innocent Husband, and I took down all the Christmas paraphernalia together, then headed out to Benihanas. In our house, if you don’t drag your butt or make ‘poor me’ sounds while cleaning up the Christmas stuff, you get to go. Yes, we bribe our children.

But after the kids went back to school I knew the house was drowning and so was my mind. I decided to attack it, in a non violent way, of course, and get the extraneous stuff out.

I have cleaned my garage, which looked like a mini – tornado had hit and left a messy Dorothy, a scattered Tin Man, and a destroyed Scarecrow. I have taken bags and bags from all over the house to Goodwill.  I have cleaned kitchen cabinets and wondered why I had 690 lids for pans and five strainers. I threw out Halloween stuff I will never use, including my tooth fairy outfit, a warted witch, and an eyeball held by a green hand. I invaded my attic and now I can walk in it. I had so much to shred I had to take it out to a professional paper shredding place. I have redecorated my living room with pillows, funky stuff, an old dresser living in my garage that I spiffed up, and now I finally like it.

My mind feels like it has lost 300 pounds.

Dust does not bother me. Not having a perfectly clean house is not a problem ever. In fact, when I go in people’s houses that are cold and sterile, it makes me nervous. What if I dropped a chocolate chip brownie that I had balanced on my head? What if I was drinking a strawberry milkshake and I laughed so hard I spit it out?  What if my socks were muddy from my afternoon run? What if I sat in the wrong place?

But STUFF in my house, that bugs me.  Stuff clogs my home then clogs my mind. It stifles creativity, dreaming, designing, planning and plotting, and my mental wings. It’s a nuisance and a constant reminder that I have a lot to do.

One time I was complaining to my mother, in a whiny sort of way, when my kids were young because I never felt like I could get the house clean. She said, “Honey, just get one layer of dirt off.” I have remembered her saying that for years and I have applied it again and again: Get one layer off.

I have two more days to continue this non-violent house attack on my house before I need to sit down with a journal and start daydreaming about the next book, which is due at the end of March.

The garage is not perfect. Neither is the attic. But there is one layer off, gone, poof – disappeared – like the Wizard of Oz.

They were big layers, too. Huge. I didn’t know there was an extra hose, sixteen boxes of paperwork, 15 plastic lids for plastic boxes, a broken wheel barrow, and an abundance of small, confusing things that I am sure belong to the Tin Man, stuck in the corners of the garage. Dorothy is missing. The Scarecrow is no more.

So this is what I have learned once again: Throw Stuff Out, Cathy. Keep throwing.

I think better when I do. I write better when the house is lighter because it makes my thoughts lighter, my feelings lighter, my brain lighter.

Two days.

That’s all I have left before I need to start writing again.

How much can I throw? How fast can I throw it?

In a super nerdy sort of way, it’s actually sort of exciting to contemplate…

Note to self: Do not throw out Innocent Husband or the cat who is in love with him. That would be excessive.

I have thought about my New Year’s resolutions deeply and completely. Sort of.

I would like to lose twenty pounds in 2012.

For two reasons I don’t think this will happen.

One, I like chocolate.

Two, I will not give up my mochas. I had a skinny friend stare at me once, appalled, when I told her I would NEVER give up my mochas. Never? she asked me, gasping. (Skinny friends!!) Nope, I said. Never. She does not understand me and this small addiction.

Why will I not give up chocolate and mochas? Because if I die after being struck by a pigeon, falling star, or tractor I am going to be truly pissed off in heaven if I did not have my mocha that day in a ridiculous quest for thinness.

So, weight loss is probably off the table for my resolutions. I already exercise and my obsessive charting of it drives me crazy enough not to mess with it. That won’t be on the Resolutions list, either.

I could write down that I want to be a better mother, but I have three teenagers and much of the time I am flying by the seat of my pants. It’s like raising three hurricanes. Who can control hurricanes?  Plus, I don’t want any more pressure.  It would make my nerves nervous.

I could write a resolution saying I want to be a better wife, but I know the nagging is still happening and after almost nineteen years, I’m simply not going to change.

All I am left with is my work.

Top Ten Resolutions, then, for a Befuddled Writer are as follows:

1) I will not daydream about romantic sex scenes for my books while running. I have fallen three times, splat down, on a wooded trail near my home while doing this because I got distracted. It hurt. I am too old to fall that hard and I do not like the taste of dirt or getting bark dust stuck in my knees. Sex and running do not work, mark my words.

