The Fingerprints of Poverty

Over on winniewoohoo.com, I blogged about growing up poor: http://winniewoohoo.com/?p=226

The Big Lesson

I spent a little bit of time evaluating my writing production from 2012 and I think I've learned three things:

1. Don't get sick.
2. Don't move.
3. Don't let your kid have days off from school.

I'm still trying to decide how to make resolve those issues this year.

Brain clearing

I've been thinking a lot on this topic, and this morning the delightful Elizabeth Spann Craig posted on it: The Importance of Doing Nothing. I was so glad to hear her nothing-positive blog, because I am a firm believer in unscheduled time for everyone (and especially kids!). I think time with nothing to do is what inspires creativity and builds a person's character. When you're sitting around mulling over nothing in particular, you sort out a lot of your values and dreams and best ideas!

When I was a kid, we lived too far from anything for lessons or camps or sports. I spent most of my time reading or wandering aimlessly. Sometimes I played in the creek, but mostly I rode my bike in circles and daydreamed. Most of those daydreams turned into stories, about a third of which I started writing down in my early attempts at novels. I never made it more than a thirty pages into a project, but that might have been due to handwriting that even at age ten was pretty abysmal (and that was when my handwriting was at its zenith!). When you work without an outline and your notes are on random scraps of school work, it really helps if you can read them.

In that tradition, my daughter has very few scheduled activities. She's taken a few classes from Parks and Rec, but she's not terribly interested in team sports or music. She wants to be a writer more than anything in the world. Needless to say, yesterday she spent about an hour rolling around on an exercise ball in our living room, doing nothing. I hope its teaching her something important.

Families We Choose

Family. It's a weird creation, isn't it? It's this notion that something fundamental can bind people together, a binding that transcends borders and distance and age. That no matter what happens to you or who you've become, you can turn to your family and they will be there for you.

Most of the people I know have had to build or prune or reshape their families. From the simple and traditional (marriage is the classic way to claim a new person as a family member; adoption another) to more intense and unusual, most of us claim family members who aren't related to us by blood or marriage, and many of us have cut bonds with people who are related in those traditional methods. Some of my friends were expelled from their circles of kinship for reasons of religion or sexuality.

Since I'm gearing up for my wedding, family is on my mind. One of the major reasons my partner and I are marrying is to help him adopt my daughter. He's the only father she's ever known and we understand that we need to protect their special relationship. Our marriage is the first step toward taking better care of our family.

And of course having a wedding means inviting friends and family to be a part of the ritual. Sometimes it's hard to know where "friend" ends and "family" begins, especially in families where relationships are sometimes strained. Or where friends are exceptionally closely bonded!

I'm lucky to have so many wonderful people joining me to celebrate the new direction my family is taking. I know there have been times in my life where I've dreamed of moving away and starting fresh, with no ties, floating like dandelion fluff along the wind. But there is a pleasant weight to family, no matter the bad memories, the difficult times, and the hard choices. I'm glad I've chosen to keep them.

The Guaranteed Results Writing Advice You've Been Waiting For

I have seen a lot of rock-solid short story writing advice the last few days. Christie Yant blogged about what she's learned in a year reading and editing stories at Lightspeed. Mercedes Yardley posted about what she's learned reading slush at Shock Totem. I even attempted a post a week or so ago. But these tidbits of information aren't going to win you the instant success you're looking for. Neither of these ladies is laying it out straight.

Well, it's time for some straight dope. No lying. No cutting corners. This is what it takes to succeed writing short fiction in the spec fic genre marketplace. Follow the steps, and you'll be delivering your Hugo acceptance in no time.

1. Locate the nearest crossroads. From my house, I'd probably pick the on-ramp just west of the Ross Island Bridge, where Highway 26 touches I5 southbound. Another good alternative might be the intersection of Powell Boulevard (Highway 26) and 82nd Ave, since that street is also Highway 213.

2. Locate a living chicken. That's easy. My neighbor has three and they're usually eating birdseed underneath my birdfeeder.

3. Bring chicken to crossroads. This is tricky, since I don't have a pet carrier, and all animals need to be crated to ride the bus. But no serious problem--I'll just borrow one from my sister.

