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My father's room in assisted living has a window that looks out into an area with bird feeders and raised flower beds. The staff there knows of my father's love for gardening, and last week when they were planting summer flowers in their gazillion raised flower beds they did something different for the one my father can see from his room. They planted it with tomato plants.
One of the staff came to him and said, "Mr. C., do you see what they're doing?"
"What?"
"Look out of your window. Do you see what they're planting?"
He looked. "Tomatoes," he said. Then he went outside, dragging his oxygen with him. He watched for a minute, then asked the lady planting the tomatoes, "Where's your lime?" he said.
She looked at him strangely. "I don't have any. What do I need lime for?"
"Blossom end rot," he said.
I wish he had said things such as, "pretty plants," "good job," "thank you." But no. It was "Where's your lime?" You're doing it wrong. Oh well. He is who is he. The lady managed to change the subject to her divorce problems. From here on I'm pretty fuzzy about what happened. My parents have been married for 72 years and a stranger confessing things about her divorce was more surprising to him than planting the tomatoes without lime.
Honestly, I think it was hard for him to perceive the kindness behind this act of planting tomatoes where he could watch them from his room. Or maybe he did perceive the kindness, and was lost on how to respond. Plus, he just planted 150 tomato plants in his garden in the country (with much help and all the right ingredients). What does a man who get three meals a day in assisted living need with a giant garden? Gives him something to do. A place to go. Life bursting with life.
He planted 150 tomato plants and he doesn't even like tomatoes. Seriously. Won't eat them.
I am touched that the people who care for my parents are that insightful and kind. Lime or no lime, I think it is beautiful.
I get e-mails from people wanting to know about writing since I get paid to write. They want to be freelance writers, too. Freelance writing sounds like a dream job, and it is, as much as any job that's what you're meant to do is a dream job. Meant to be a cardiologist? That's your dream job. Meant to teach math to students who hate math? That's your dream job. Doing what you're meant to do is the place where the parts click together, where your skills and the world's needs meet.
Speaking of needs, never, ever write an ad that says, "We meet your needs." I could go on but now is not the time or place.
The dream part of freelance writing is the part where the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. Sure, I work at home. More and more people do as technology makes it possible. There's much that's wonderful about working at home. There are also many pitfalls, from welcome distractions to never really being able to leave work because you essentially live at the office.
Then there's the bit where you get lonely, desiring to be around people you don't have to be nice to. I see clients, but I have to be nice to them. This is usually not that difficult, but it's not about being completely yourself either. I have to make an effort to see people I care about, made more challenging by the fact that I live in the country. If I go to lunch with a friend, my workday is shot unless I'm lucky, careful and plan well. I'm not naturally good at any of these. I've learned to write when and where I can.
I frequently write on my AlphaSmart in the carpool line. When I haven't fallen asleep with my mouth open just to embarrass my daughter.
Most of the time, the work is hard. Sometimes it's hard because it's just so incredibly boring. My mind doesn't want to submerge itself in home foundation repair, and I have to beat my mind to make it pay attention and work. Unlike some other jobs, writing requires that you put yourself into it. You can't write about education reform and at the same think about how you're going to faux paint a wall. If you're writing about education reform, that's got to be the thing that's sucking up your brain cells. And suck up your brain cells it will.
Then there are the people who want to know about fiction writing. They've been told they should write a book. I wish I could help, but I'm trying to figure out how to write a book myself. I read Stephen King's On Writing book when it first came out and thought it was the best book on writing I'd ever read. I'm now listening to it (King reads it himself) and it's as good as I remembered. If you want to write fiction, that book is a good place to start your education.
How do you get to be a freelance writer? Start off by being a writer. Figure out ways to get published. Then take those published samples to people you think could use the help of a writer. It's hard to build credibility. Everyone thinks they can write, especially lawyers, who are the most difficult clients. Some writer could make a career out of re-writing everything engineers write -- all you have to do is convert their manuscripts from passive to active voice. However, they won't like it. They don't think they sound smart if it's not in passive voice. Or maybe there's some other risk. They wear me out.
How did I get to be a freelance writer? I wrote plays on the side when I worked in the family business. When it became clear I couldn't work with Non-Saintly Brother, I needed to find another job. Because some of my plays had been performed and received publicity (mostly bad), the head of one of the state's largest ad agencies recognized my name. I approached him for advice on changing careers. Instead of giving me advice, he gave me a job: a three-month trial as a copywriter. I stayed for over nine years, then, after having Lily, it all became too hard and I quit that dream job for another one, being a freelancer. Because I have a portfolio of published, performed, recorded and approved work, I can get more work. I believe most freelance writers have worked as paid writers for an organization of some sort before they started freelancing. That doesn't mean that's the way everyone has to do it. It's just the only route I know.
