Peg Kerr's Journal

I am much hungrier than usual. The nutrition guide said I should up my calories from the range I'd been trying to stay in before I started this, and I was dubious, but oh boy, I've really noticed a difference in my appetite.

Tony Horton seems really kind and encouraging. I certainly appreciate all the modifications he points out, and I feel more confident that I'll be able to keep this up, although I certainly can't do all the exercises yet. Not even close. But I'm confident that I'll get better.

I can tell that my problematic right knee will continue to be a factor.

Tony Horton's personality, on the other hand, really sets my teeth on edge. I can best describe it as, um, 'California Smarmy.' I can tolerate it for now. (I do note that there is an option to turn the sound off. I may resort to that in the future!) The program does seem solid, challenging, and safe.

Still sore, but not unbearably so. I am resorting to painkillers.

I've created a wizard rock set list which adheres pretty closely to the plot of the seven books, book by book. I chose a variety of artists I particularly like, that have done a good job of dramatically presenting various scenes or just the feeling the books evoke, through their lyrics and music.

( Here's how I'd tell the story of Harry Potter through Wizard Rock songs )

Your suggestions, additions, deletions? I'm probably relying most heavily on Riddle™ and Ministry of Magic, with a goodly dose of Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, the Parselmouths, the Weasel King, the Remus Lupins, the Whomping Willows, and Oliver Boyd & the Remembralls.

I planted my garden containers with miniature tomatoes. They are already noticeably thriving after a mere week and a half. The hanging baskets on the porch look great. The hostas look lovely in the front. And I never have to buy flats of impatiens to plant in that front garden ever again.

The hanging pot of mixed white and blue lobelia gives me deep joy every time I walk out the back door.

Rob has a job interview next Wednesday for a job he really really wants, for which he would be well-suited, and which I think would make him ecstatically happy. Grateful thanks to jenett who brought the opening to our attention! He made the cut to the top four candidates (there will be a later interview for the top two). Please send good thoughts and prayers our way.

The weather the past week has been gorgeous.

I will get a lot of overtime pay in my next paycheck.

At the end of the month, Rob will have been unemployed for a year. Yet, we are still managing to pay all our bills on time, and we actually have more money in the bank than a year ago. I have been a good steward of our resources, and God has truly been good to us.

I am hopeful and happy--for the most part--about our new President.

New Hampshire joined the list of states today that allow gay marriage.

Fiona got a call from that high school jobs program. She may get a job with them after all--at a public library. Man, the universe is doing a good job of finding jobs for her that exactly suit her.

I think I have finally achieved some hard-won peace about something Elinor Dashwood has been processing for over a month.

I think the Decrease Worldsuck has changed my thinking about my life. I have found such joy in discovering that I can make a difference every day (well, most days) and I am eager to see what this project will bring me and my family for the remainder of the year.

I dropped Fiona off at karate tonight and then drove to Anodyne Coffee where I had a delicious vegan salad. Then, I drove to Tanglewood Gardens, where I browsed the lovely plants for awhile and then stepped across the street for a hot fudge frozen custard sundae. As I was driving back to pick Fiona up again, I rolled down the window and looked up at the blue, blue sky, and admired the flowers in the gardens I passed, and I thought to myself, I am happy. I am truly, truly happy. I must remember this feeling so I can pull it out on dark winter days for comfort. I can see the holy tree growing within in my own heart without the slightest difficulty. The branches are flowering, the fruit is beginning to form, and the light from it is so bright that it illuminates my whole life with happiness and wonder.

I love being alive. I love my life and my family.

Right now, this moment, I am perfectly, exquisitely happy.

Ingredients for a really bad morning:

A teenager who has not had enough sleep.

A teenager who thinks she can finish her paper on the morning that it's due.

A subzero coldsnap.

A teenager who refuses to wear her gloves because they don't really keep her hands warm enough. (Oh, so like, bare skin is better?)

An orthodontist appointment at 7:30 a.m.

A cross-town highway that is crawling at 5 miles per hour when the speed limit is 55 miles per hour.

A car radio that no longer plays The Morning Show but instead news reports about the terrible economy.

A jeep that reeks from last week's electrical fire.

A school start time of 8:30 a.m.

A teenager's messenger bag that manages to insinuate the bag's strap into the mechanism of the jeep's hatch, thus rendering it unable to open.

When you're kicking the jeep and bawling out of sheer rage and frustration before 8:45 in the morning, you know it's probably not going to be a very good day.

Consider my last half week:

Brown belt test, advanced division
Continuing with 100 pushups challenge
Sparring
Biking to and from work
Spin kicks practice at karate tonight, and yes, as it ALWAYS does, the tornado kick wrenched my inner groin muscles
continue (fruitlessly) trying to stretch out my super tight hamstring muscles

It is no wonder that if Rob didn't have to have the car tomorrow to take the girls to the orthodontist, I would be driving to work. Because, damn, I hurt all over. And tomorrow I'm expecting girly cramps. I've sure been putting my body through a lot lately. I think it's trying to tell me that really, enough is enough.