4. Wait until midnight. Luckily, Carl's Jr here on the corner is open until pretty late. I can probably keep myself awake drinking Mt Dew and eating french fries. The chicken would probably appreciate the fries a lot, too.

5. Call upon the powers of darkness. There are plenty to choose from. Satan's always a good choice, as Beezelbub is really into flies, which have those dirty little feet, and the Elder Gods are just really slimy. But if you're willing to put some research into it, I'm sure you can find the right evil demon or underworld-dwelling god to fit your own needs.

6. Light a candle. Or better yet, a bonfire. Evil gods like fire. So do good ones. Pyromania goes hand in hand with omnipotence, I think. It explains why so many men enjoy barbequeing.

7. Sacrifice your chicken and surrender your soul in return for literary success. Ahh, crap. I'm a vegetarian! I can't kill a chicken! Take my soul, please--I don't need it. Wait! Elder Gods! I didn't mean what I said about the slime. Come back!

Come baaaaack!

Damn it. Well, it looks like I'm going to miss out on next year's Hugo ceremony. On the plus side, though, my neighbor still likes me, and I'm totally wound up on caffeine.

True North

Do you know what a lodestone is?

A lodestone is a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite. In the picture above, you can see the paper clips sticking to the chunk of ordinary-looking rock--it's a lodestone.

In medieval China, navigators developed a compass using the lodestone. Because it will point north, many people associate lodestones with telling direction and finding one's way in the world.

Almost eight years ago, I had lost my way. My plans to go to graduate school clashed with my new role as a single mom (at this point, I was a hugely pregnant emotional mess); I felt alone and I had no passion for anything. After two years of almost rabid environmental campaigning (letter writing and marching and organizing protests about agricultural issues), I felt depressed about the future of the world and powerless to do anything about it. And while I'd always dreamed of being a writer, I felt guilty that the only story ideas I had involved dragons, fairies and vampires. I was ashamed of everything about myself.

At the time, a friend of mine was planning a birthday party, and since she was interested in paganism, I stopped by a magic and herb shop. Nothing seemed like the right gift for my friend, but a display of lodestones caught my eye. It felt like a sign, like an offering from some mysterious spirit. I bought one and kept it in my underwear drawer.

I didn't think much about it, taking it out once in a while to wonder at the tiny iron filings clinging to the stone's black flanks. It wasn't a beautiful stone, but its heft in my hand and magical magnetism fascinated me.

Weeks passed and decisions that had tormented me became easy. I quit my job. I wrote a children's book. I moved in with my mother. I set aside grad school plans and began a novel. Life wasn't easy--I had to move to Portland and take on odd jobs to pay my student loan, while mooching a home from my sister and sucking the food stamp teat--but somehow, I knew which direction I was going. I knew I needed to be a writer.

Sometimes I still take my lodestone out of my underwear drawer and study it. The superstitious part of me deeply believes that this little charcoal-colored stone pulled me back onto my life path. The more rational part believes that my lodestone is simply a beautiful symbol for the love of story that has always been inside me, hidden beneath the chatter of a busy young life. My time alone turned off that chatter and let the truth tug at me.

We must all look for our own true north. For me, it lies in a land of myth and mystery, of fantasy and horror. It lies in the darkest forest of the Realm of Words, the place on the map labeled "Here there be dragons." There are other places in that realm, good places, wonderful to visit. Maybe you pull you.

If they do, you should let thtem.

Picture by Ryan Somma.

The Hunger Games, FTW

This weekend, after blitzing through the trilogy as fast as I could convince anyone to lend me the books, I finished Mockingjay. They're action-packed fun reads. For me, that makes them enjoyable lit-candy. But if I was a thirteen year-old girl today, these books would resonate in a powerful way.

You see, the protagonist of the series, Katniss, is under scrutiny almost all the time. In several sections of the books, she's being filmed and broadcast across her country, and she knows all too well that any wrong move will doom her death. For kids growing up in the Facebook-reality TV-instant messenger world we live in, they must really identify with this girl.