2) I will try not to be in a robe at 4:00 in the afternoon for the last six weeks before my deadlines. I will also wash my hair more than every three days during that time period because it is gross not to and my daughter nicely told me this a couple days ago.

3) I will try not to cry when hard things happen to my characters while I am sitting in Starbucks.

Okay. I will cry. Forget this one.

3) (Again) Speaking of Starbucks. I will not eavesdrop so much on people’s conversations in the hopes of studying dialogue, odd people with strange quirks, or gaining story ideas.

Nope. This one won’t work, either. I like eavesdropping.

3) (Again, again) I will write better the first time around in my drafts so I don’t have to edit the book twelve times.

4) I will not mutter loudly while writing when other people like, strangers, are around and can hear me.

5) I will not let my characters tick me off, then take it out on Innocent Husband, who truly has no clue about what’s going on in his wife’s mind. (That second part is a side note. Don’t tell him I said it.)

6) I will try to go out more when I’m writing my stories and not go into a cave with my journals and computer. I will go to lunch with girlfriends and pretend that I am normal and do not have a passel of noisy characters in my head at all times.

7) I will find out what is abnormal about everyone I talk to. Just for fun.

8) I will stop feeling guilty about serving ready made meals at dinner and getting salad from a sack. I don’t like to cook. So what?

9) I will remember my name at all times.

10) I will remember Innocent Husband’s name.

11) I will not say all of my children’s names, one right after the other, when I am disciplining a child, until I get the right kid’s name associated with the right kid. I will call each kid the right name even if they interrupt me in the middle of a scene where a character is seeing heaven’s angels or a beastly man is breaking a hip or a greenhouse is being shattered.

12) I will read more.

13) I will walk more at dusk because sunsets are truly inspiring for writing and living and understanding things bigger than ourselves.

I am in my robe while writing this. My hair is not so clean. I have been muttering. It is not a good sign.

Luckily, I have had my chocolate and my mocha today. Who knows when I could get hit by a pigeon? You must always plan ahead for these things.

Cheers and Happy New Year.

I am often asked about my “writing process”  for my books.

My writing process is a combination of semi-insanity, creative muck, and word – sweat, so to speak. (I just made up the word, “word–sweat,” for fun and because it is past midnight and my brain is fizzy.)

First, I start scribbling in a journal. The journal costs no more than $5. Why spend extra, hard -earned money on something you will eventually throw at a wall, swear at, jump on and, possibly, burn or explode using small amounts of dynamite?

Each one of my books starts with a separate journal. I now have a full shelf of journals. With my most recent book, Such A Pretty Face, my story was so overly complicated for my little menopausal mind, it took four journals. I finally resorted to the sort of notebook I used when I was in school. White pages. Boring. No fluff. Filled that, too.

Everything I scribble in my journals initially is terrible but I have to go through this process to get a handle on the character. One of the first things I try to do is figure out my main character’s name. Most of the time, she won’t tell me her name. It’s like dealing with a female Rumpelstiltskin.  I’ll fight with her, tell her to quit giving me the silent treatment, to open up for heaven’s sakes! Give me a hint! What letter does it start with? How many vowels? Eventually, I wrangle her to the ground and get a name.

Then I have to figure out who she is, where she works, her past, her tears…

Now, Julia, in Julia’s Chocolates, she was pretty open with me from the start. She had thrown her wedding dress up into a tree on a deserted, dusty street in North Dakota, she was on the run, and she was ready to talk because she didn’t have much to lose.

Jeanne Stewart in, The Last Time I Was Me, was so steamin’ mad after getting revenge on her cheating boyfriend, (She used a condom, peanut oil and hot glue, but I won’t say more. Don’t try this at home!!), that she was ready to talk to me, too, in a really furious, I’m-Driving-My-Bronco-Over-A-Cliff sort of way.

But Isabelle Bommarito in Henry’s Sisters? She’d been so used to handling her own life, her own misery, her own mental nightmares, and so shut off, I practically had to bribe her to get her to speak to me. She was private and not so nice. Way too tough for me. I am still not sure Isabelle and I are friends. We had to come to an understanding.

Stevie Barrett in Such A Pretty Face only told me about her life in chunks, here and there, a whisper around that subject, a chat about this part, a dance around those years, silence in that area.

But the journals are the launching pad for my books. Everything about all my characters that I know, at that time, goes in those journals, including what they look like, their past, their future, what they think of men and cheesecake and their night terrors.

