I’m going to write a book someday!

It struck me the other day as I was riffing with my writing partner that I loved the creative process. Even if the messiness of it gets to me sometimes. You know that without-hope part when you’re kicking ideas around and there’s too many — or not enough — and you lose focus and become done with it all and then a light shines at the end of the cave and you fumble toward it and next thing you know you’re out of the abyss of process and into the shine of idea production?

And then I remembered my first partner in creative ideating — Dawn (isn’t that name apt). We made an insane amount of ideas come to life, on cassette tape after cassette tape, which we’d play for our unwitting parents after we emerged exhausted and exhilarated from our “recording studio,” located in the far right corner of Dawn’s bedroom, across from the Barbie penthouse and Sunshine Family camper.

Those days soared. I lived smack dab in creativity and promise and was best friends with someone who got me.

So the prompt for today:

Describe your closest childhood friend.

This prompt comes courtesy of creative genius, this guy. Because although I think often of my best childhood friends and the road which led from them to me, I never prompted it, until he gave me the idea on Twitter last night.

Please post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

A few weeks ago I worked late on a Saturday and came home around 4PM greeted by a mish mash melange mosaic of Christmas cheer. Seems Toots and Booger bamboozled their dad into taking the holiday decorations out of the garage early so they could get a head start on fluffing our place with all manner of sparkle, glitter, and snow globe.

Lordy the place glowed! With bedazzled pine cones placed in heating vents and empty corners, holly draped on couches and sills and toilet tanks, and ornaments put wherever they’d stick. Strangely, that turned out to be every kitchen orifice and cooking appliance, but no matter: The place festively bursted with decorative accents lovingly placed in bizarre and dangerous locations! Have you ever been impaled in sensitive flesh areas by a pine cone? It’s a holiday tradition over here!

As I walked through the house and beheld each unexpected Christmas wonder, the girls trailed behind me in anticipation. “Mommy! Did you see where we put the Baby Jesus?” (On a lightbulb) “Can you find the glass ornament YOUR mom gave you as a special memento to remind you that even though you had a conflicted relationship she really loved you?” (On the third step of the staircase) and so on. And all the while because I’m a horrible OCD person unfit to enjoy the magic of Christmas unless it’s tidy, I mentally catalogued each misplaced decoration and re-located it in my head. Of course, sure enough over the course of the next several days, I’d surreptitiously transferred every ball, light, and sleigh to where they properly belonged. Everything in its place! Whhhheeeee! I’m so delightful and fun!

As soon as the kids caught on, Toots told me in disappointment, “We KNEW you’d move everything.”

Well after that “My OCD is going to kill us all! Alllllllllllll!” moment, I decided to let go and allow some items to be haphazardly re-placed in weird spaces. Which is to say, that around MY home, holiday decor is all about me being able to live with my kids’ version of holiday decor.

I’m really coming along. Because this totally didn’t freak me out too much:

But right? It’s messy religion-wise. Sending mixed signals. A Jesus holiday trinket on Buddha? Come ON!

Also, this is a Christmas decoration:

According to my children. And let me tell you, as a certifiably insane over-vacuumer, THAT is the hardest thing to let stand. Or sit. Or lay? What IS it doing? Scattering its infernal messiness all over my white carpet? DIE pine needles DIE! DISINTEGRATE INTO NOTHINGNESS! STOP DEFILING MY OCD SPACE!

Ha. HA. I kid. Just. Kidding. Kidding is me. Call me a kidding person. Of kiddingness. I’m cool, really. Cooooolllllll.

But this one hurt a bit:

At least the Made in China figurines are arranged from lowest to highest.

And THEN this happened:

Yes that’s a tree placed at a 90-degree angle. It toppled yesterday and we haven’t been able to upright it. Now as I’m someone who needs stuff to be aligned in a sensical fashion (note: only in my house, not in my head), this made me spit bile, but I lived. The kids think it’s awesome and want to keep the tree leaning that way. And all the infernal pine needles that flew everywhere when the tree dived into the window? Those are simply a festive nest of holiday amazingness. If I throw pine needles away, I am “killing the tree’s soul.”

All this is to say I’m trying to win a vacuum. (“I am sharing my holiday home decor and cleaning tips for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls and Great Cleaners.”) Because if I had a new vacuum, I could busy myself with sucking dirt up and not worry so much about Buddha’s bow.

To that end, I have a few/one holiday decor tip(s) for you:

1. This

is not holiday decor.