We're warned every day that what we post on our social networking sites can derail our abilities to find & keep a job. Google Buzz is being sued for privacy invasion. A college kid used Twitter to share videos of his roommate having sex--and the roommate posted his suicide note on Facebook before jumping off the George Washington bridge.

If you were a teenager hearing all of this, you'd be a little scared. For those of us who grew up in the 70s & 80s, TV is about entertainment. The Internet is a great way to find information and catch up with friends. But to us, they're still virtual. Their power is removed from us, kept an arm's length away by the security of the screen.

Today's kids see the Internet and the real world as extensions of each other. To them, the screen is perfectly permeable.

While I read The Hunger Games trilogy, I thought about how unfair it was that Katniss's actions in a ridiculous TV game show should be held against her, her family and her nation. When my daughter reads it, it will make perfect sense.

Isn't that terrifying?

It's not a cliche--it's true!

"I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them." --Edith Wharton

Back in January, I dubbed this year "The Year of Science Fiction." I planned to catch up on my reading, play around writing a few science fiction short stories and soak up as much science and technology info as possible. Some of that's been going well. I've read some great stuff this year! But the writing ... nope. That's pretty much tanked. I've written a handful of SF pieces, but there's just something missing in them. They haven't been fun, and they haven't gleamed with the fun, manic energy of a piece that comes together in that just-right way.

And it hit me today: I've been violating the #1 cliched piece of writing advice: Write what you know.

Not that factual knowing, but what you know. Like a belief, something honest and true that you can feel in your bones.

Well, I'm a lot like Edith Wharton. Deep down, I don't believe in the future--but I'm absolutely, positively afraid of it. The other day, I read a really enjoyable story over at Lightspeed ("The Taste of Starlight," by John R. Fultz). It's a great story, full of gore and a highly depressing ending, but for me, it was too cheery. I can't bring myself to believe we'll ever leave Earth. I think we'll wipe ourselves out first. Or devolve. Or something else incredibly god-awful. But space travel and colonization, tropes I've always enjoyed in novels and tried to use in my own pieces, are things beyond the knowing of my inner universe.

What we know, you see, is a system of symbols and emotions and ideas that are leached out of the things we read and do. Our inner universes are built out of our experiences in both the real world and the imagination. The creative endeavors we create are the logbooks of our explorations that those inner worlds.

That's one of the reasons why, when an author finally hits his or her stride, their books begin to sound more alike. They have found what needs to be explored inside them, and it is infusing every word they create. This doesn't mean all their books and stories are exactly the same or even that they're all set in the same places. It just means that the iconographies of the texts begin to hint at each other.

My inner world doesn't include the normal stuff of science fiction, even though I love science and I adore science fiction. Somehow my world gelled around other landscapes. (I'm not giving them away because then you wouldn't need to read any of my future books or stories!)

That doesn't mean I won't write science fiction--and by that, I mean scientifically reasonable futuristic fiction. I just have to write the right science fiction. The bad news for all of you guys? Some of those stories might make "The Taste of Starlight" read like a children's matinee. There's a lot of ugliness in the future I see.

But ugly or not, I think I'll be happier writing science fiction now. It's like I threw out a travel guide someone else bought for me, and now I'm setting out on my own trail.

I've got my helmet light on. I'm ready for the monsters.

Nicknames

Lately, I've been calling my kid "Evangelion."

Her actual name is Fiona, but when she was little, I called her my "inky binky biddy baby" (I know, yuck!), and it just sort of evolved from there. I actually call her "Inga" about 75% of the time, or more frequently, "Ee." Evangelion was a natural spin-off, I guess.

Nicknames are a big part of my world. For example, I grew up being called Winnie. That was just what my dad called me, a secret identity. I went through a phase where I hated it, and then I recently started liking it again. And by recently, I mean in college, when I saw The Shining for the first time. Winnie suddenly seemed like the coolest name in the whole dang world after watching Shelley Duvall take on Jack with that baseball bat.

On the other hand, my brother wound up changing his name. He always hated his real name and the nickname my dad gave him. But one day he invented a character for an RPG--and found his real identity. He got all his teachers to call him by his new name and eventually convinced my parents to help him change it legally!