Next I think of a starting line for my books. This takes a looonngg time. It must be clever and catchy. It is hard for me to be clever and catchy, especially if I would rather be outside playing or cruising through bookstores or going to Starbucks.

Once I have that line, and the first scene, I am launched, and I write.
I write until I’m done and have a first draft of about 90,000 words. Then I have a framework. Like a house. Only this is an extremely messy house. The plumbing does not reach the toilets, the electricity is in but it’s still electrocuting people, the heating system is blowing smoke, there is no tub, only cockroaches, and no refrigerator for the chocolate ice cream.

I am half crazed by then. I am working late at night, I can’t turn the story off in my head during the day, I am talking to my characters, arguing with them, and the scary thing is that they are arguing back. I must win all the arguments, but it is difficult. My characters are often poorly behaved and sometimes sarcastic and bad-tempered. They are funny though, too, they laugh and cry in my head and throw things at each other. They don’t do what I thought they were going to do, they don’t say what I planned for them to say. They are becoming themselves and I am watching from the sidelines, wringing my hands, nervous, quaking, wondering if I should have kept my job as a fourth grade teacher….

The first full edit is like writing through tar. Second edit, the tar is a little more soupy. I would say my house now has electricity and plumbing that only clanks now and then. Yay for working toilets! No one is electrocuted.

Third and fourth edits, I’m working on character development more, dialogue, details, sensory stuff, setting, and honing in on all the pain and anguish and making the funny scenes funnier, so you will, hopefully, laugh. I’m also deleting a ton. In terms of a house I now have a working kitchen, no ants.

Fifth draft I’m doing the same thing, and adding strings through the book, repetitions, I’m working on the rhythm of the sentences, completing character development, adding more emotion. The carpet is in, wood floors down, chimney built. Sixth edit I’m making it the best I can make it, obsessing over the tiniest word…and still deleting! Seventh editing I’m tightening, especially the dialogue, streamlining, eighth edit I am, to the best I can do, perfecting it, tying the motifs in, tying all the knots together, nailing the final nail.

So I have a house.  A literary house, so to speak. A small house.

Then I send it off to my very clever editor for his thoughts and input and head off to get drunk on decaf mochas.  Later I will edit that book four more times, for a total of twelve times, until I have almost memorized the darn thing.

By then my house is a wreck. I am a wreck. I need a haircut. I sure need to get the gray hair dyed. I need to find a razor. Where did I put it? I need to find my husband. I need to make sure the birds are still alive. I need to get the cat away from my husband. My cat is in love with my husband and I have to break that relationship apart now that I’m not frothing at the mouth and having imaginary conversations with people who do not exist.

That’s my writing process. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t romantic. It involves a lot of late nights, time alone, sloppy pajamas, too much chocolate, some swearing, and now and then the journal gets thrown across the room and I tell my characters to, “Shut up, will you?”  Lovely.

Happy reading.

Published in Reading Group Choices, On The Bookcase, August, 2010

My husband recently declared in front of a group of people that he would rather stick needles into his eyes than go shopping.

Anytime, anywhere. Bring on the needles.

He was not kidding.

He hates to shop so much he will only go to the mall when the end of a rainbow lands on our roof or when a small tornado originates in our kitchen. Which means: Never.

When I told him we needed another couch and asked him to go shopping with me I almost laughed at my own joke.

But, funny enough, or maybe  because we had had a wee spat the night before and he did not want to land on our existing couch again, he actually put on a big, fake smile and said in this strangled voice, “Okay, honey.”

Shocked at his easy acquiescence, and knowing that a vision of worms gnawing at his kidneys would be more appealing than shopping, I shoved him into the car and peeled out of the driveway before his courage deserted him.

I attempted a pep-talk along the way. We are looking to replace our beige couch which is covered by a white slip cover because beneath the slip cover the couch looks like a beige coffin with cushions, I told him. The slip cover is now ripping. The couch looks diseased.

He nodded. He looked rather pale.  When we entered the mall he became more pale. Twitched a bit. I grabbed his hand to calm The Pathetic Shopping Wimp.

One couch we saw looked like a giant blood clot.

Another had such a crazy design I was sure if I stared at it long enough I would hallucinate.

Still another couch reminded me of a couch one would purchase if one lived in jail full time.

I did not like the modern stuff at all.  I did not like all the flowing flowers.