Which brings me to my cleaning tips:

1. Use vinegar and baking soda on everything. I do. I pour it down the sink, in toilets, and on carpet stains. It makes a little cleaning volcano that sounds clean while it’s cleaning. I like things to be clean. CLEAN clean. With cleaning.

2. Let some things go. Like your entire upstairs and the insides of things. This cleaning tip can get complicated if you use your second level or refrigerator.

3. Get a new vacuum. Because the one you have is full of disappointment and defeat.

I think that’s good for now. Because I don’t care to dissect why I’m gunning for a new vacuum when I just wrote about why I needed to de-OCD myself.

So: Merry Christmas! Enjoy, even if your holiday figurines are placed asymmetrically!

“You can see him now,” like a movie butler or secretary might say, and never before have those words carried such weight. I threw each syllable around my shoulders and hefted their sharp points into the hospital room. I laid the armor at his feet, and surveyed the tube thieving his speech. And then. Big black eyes like his mother’s, my grandma, with Indian blood and fire, which she spit whole into his mouth at birth. He took to them like a baby bird. Which is what I thought of now. Like a child, like a baby, like a helpless one, like someone he’d never been. Not yet. I know that now.

It’s the eyes. What I remember. Round and open and scared, and the tubes, bloody and thick with amber, and the bed pan full of poop in the room next to his. We passed it every day, seemingly unemptied, possibly containing all the waste of every person in the unit; allowed to fill up and fill up and stay there, coiled and dirty and disgusting and why didn’t they move it?

Where’s the bed pan guy?

I asked my brother.

“Actually?” he teased, “‘Bed pan guy’ prefers the term, ‘fecal engineer.’”

So there were laughs.

Pops taught us well. Chewed life whole and spit it back in our mouths at birth.

The laughing through what comes and in the maw of death and I”ll have the chicken fried steak, thank you, our time here is too short.

But the tube doesn’t laugh and the eyes tell all.

You don’t want to see someone you love with black in their eyes.

So much remains although it’s over now (is it?). New intentions and closer to the family and scars from chin to calf. A sharp recall of the tube, so very quickly out, but the words that I carried into the room and the husk they left behind.

I don’t want to watch him die; one parent is enough. And I’m obsessed. With death and not being here anymore and the quiet and the roar in the dark. With the spirit emptying and soaring and the shard it leaves behind. Of the pine casket carried by children and On Eagle’s Wings and all those flowers. The cards with shaky script written by people who fear they’re next and the phone calls. Of my friends with cancer and the young mother who will leave her two girls brinking on womanhood and the not waking up in bed and who will find you and the things left in the closet and the notes you forgot to burn.

But it’s not about me, is it?

Because we make it through to the other side, whether we want to or not, and so much remains.

The Indian blood and the fire. The laughs and the scar. Who has one without the other.

There will always be black in our eyes.

Hi! It’s that special time of year! A happy month of merrymaking and holiday cheer. Of friends, family, and fruitcakes. Of gifts from the heart and trees from the forest. Of chestnuts and golden balls.

Which brings me to…

The fourth installment of Bawdy Holiday Prose.

As I wrote back in December 2008:

“For today’s PROMPTuesday, please compose a holiday limerick.

 

For background: As you may or may not know, and probably could care less to have knowledge of, is that a limerick is a five-line poem, often obscene in nature… In a recent Wikipedia search, I turned up this example:

 

The limerick packs laughs anatomical

In space that is quite economical,

But the good ones I’ve seen

So seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

 

Now I don’t care if your limerick is obscene, because mine probably won’t be; after all I was a virgin until the age of 22, and probably wouldn’t know obscene if it bit me in the ass, which it did.

 

But still, please imaginate your limerick and either post it in the comments or write it on your blog and leave your URL in the comments.”

Well that 2008 bawdy holiday prose as described above was a big hit with some hilarious submissions as you can read here. Here is one highlight from my very own The Rock:

‘Twas bitterly cold that xmas eve night

Down came his pants and out went the light

Not bad, right? So I did it again in 2009. And that time? It blew. I like to pretend there wasn’t a Bawdy Holiday Prose PROMPTuesday, Part Deux.

I am getting very sleepy. Veerrrryyyy sleepy. My arms are getting heavy. My fingertips are numb. So numb they were incapable of writing last year’s bawdy holiday prose prompt. It was all a figment of my overactive imagination. It didn’t exist. It didn’t exist. It didn’t ex…..