Fiona loves her name and tolerates all the weird things I call her. I suppose that Evangelion doesn't sound too bad compared to the pet-name I gave my mom: Skoonamagawa.

So if you're doing any writing, keep nicknames in mind. They say a lot about the characters who use them and the characters who created them. The nicknames I use for my family members probably show that I'm a goofball who ought to have her mouth taped shut.

Brain scrub--stat!

No, I haven't been freaked out by reading (ok, RE-reading) Rigor Amortis. Nope, this is a much, much worse thing to have happen to my brain. Brace yourself.

I was walking along Monday afternoon, admiring the beautiful autumn day, the lovely leaves, the cute baby passing by, the friendly orange cat--when out of the blue the most preposterous, horrific thought crossed my mind: "Wouldn't it be sweet to have another little baby?"

Those were the exact words. I actually stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and slapped myself in the forehead as if I could knock them out of my brain. Jeebus. I can't even imagine living with myself if I had another kid.

It's not just the environmental factors (OMG POPULATION CRISIS, people--put your freakin' legs together!) or the expense thing (kids are powered by money, I think). It's not just the fear of sibling rivalry or the endless mess, or even the forty weeks of misery. It's idea of living in absolute terror for four long years.

I say four, although it's an approximate. I mean, you live through the agony of pregnancy, where the least little mistake could make the little critter shoot out three or four extra limbs or a harelip. A morsel of bad sushi could annihilate the poor thing. Then it finally gets here. There are germs and SIDS and colic and random viruses just waiting to pounce on the tiny, undeveloped immune system. There are all the food issues--dare I breastfeed after I've had Pad Thai, for fear of peanut allergies? There are all the fears that I'll drop the slippery, squirmy thing after I've given it a bath.

And those are just the infant terrors! Toddlerhood with its wobbly legs and attempts at running and climbing--that's where the real hell begins. Everything is a lethal weapon in the toddler's hands. Death is a second away at any point in time.

Just typing this stuff is making my tummy hurt. I am too big a sissy to be a parent. I feel damn lucky I made it this long, and you better believe that I have raised a child who is obsessed with safety. She's the school safety bully. Don't let her see you doing anything dangerous or you'll get your ear chewed off.

Well, luckily that thought passed. But in different "baby" news, I am feeling a bit like an empty nester. I'm pretty sure I feel exactly like a baby-sitter feels when she learns the kids she watches have gotten too big to need a sitter. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself!

You see, the last couple of months I've gotten to enjoy a truly, awesomely fabulous experience: working with John Joseph Adams on a couple of his projects. If you're like me, you've read all his anthologies and love them. (If you're not like me, you can keep it to yourself.) Somehow, a miracle happened and this guy, my hero, let me work on story headers for the coolest, most awesome anthology of all time: Brave New Worlds. This book is going to be amazing and I can't wait till it comes out, which is something like next January.

But now my work is done and it's been sent off to the publisher and I am just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs. I guess it means I'll have plenty of time to get ready for Nanowrimo!

I think I'll write something scary. But not as scary as thoughts about babies.

Yes, I am geeked out about this!

G**gle-y Gadgets

Somewhere down the line, I became a Google freak. I have gmail. I use gchat. I use Google Notebook (now defunct, sniff) to store many important pieces of information. I use Google Calendar, which between coordinating the family's schedules and a top-secret upcoming project that involves my favorite members of the Internet, has saved my bacon more times than I can count. And I can't rave enough about Google Docs, which not only helps file-sharing, but really does work as a good emergency word-processing tool. Hey, emergencies happen.

But then again, Google makes me nervous. There's the Google-Verizon Internet-twisting deal. The author-crushing Google Book Settlement. And I don't even like to think about the fact that Google is the world's biggest provider of information, what with the search engine and youtube and satellites and maps and YIKES!!! It's just creepy that one organization has become such a critical gateway to knowledge.

But creepy or not, they're dead useful. So I'm not sure what to think. But I do know the more I think about it, the more inspired I get to write dystopian fiction!