He did not like stripes. He did like white leather recliners. I informed him that we would have white leather recliners in our house as soon as my neck grew a second head. He wanted a recliner with arm rests with holes for beer cans. Ha. No way, that is a stupid idea, I said, as politely as I could manage.

Finally, we found a sectional we both liked. This was nothing short of miraculous. We liked the saleslady, too. I was pleased she was not young, skinny, stacked, and flirting with my husband like a recent waitress at a pancake restaurant.

She told us soon after we met that she was married for almost three decades and then “got rid” of that husband for a  “better model.”

I related to her completely and we were off and running.

In the show room, the sectional looked like it would fit but when we returned home we realized it would fill so much of our family room it would resemble a great blue glob.

We were almost ready to buy the Great Blue Glob, however, because it was so comfortable and we could be on it with all of the children in our home who refer to us as “mom” and “dad,”  plus our psycho cat, K.C. who recently took an accidental tumble in our clothes dryer. (We didn’t know she was in there when we pressed, ‘on.’ She was not happy when she stumbled, about fifteen seconds later, from the dryer.)

I looked at my unsuspecting husband.  “Perhaps we should keep shopping for another couch?”
I could actually see the blood draining from his face at the very thought of yet another shopping trip. He coughed. Wiggled. Rolled his shoulders. Twitched again.  “I think the blue couch is perfect.”

Yep. I thought, so, too. But to torture him further I smirked and said, “Next weekend we’ll shop for new chairs.”

He actually had to sit down and breathe deeply, head to hands.

Poor dear.

About once every 48,980 miles, I go to Les Schwab to have my tires rotated. I haul in my kids, switch on the cartoons and start inhaling popcorn. Why not? It’s there and it’s free.

While there last week, I picked up a woman’s magazine and read a beauty article. I learned that some people willingly allow others to stick needles in their faces – even though it causes temporary facial paralysis. Other people put chemicals and acids on their faces to disintegrate several skin layers.

Still others volunteer to have layers of skin “vaporized” by a laser to rid themselves of wrinkles and other imperfections. Yes, there’s a procedure that can vaporize part of your cheek!

Why would a sane person do this? Such a simple reason: People claim it makes them look younger, fresher, sexier.

One of my favorite procedures involved Botox. Botox is otherwise known as botulism toxin. Doesn’t the name alone scare you? Botulism is a bad word.  Botox is injected into the muscles in your face with needles to puff out nasty wrinkles. This sounded about as relaxing as dermabrasion.

In “dermabrasion” a doctor uses a tool, often a wire brush, to remove unwanted skin layers. I didn’t know there were layers of skin I shouldn’t want. I’ve filed that away as  Useful fact. The article did warn that dermabrasion can be bloody and cause more scarring. But people are willing to pay $1,500 to $2,500 for a professional to bloody up their face.

“Microdermabrasion,” was yet another option. It also is called a “power peel.” I peel bananas. I peel onions on the rare nights that I cook. I cannot imagine wanting to peel my face.

Here’s how it goes: A doctor uses a tool, which the author compared to a sandblaster.  Take a moment to picture a sandblaster. There ya go. The sandblaster shoots teeny crystals right at your face at a rapid rate to removed the dead skin. Then, the dead skin is vacuumed away. People  pay about $350 to have their faces vacuumed. (Note: I have three kids to put through college. I will vacuum your face with the special hose attached to my vacuum cleaner for half the price).

The “chemical peel,” involving the above mentioned acids, costs $4000 to $5000. The author warns recovery can take weeks, and you might have crusting and scabbing. That’s not hard to imagine.

If someone is scarred from acne or accident or surgery, I could understand extreme measures. But it appears that outwardly normal people have these procedures to help them look younger.

People, we have taken our quest for youth to a new and insane level.

Before I am buried under a thousand letters from dermatologists who claim these are safe and useful procedures, please, I tell you, don’t bother.

Nothing can convince me that dumping acid on my face is safe. Nothing can convince me that injecting Botox through needles into my laugh lines is a good idea, making it so I can’t move my face like a normal person. Nothing can convince me that a procedure involving a laser that “vaporizes” layers of skin over my forehead is a smart thing to do.

They told us implants were safe, too. About 20% of those have to be taken out when they burst, harden, shift, break, or cause pain.

The tires are soon rotated. I grab the same number of kids that I walked in with who address me as “Mom,” and we go home.