I view those years at the ad agency with fondness and great appreciation. They taught me a lot. It was a fun place. For a while I defined myself by my job. I loved the insanity of the place, the high spirits of so many creative-types in one building. And every day I wrote. And wrote and wrote. I wrote whether or not I knew anything about the subject and made it sound like I did. I wrote pieces for crisis management situations where I didn't have time to even think through what I was going to say. I wrote for one client who was so stupid that they had voted that their organization, which used the word "centers" in its name, was really only one entity so that "centers" should be treated as a singular noun. In other words, they would correct my copy so that it read, "Our Centers is." At last, I was grateful for passive voice, which allowed me to keep them from looking like they were completely stupid.
I wrote like a sweat-shop seamstress sews, churning out prose that I won't call seamless but there was certainly a lot of it. And I learned to control the language. That was my apprenticeship.
Though I freelance now and am grateful for my clients and the checks that trickle in, I feel my work is my fiction, which is so very hard that I must be doing it wrong. But I'm back at it. And I'm following Stephen King's advice: no matter what, tell the truth.
The weeks go by so quickly that it's hard to work in a fun thing! But this week I have squeaked by with lots of last-minute fun, starting last night, with dinner out, then breakfast out this morning, then lunch out with friends. There's nothing better! (Do I know how to milk a birthday or what? Paul's traveling but returning late tonight, so I'll prolong the celebration and chocolate until Mother's Day.)
And to my credit, only one of the three friends knew it was my b'day. That made it fun for me because they could enjoy themselves without the panic of realizing they didn't have a card, etc. I am all about celebrating my b'day, but people go to too much trouble. I just want to see them! (And the cards that arrived in the mail were a complete delight! Thank you!)
My indulgence, other than finding excuses to eat out with friends, was the purchase of some geriatric stirrups. I had a Jones fracture in one foot a few years ago and the only time it bothers me is when riding horses. I think that's the spot where all my weight meets the stirrup. So I got a pair of hinged stirrups designed to redistribute the shock. I just used them but didn't ride long enough to tell. Wonder if they'll hold up as well as the stirrups they replaced, which I've had since 1968 and which remain in perfect condition? I doubt it. The old ones had no moving parts. To read about other people and the changes they're making in this eight-week challenge (which it appears to me they started a few weeks before I did, and although the emphasis is on changing from the inside, they seem to be working out and eating less), go here.
The Baptists are way ahead of everybody. There are more of them, and it looks like they're smarter, too. They've always got something going on, and they make it look like as much fun as you can have without alcohol.
We're Presbyterian and there's a Southern Baptist church across the street from our church. Every Sunday night the youth groups gather at their respective churches for pizza and salvation, or at least to keep them from their weekly gang meeting or whatever menace is out there.
This past Sunday night our youth group was having a lively game of rubber chicken on the small lawn in front of the church. (No, I don't know how you play rubber chicken but you also have to have a basket.) Across the street the Baptists had a carnival -- complete with rides!
So here are our kids on a scrawny patch of grass playing with a rubber chicken, and there are the Baptists and all their friends -- and a whole carnival spread out on their large campus.
One of the adult leaders of the youth complained last night at a meeting, "All I had was a basket and a rubber chicken. They had a carnival. How are we supposed to compete with that?"
Maybe get two rubber chickens?
I'm not going to name names (Tiger), but somebody ate all of the catnip plant I've been carefully nurturing along. I just hope he didn't try to drive or do anything requiring skill and non-silliness afterwards.
He ate it all the way down to the ground. Not even a stem left. And the local plant stores don't have catnip, so I've ordered a packet of seeds -- 100 for $1.45 plus $2.95 shipping. It appears to me that there's something wrong with the math there but for my cats, I'll overpay shipping. If it were a chocolate plant, I'm sure they'd do the same for me.
I'm just sorry I didn't get to watch. He's a wild man as he is.
This week's fun thing in the Eight-Week Challenge was kind of a cheater. Dear friends invited us to their home in the N.C. mountains on Lake Lure. Here's a photo (click to enlarge.) Their house is on a point connected to the cove where the water scenes in "Dirty Dancing" were filmed. Tour boats come by all the time and point out the spot. We wave from the boat house and I feel like a celebrity.
For the first time, I figured out how to use my camera's macro setting, so here's the obligatory flower close-up. Even though it was too cold for adults, Lily went tubing behind our friends' boat (the air was in the low 60s; the water was cold). She was bright red when she got out of the water. When she was younger, it would have made her blue.
There's nothing better than good friends, a beautiful setting and lots of chocolate. And really, really talking to a friend about absolutely everything. Heaven. We came home rested and renewed.