Cherries, Fruity Pebbles and love

I'm having the kind of week where paragraphs just won't come into my mind. So in no particular order, here is a list of odd-ball thoughts and activities going on in my world.

• We picked a gajillion pounds of cherries on Saturday. After snacking on cherries, baking with cherries, freezing cherries, juicing cherries and cleaning up cherry juice, I am now the only person in the family who will still eat a cherry.
• I am once again snacking on Fruity Pebbles before bed. I'm a lazy snacker, and I'm trying to eat less wheat (hey, you'd encourage it if you lived downwind from my house), so rice cereal is a lovely treat. It's also a become a wonder bond with my lovely friend Geardrops. This week has been so nice--now that she's unemployed, we've had way more time to chat!
• In the past five days, I've had four rejections and two acceptances. And no, I can't tell you who the acceptances were for. Not until August 6th.
• Wedding planning continues. I'm not sure what's worse: finding a place we like or trying to imagine an outfit that I'll look exceptionally cute in. My party-expert sister, Kristina, looked aghast when my answer to the question "What do you envision yourself wearing?" was answered with "A cardigan!" Welcome to Fred Rogers' wedding, gang.

Well, those are the top thoughts in the cobwebs of my brain. There are a few other stragglers--"How DO Chinese restaurants get the tofu so chewy on the outside and creamy on the inside" topping the list--but at least these all make sense.

May your week be productive and your Pebbles fruity!

As American as Ernest Hemingway

When I think of American literature, I think of Ernest Hemingway. Sure, there are other, more boring literary Americans: Hawthorne and Melville spring to mind. John Steinbeck begs to be mentioned, too. But can any other writer so magically capture the spirit of America?

Papa was a man of massive talent, over-flowing with talent. (Just as the United States began as a nation overflowing with resources and possibilities.) He spent much of his life exploring foreign countries (that's the US all right, always sticking its nose in other countries' affairs!). He was a physically powerful, rugged individual who devoted his free time to consumption, be it booze, women or trophy animals. And he utterly destroyed himself, finally committing suicide in 1961. (Here in my analogy, all I can say is: o_O)

But beyond being a man infused with the American spirit, he was also an amazing artist. He earned the Nobel prize in 1954 for the novel The Old Man and the Sea. His words have influenced the following generations of American writers more deeply than almost any other compatriot--his style has been aped or rejected or lauded in almost every writing instruction book I've ever picked up.

So I celebrated the 4th of July, our American national holiday, with a dessert inspired by Papa. Hemingway spent a great deal of time in Florida and the Caribbean, where he may have become enamored with the wonderful treat of Key Lime Pie. I whipped up a very basic Key Lime pie and gave it a red-white-&-blue flair, with a blueberry garnish and an ad hoc red berry sauce. The red berry sauce is especially American, since it is made with Concord grapes--a truly American grape varietal!

Here's my recipe for the sauce:

Ad Hoc Red Berry Sauce

1/2 C fresh or frozen strawberries & raspberries, defrosted if frozen

1 tsp sugar

1/4 C Concord Grape Jelly

Thoroughly mash the berries and stir in sugar. Heat grape jelly until liquidized and pour over the berry mixture. Stir together and chill until cold.

So go out there and celebrate your favorite American authors! If Hemingway leaves you cold, and you're desperate to escape literary fiction, try enjoying some great Speculative Fiction writers. Whip out some Ursula K. Le Guin. Try Octavia Butler if you've never read her work. Or try my favorite, Sheri S. Tepper, another fantastic feminist SF/F writer. Craving something darker? Anne Rice, Stephen King and Peter Straub are all patriotic choices.

Whatever you read, enjoy it with a slice of Key Lime Pie!

Coping with sensitivities

Call me a sensitive person.

It's okay. I have finally reached a point in my life where that word doesn't bother me--because I am. Sensitive. I have a remarkable sense of smell (which sharpened during pregnancy to a point where I could identify individual customers at work when they walked through the front door, a floor below my desk). I have perceptive taste buds that can taste the gag-inducing flavor of dish detergent on my hashbrowns no matter how well I rinsed the baking sheet after scrubbing it. I have good senses and love giving them new wonders to enjoy.