1. Third time isn't particularly a charm. It's a good thing I'm telling practically nobody about this.
2. How dare you!
3. Would you cut it out? Do you have to do that almost every night? You are digging your grave with your own teeth.
4. Aren't you glad you're not around so I can't nag you about it?
5. Ouch.

kijjohnson does this. I can do it, too.

1. It would perhaps be easier if I were more used to it. Why now? Hormones? I thought that by now it would be going the other way.
2. There can never be enough, but drawer space is limited.
3. There are times when I am convinced that they really don't deserve me.
4. That's okay, because I really don't deserve them either.
5. The guilt would be more productive if I actually did something about it.

Another parent meeting at school, this one for Fiona's Robotics Team. I sooooo do not want to go to this. Right in the middle of the dinner hour, dammit, and it'll mean I miss karate.

I am still irritated about all the incredibly stupid (and often bigoted) commentary I've been reading in blogs and news services about the outing of Dumbledore. And then I get mad at myself for even caring what idiots say.

I am gaining weight again. I didn't want to go back over 150, but I did. Dammit.

My check register doesn't match the data input on Quicken, which means I'll have to chase down the subtraction error. I am extremely anal about making sure my paper and computer records correlate, but I can't find where I screwed up. I hate this.

My office is a mess because I have the financial paperwork spread out all over the floor, for making Quicken entries and filing.

I need to start writing that paper for Fantasy Matters and I feel singularly uninspired.

I am excessively irritated with Fiona over something. It's between her and me (and her geography teacher). Best not to ask. Really.

My husband is still unemployed.

Gacked from weaselmom:

If you comment on this post, I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Here are the interests from my list that weaselmom picked to ask me about:

endicott studio A consortium of writers and artists, grouped around Terri Windling, a noted fantasy writer and editor. Website here. She was the one who created the Fairy Tale series published by Tor--I had originally written The Wild Swans hoping to sell it to her for that series, although eventually I sold it to Warner instead. I enjoy her blog and journal.

letter games I first learned about letter games when I read Sorcery and Cecelia, which was co-written by one of my writing mentors, Patricia C. Wrede, and Caroline Stevermer (1crowdedhour). Basically, the idea is that one writer writes a letter, in character, and the other writer has to answer, and between the two of you, you start creating a story. But you can't tell the other writer what you intend the story to be. You just have to react to the latest letter. So it's a challenge to you as a writer as well as a game. I tried it, once, with kijjohnson, and we started a pretty interesting story, set during the Civil War, but we never finished it.

mythopoeic fiction Fantasy fiction in the tradition of the Inklings (i.e. the writing group at Oxford, of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. The Mythopoeic Society is a literary and educational organization for the study, discussion and enjoyment of fantastic and mythic literature, both the work of the Inklings and other works that continue in the same tradition. They present the Mythopoeic Award every year; The WIld Swans was a finalist for the year it was published, but it didn't win. Sigh.

paradigm of uncertainty I put this on the list because it was the first Harry Potter fanfiction I ever read, written by madlori. I think I discovered it shortly after I started posting on the Harry Potter for Grownups Yahoo group. It's archived here. I believe it's generally considered THE classic Harry/Hermione story. It was this story that started me on a hunt for other fanfiction, a habit which I have not yet broken.

pre-joycean fellowship There's a definition of it here, at Wikipedia. It is rather a joke which started among a circle of writers, many of them local here in Minneapolis. I was aware of it because these were many of the same writers I was pumping for information on my question, "How do you write a novel, anyway?" (And after writing two of 'em, I'm still no clearer on this question.) Anyway, their works were the ones I enjoyed reading, and which influenced me the most while I was trying to master novel writing myself.

ritual I like rituals, and I work a lot of them into my daily life. Writing in my paper journal every day. Getting pictures of the girls on their birthdays and a picture of Rob and me on our anniversary. Always eating strawberries and cream for breakfast on the morning of July 6--that's the day after my anniversary, and I had strawberries and cream for breakfast the day we started our honeymoon. (Yum. In more ways than one.) Setting the table for Twelfth Night. Lighting candles on the night of the winter solstice. I firmly believe that I need rituals to ground and center me, and I love weaving them into my family life. I express my love for my kids and husband partly by the things I do without fail, every day, every week, every year.

winter I have very mixed feelings about winter. I can hardly avoid it in Minnesota, of course. I dreaded it for years when I came to realize that I suffered from seasonal affective disorder, and so my experience of winter was all tied up with my depression. I thought about it a lot when I was planning a book about winter magic (that book, alas, seems to be permanently put on hold).

Gradually, however, I came to identify the diamond in the heart of winter that Peter Gabriel talks about in his song "Winter Solstice." Learning to love winter is all about finding light in dark places (another interest on my list).