Later that night I call my father and tell him about my experience. First, he must get over his shock that I took the car in to have the wheels rotated. I dare say, he is proud. Then we talk. My father is 66 years old and can run a seven and a half minute mile. Watching him run is like watching a puffing tank zoom down the road. Do not get in his way. He will not stop.

I tell him about these new procedures, and he makes a crack about masochists. Then we start talking about beauty and youth. He is wise, and he is kind and knows much more than me. I know this, I do. “Beauty,” he tells me quietly, “real beauty, is in the soul.”

I knew it.

One more reason to keep the dead skin on my face, right where it belongs.

 

This article was printed many moons ago in The Oregonian.

I hate shopping.

Here’s a list of things I’d rather do than shop.

1) Capture a porcupine with my teeth.

2) Build an igloo and live in it.

3) Perform kidney surgery on myself.

When I even think about shopping I feel somewhat faint.  Sickly – like, as if I’ve swallowed a sea urchin. Fortunately, I don’t need to shop much.

Why? Because I am a writer. Me and my graphic, cartwheeling, crayon-colored imagination do not need to look hot because I am alone. A lot. Plus I’ve been married a long time.

I have gangs of characters in my head who screech, cry, throw cherry pie, paint whimsical chairs, lie, fall in love, name concrete pigs, sneak peanut oil into condoms, sit naked on their decks, and declare that men are pricks.  I have entire families going back generations in my head and they never, ever shut up. Sometimes the characters leave their books without my permission and mix in with characters from other books and that is never good.

So I slop around in jeans and sweatshirts, write away, and try not to argue or talk out loud to my characters when others are near me. (It scares them).  During the last weeks before a deadline I’m often in pajamas until my kids troop home from school because I work ten to sixteen hours a day.  My pajamas ones with the reindeers are my favorite. Who needs fashion for this?

But recently I have been forced to admit that I have crossed the line from sloppy, liberal thinking writer-style into abject frumpiness. This happened because of back to back deadlines. It also happened because I have grown so darn fat nothing fits. My urge to get at least something decent was also stoked by a saleswoman’s snarky comment about “those things,” when referring to my jeans.

So for advice on what to buy, and to see what is currently in style, I bought a fashion magazine. I have not bought a fashion magazine since the moon was blue with gold stripes, in other words: I can’t remember.

Here’s what I saw in the magazine to help me shop.

Apparently, silver, shimmery dresses from Uranus wrapped in metal bars and ball bearings are all the rage. It’s Space Martian meets hardware store.  Also, it is fashionable to dress like a leprechaun. I know this because I see a model in green frills and ruffles holding live doves. I don’t know if a live dove would stay on my finger, but I could give it a try.

Dead animals attached to purses must also be cool because there is a dead animal attached to this girl’s purse. I am from Oregon and we like wearing dead animals about as much as we like shoving umbrellas down our throats while warbling, so I will have to pass on that.

I am startled by two models wearing short dresses barely covering their privates made from leather in geometric shapes in red, black, and orange. Their expressions say, “I think we’re being chased by stampeding rhinos. We should run!”

One model is wearing a swirly painting. She is standing on her head. It is unlikely I would ever wear a painting and I will never promenade around on my head so I feel a wee depressed.  Another outfit has a kaleidoscope of colors that makes me wonder if the designer was on drugs when he made the dress. It appears there is a robot, a goose head, a sad dog, and an old lady with a Cyclops eye on the material. Why would a Cyclops eye be fashionable? I am now depressed and baffled.

Finally I come to a model who is wearing a tie dyed skirt and part of a Scottish kilt on the top. Her cleavage is out and she has black tattoos up and down her legs that look like American Indian totem poles. She is carrying bamboo and is so thin I know she is thinking of eating the bamboo.

In fact, all the models are about the size of cotton swabs with heads, their legs longer than my ladder. Honestly, they look ravenously hungry and could do with more hearty soups and chocolate in their lives. I am hungry looking at them.

After studying the fashion magazine, I am exhausted. If I were a drinker, I would drink. I would swim in kahlua, in fact, spurting it like whales do from my mouth.

I decide not to go shopping. Too confusing. Too expensive. I don’t know where to get a live dove. I don’t know where to find a wearable painting or a robot. I can’t walk on my head.

I wonder: What is wrong with my reindeer pajamas anyhow?

Nothing, I tell myself, with quiet pride. Nothin’.

Besides I have another deadline and have no time to shop.

It was the pancakes.