I must also have a weak filtering system so information from these great senses goes straight to my brain. Lots of noise drives me crazy. Ladies with perfume give me headaches and make it hard for me to concentrate. Too much color makes me agitated and stressed. There's no tuning it out. It's all or nothing, and sometimes it's exhausting.

I also got hit with all the other kinds of "sensitive," the kinds that nobody wants: a sensitive tummy, easily irritated by stress and booze and the kinds of foods it decides it doesn't like this week. A sensitive disposition, easily startled or made to cry. Sensitive skin that breaks out in hives when exposed to the kinds of chemicals it doesn't like. A sensitive immune system that is easily launched into hyper-mode when exposed to molds & dusts. And even, lamely enough, a sensitive respiratory attack that launches into coughing and wheezing fits at the least drop of mucous.

Those are the kinds of "sensitive" that gives the word a bad name.

There was a time in my life when I would have given anything to have thicker skin, especially in college, when my coping skills were at an all-time low. But now, 80% of the time, I love being sensitive. It's like having super-powers that help me better understand people and more fully enjoy the world in which I live. Yes, there's a disadvantage to being so moved by good writing that I sobbed my way through John Joseph Adams' The Living Dead anthology. But you better believe it helps me create better stories. And I love that.

Sometimes the real world irritates the hell out of me. As I've gotten older, I've gotten more skilled at controlling my environment and finding approaches that allow me to minimize negative or overwhelming stimuli. But it's impossible to get rid of it all. Bad days do happen when noise and upset and dark emotions swamp me like storm waves overpowering a little fishing boat (hey, where's the small craft advisory when I need one?!?). Even good stimuli can be too much for me, sending me into a full crash.

A complete crash is bad. It's a pure black depression, exhaustion, despair, emptiness. It's like a sensory deprivation tank built out of unhappiness. I wouldn't want to stay there long, and luckily, my system has developed an auto-eject function: inner misery will often switch over to a cold! In fact, right now, after an exhausting week, I can feel blackness dissipating with every sneeze.

It's a weird relationship, body and mind, senses and soul. Everybody has their own troubles balancing them, and everybody has to find their own solutions. But I think you can't go wrong with a hot bath and the love of a few good friends. They've gotten me this far!

Toothbrushes

So this morning I grab a toothbrush, paste it up and jam it in my mouth, only to look down at the toothbrush mug and realize I'm using Sweetie-Pie's toothbrush. You have never seen a toothbrush move so quickly--flying through the air in a beautiful arc of foam and spray, landing with a splatter in the sink. Uggh! The ultimate taboo! Using another person's toothbrush!

But isn't this ridiculous? I've lived with Sweetie-Pie for more than four years now. We share coffee cups. Share socks. Heck, in a pinch, I've even borrowed his underwear! (Boxer briefs, by the way, can be pretty dang comfy.) I certainly kiss the poor man. So why is it okay to put his tongue in my mouth, but not his toothbrush?

It's a stumper.

PS: Sorry for the TMI, guys. Hope no one was too scarred. :)

How about them beans!

On Tuesday, we had a bit of a family reunion. One of my aunts, who lives in Arkansas and whom I've only met a few times, came out west to visit, and my other aunt and one cousin drove her (and her husband) down to the Portland area so she could see my sisters and I.

It was a very nice evening. We all had some good chats and good food, but the surprise treat of the evening was the distribution of a few family heirlooms. I had the good fortune to receive a pitcher, just like the one in the picture above. Mine also came with a lid, which is flat and yellow and sits quite nicely on the ceramic rim of the container.

Most people would probably use this gizmo as pitcher for pancake batter, but my intrepid great-grandmother used this as her bean-soaking vessel. I wonder how many batches of beans began in this little crock. I wonder how many more will be made. It seems like a small container for a big farm family, but for my crew, this would make the perfect batch.

This ovenware dish will never be worth a lot of money. It's not a fancy or particularly unusual piece of pottery. But it is probably close to sixty years old. And it has seen so much! My great-grandmother was a farm-wife in Aroostook County, Maine. My aunt Nancy took the crock with her to Arkansas at some point after my great-grandmother died. And now it's been passed on to me, here in Oregon. From potato farm to suburbia to the city of Portland; from World War II to 2010--if that pitcher could talk, it would have quite the stories for us.