That’s how I came up with the idea for my book, The Last Time I Was Me.

Pancakes, hot maple syrup, and two gray haired women reading books.

I was sitting with my kids at an old fashioned pancake restaurant in my hometown. It was just us and the two women, both who were sitting alone, books in hand. They looked to be about seventy and I started thinking about them.

What were their names? Why were they alone? Did they like eating pancakes by themselves? Were they married and happy, married and miserable, divorced? What had happened in the first seventy or so years in their lives? What hopes did they have? What grief had they endured? Did life turn out as they had planned?

And, most importantly, at least for my purposes: What secrets did they harbor? Did they haunt them, or did the women dive back into their scintillating secrets periodically and enjoy every moment, delighting in the memories of forbidden love or crazy antics?

Aha!

I then had a vision of pancakes, a pancake restaurant, and women who have – ta da – secrets. As I later drove down a tree lined street in Welches, Oregon, near Mt. Hood, and saw several charming white houses, one with a blue roof along a river, the plot unfolded for The Last Time I Was Me in full, brilliant Technicolor, including Jeanne Stewart’s naked run along that river, a bar fight, and anger management counseling that has her flying like a bird and painting her body.

Need ideas for your books or characters?

Look around. Listen. Be quiet, be in the spot you’re in, and just be.

Be. That’s all you need to do.

How did I get my idea for Julia’s Chocolates? I had an image… an instant, crystal clear image of a white, fluffy wedding dress being tossed into a dead looking tree on a dusty, deserted street. That dress fluffed up into the air, and back down, up and fluff, and down again. Finally it caught on a dried finger -hook of a branch. The question that launched that book: Why is she throwing her wedding dress into a beat up looking tree?

I had my Julia. Then I gave her quirky, scared, passionate friends and an Aunt Lydia who had a pink house, a rainbow – painted bridge on her front lawn, and five foot tall ceramic pigs that were named after men who had ticked her off.  I asked myself how I could get all those ladies together in an original way. So I invented Breast Power Psychic Night and Your Hormones and You: Taking Over, Taking Cover, Taking Charge Psychic Night. Getting To Know Your Vagina Psychic Night followed.

For my book, Such A Pretty Face, I knew already that I had a girl with a troubled mother. When I watched Storm Large’s brilliant play in Portland, she talked about her mother and their troubled relationship. In the midst of one of Storm’s rockin’ out songs, drums pounding, guitars banging,  I had an epiphany: My character’s mother has schizophrenia. Boom. In the midst of the hard rock, the funny lyrics, and the darkness of the theatre, I had my story line.

The idea for Isabelle, in Henry’s Sisters, was based on a mood. My father had just died of prostate cancer and I was grieving. I was in a terrible mood. I gave my terrible mood to my character, Isabelle. At the same time, a conversation came up with me and a few girlfriends in my church about promiscuity, and how one of my girlfriends had such a hard time putting her past behind her, forgiving herself, and moving on. So, Isabelle formed into a character with a lot of bottled up anger, grief, and loss with promiscuity in her background. The question that launched the story: Why was she promiscuous?

I wrote from there. I gave her two sisters and a brother. I am from a family of three sisters and a brother, so I had a familiar family formation. But Henry, unlike my brother, is specially – abled. I decided to write a story about the beautiful impact Henry had on his whole family , inspired by the brother of a friend who was also specially abled. That brother had recently died and listening to my friend tell me about the love and kindness her brother brought to so many people was just tear jerking. I was also touched by a photograph of a specially abled young man with his father in a poster for Goodwill. I stared at that photograph for so long, amazed at the joy and peace on that young man’s face. So I had my Henry.

For ideas for your books, look around. Listen. Be open. Talk to others. Listen more. Take drives and listen to music you usually don’t listen to. Go on day trips to the beach, hike, head downtown, go to shows, plays, the symphony.  Accept and embrace people’s differences, their walks with life, what hardships they’re going through, what triumphs they’ve had. Stroll along a river and daydream, drive to a town you’ve never been in before and where no one knows you. Be anonymous. It’s a safe place.     Notice people. Watch people, not in a stalky way, of course, but watch them. Watch movies, study your ancestral history for cool family members, call an older relative and ask about her life. Always read newspaper articles about elderly people for the wisdom and guidance they can offer. Paint, draw, create. And read. Book after book after book, read.

Wishing you a rush of ideas for stories that will make your readers laugh and cry…