And they would all be centered around the humble, economical, filling and delicious bean.

Ode to geekerie

I have never been friends with anyone cool.

That's not to say that I've never been friends with anyone awesome or that my friends are uncool. Obviously, I have amazing friends. They're just geeks.

Geeks are willing to be enthusiastic about things. They get excited about something and they bubble over with it. Geeks try to learn more about their passions and make everyone they know into mini-experts on the topic. Geeks are passionate people.

I like being friends with geeks because they are always teaching me new stuff. Also, they don't look at me funny when I start talking supernaturally fast. They just listen harder.

I love being a part of the spec fic community because everybody involved is a super-mega-geek. Even the most important editor at the biggest publishing company is incredibly geeky. Actually, once you know how publishing works, you realize that an editor's job is to be a professional geek. That's right--they get paid to be full-time book geek. They just have to remember to talk more slowly than I usually manage during a full-on geekgasm. It gives them the illusion of cool.

Nothing makes me happier than giving in to my geekiest instincts and falling in love with a new subject. Nothing makes me happier than meeting another geek and riffing off their geek loves.

Nothing makes me happier than meeting kids that are growing up geeks. (And I'm thinking of my young friends Amberly and Kayla when I say that. Thank goodness for girls like you, who already rock so hard! We WILL hang out at Orycon. Just wait.)

Geeks rock. I love them. And I am so proud to be one that I'm even typing freakishly fast!

Atheist in paradise

A major highlight of my trip was my visit to the Natural History Museum of London. I hadn't intended to visit this museum--I thought I would go to the Victoria & Albert--but when I passed this amazing building, where each bit of architectural detail celebrated animal life, I had to go in.

A close-up of detailing between two windows:

I'm very glad I did. Every inch of this museum celebrates evolution and its first champion, and every inch was designed to astonish visitors with the grandeur and majesty of the natural world. Here's a view of the main lobby, shot from above:

And a close-up of the beautiful statue of Charles Darwin:

I did not feel simply as if I was inside a place of learning, but a place of celebration, of devotion, of inspiration. (I got pretty teary-eyed.) And on top of it all, the place was filled with remarkable specimens. The jaw-bone of the first t-rex ever discovered! Fossils discovered by the remarkable Mary Anning herself! Taxidermied passenger pigeons and dodos! I just sort of stumbled around, babbling to myself.

When I got done with my tour (cut short because of the need to meet some great people), I felt uplifted and full of joy. I have to imagine it's how religious folks will feel tomorrow, when they celebrate the biggest day of their calendar. I'm just glad I can get that feeling from the beauty and wonder of science, and the minds and creatures that fill the world around me. And I thank places like the Natural History Museum for helping me tap into that wonderful emotion.

Ordeal by Bra

Ordinarily, Saturday would be a day devoted to food talk, but today I have something much more pressing on my mind: bras. Or more precisely, trying on bras.

First, I have to confess that if I had my druthers, I would just go to Nordstrom and get professional assistance, because when it comes to brassieres, you are really much better off with an expert at the helm. There are many, many issues that affect the way a bra fits, and unless you have a lot of time on your hands (and possibly a degree in engineering), you're going to get frustrated.

But the last time I went to Nordies, I spent a lot of money, and while those were very worthwhile purchases, I am currently gripping every dollar bill quite tightly (this trip to England is going to be really expensive!). So it was Target and a lot of time in the fitting room this time around.

When I was younger, buying a bra was easy. I had the same criteria for foundation garments as I did a mate: stable and really good-looking. I would pick out something that looked cute, jump around the fitting room, and if everything had stayed inside, buy the darn thing. But now my boobs have quirks and special needs--like me, they come with baggage (and by baggage, I mean a kid who nursed for two years. Cause I'm a recovering hippie.).

For one thing, the boob parts of my boob (the soft, jiggly parts) hang down to about my navel, leaving the normal breast all skeletal and ribby. And for another, they can no longer be squished together in that sexy romance-novel-cover cleavage-y manner. There is no cleavage. There is a canyon. And attempts to push together the two sides of the canyon does not create attractive cleavage--age has given these melons willpower that simply sends them shooting out over the tops of the restraining material.

I do not look my best with boobs coming out my armpits.

Needless to say, when I shop for a bra, my first order of business is to search for something with a diesel engine and a crane attachment. I haven't found anything yet, but with all the options (padding! push-ups! gel inserts! wires! microfiber!), I feel it's just a matter of time before Caterpillar designs something for me. If anybody can work a forklift into shapewear, it's them.

Lord knows they've got Playtex beat. I worry that company has a new CEO: the Marquis de Sade. I'm a big believer in underwires, but these bras used their metal parts to break new ground in pain. Instead of "lifts and molds," the tag should have read "crushes and mangles." Said garment did, however, take the armpit boob to new heights--I could barely lower my arms to get the darn thing off.

On the plus side, all the twisting, dancing and shaking to get 15 models of brassiere on and off gave me a good workout. After spending forty minutes in a fitting room, looking at my shirtless body, I know I need one.

Defining beauty, defining power, defining ourselves

A few days ago, I cut my hair. It was a pretty drastic change (see before & after pics), and it made me think of my last major haircut. I was working at the museum and there was one family who came in pretty regularly, with three wonderful girls who liked me a lot. And the one girl saw my haircut and said that it was a big change, but I was still beautiful anyway. She looked so pained when she said it that I knew she was trying to be diplomatic. She was at that age, I think, when what it means to be beautiful is to have long hair.

To most girls, beauty is a function of being a woman, and to children still developing a sense of gender, the genders are painted with very broad brushstrokes. A woman has long hair. A girl wears pink. Men have short hair. Boys wear blue. Men are handsome; women are beautiful. Women decorate themselves and color their parts to accentuate their beauty. To kids, this all makes a lot more sense than any explanation of biological parts.

But as we get older and begin to work out a finer sense of what it means to be a woman or a man, we struggle with ideas about masculinity and femininity. The basic notions of a child become restrictive. What if you are born with a uterus but you don't like pink? What does that mean? What if you have a face that is never, ever going to look symmetrical, no matter how much foundation you cake on? These are questions that girls wrestle with as they grow up (boys have their own issues to work through), and into the middle of all that wrestling come the artillery shells of hormones and lust, throwing all the questions and definitions into the harsh light of lust.

Once lust is involved, the problems become more difficult to solve. Because there is a certain kind of power a beautiful woman can wield over a man, a power that generations of blond, buxom teenage girls have used to their advantage. It is the power of the trophy wife. It is a power that does not make a person stronger, but only allows them to better manipulate others. Girls watch prettier, more glamorous girls get doted over and see that power and beauty and being a woman are all wrapped up together in a horrific Gordian knot.

For some of us, that knot is too difficult to work through. I was one of those girls who looked at the muddle and just decided to turn my back on the problem. I wore goofball outfits, got ridiculous haircuts, and reveled in my personal integrity. I tried to become strong in my own way, learning as much as I could, developing a sense of humor, and looking down on all those blond babes with the boyfriend shelling out jewelry.

But now that I am strong, an educated woman with plenty of opinions I'm not afraid to share, I also don't worry so much about being mistaken for one of the babes. I can have long hair if I want to, not because I need to look like a girl, as my first-grade daughter believes she must, or because my hair is beautiful and I need it to look gorgeous (what can I say? I have good hair). I can have long hair just because I like it. And I can have short hair because I want to have short hair, not just to prove that I am too cool and tough to be "girly" (which is probably why I wanted short hair when I was a teenager). It's just hair.

I can say that now, because I have lived with myself and looked at myself long enough to appreciate the good features and the bad ones. I have people in my life to tell me I am beautiful. I am not afraid that I need a man to give me power. I think I might have finally worked out for myself what it means to be a woman. It is bigger than hair; it is bigger than pink; it is bigger than beauty. But it's also big enough to hold all of that in its warm arms.