There. I have self-hypnotized myself into pretending 2009′s bawdiness never even lived on the page. Self-delusion is fun! You should try it sometime. I can teach you.

And I’m not even gonna talk about Part Trois, cuz I lifted the whole thing for Part Four, and this is all getting extremely confusing.

But meanwhile…

You got a bawdy holiday limerick?

Give it to me, baby.

Please post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

{{A re-post!}

Writing sweats it out of you, sometimes turnip blood, sometimes holy water, but the act is always a birth, a labor to be endured with sturdy legs and open mouth. There’s such pain rooted in the craft, which is inexorably tied to bliss, both binding together in a paroxysm of creation. A single burst of inspiration sometimes. A hard-scrabble bout with crippling insecurity others. And you never apprehend the way it ekes from you – a spurt, a stream, a leak? – to make it happen just the same way twice. Words are water, writing is wind; it puffs, it squalls, it sings; it hauls you up, it plants you down. I know this all to be true, every unsettling consequence, and still I puzzle it out, usually in the midst of a tunnel I’m scrambling from, clutching scraps of paper with messages I’ve scrawled and bled out: Why all this fuss, all this fracas? Must I twist in the labyrinth, search for words, trust them to lead me somewhere I’ve never been?

Yes. Because the the light gleams in the nethers and I will forever coax it out. The shadows bubble there, too, somewhere profound and bottomless, and it’s equally important to summon their mournful stories of closed bedroom doors and the girl waiting inside. I’m not always ready for the surfacing, but I welcome what comes because the girl needs me to bust open the door. But sadly, so sadly many writers shut it. Told one time or another they’re no good, they should stop trying, or worse, they’re not writers. Somberly still, these arrows of criticism are sometimes slung by the people closest to us, and those are the deepest gashes to the soul. That kind of silence is the heaviest of all, a thunder clap that erases all else but the voices in a writer’s head. Belief in self is unyielding for some; but for writers, it can be wearisome and a mountain to scale with scabby fingers and burned-up spirit.

It takes some of us years to shed the belief that our words have no value, don’t hold worth; that we should shut up because who wants to hear what we have to say.

So why would someone, anyone, especially another writer, join the army of voices in your head?

We all know what it’s like, the sweat, the shadows, the silence. Put down your battle axe.

The wind calls us both to the labyrinth.

Have you ever organized your desk, scoured the attic, or browsed garage boxes and found old letters from lovers, high school friends, or…yourself? Encased in dust, scourged by yellow, or just plain unread for years?

I did recently, and was amazed at how so much — and so little, really — has changed. In a recent bureau drawer cleanse, I discovered 1989 letters I wrote my mom from college, and the trademark insecurity, flippantness, and introspection is there; as are a girl’s words spoken into the world unfolding in front of her.

Eye-opening, sobering, amazing, centering, and bittersweeting.

Meanwhile, would you share one of your “found” letters here? It could be from someone else (bonus points for juiciness) or from YOU to someone you love/d, hate/d, admired, cherished, dumped, believed, married, broke.

Please post your letter (bonus bonus points for pictures AND explanation) in your blog and leave a link in the comments here.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

P.S. I’ll be back here tomorrow to expand/expound/post the letter I wrote as shown above.

In the days when I’d visit my dear friend Rebecca, I remembered silence. Those afternoons of unrelenting nothing. Of near to zero noise and conversation and TV buzz. So many days, a million, we’d sit cross-legged from each other, she in her rocking chair, I in a vintage gold velvet-covered, straight-back number, and just melt into air. In complete repose, Rebecca would cross her hands over her chest of many colors — how she loved color — while I’d struggle for something to say to bridge the vast resounding quiet. There was this teeny smile that’d play over Rebecca’s lips because she knew how I roiled against the not talking and filling the gaps with small talk, but as always, she knew me well enough to know I could learn a lesson.

My eyes darted and skimmed and eventually settled because if someone doesn’t want to talk, no amount of your nervousness is going to make her. I smelled the musky dried lavender she’d collected a year earlier and placed in one of her small glass containers, probably a jelly jar; and I heard the calla lilies outside her window stroke each other’s silk, and there was a clock ticking. Soon enough, I stopped hearing it. But there were pictures — so many! — that she painted with an impossibly steady hand for 92 years old, and scriptures, and newsboy caps on boys who’d died in 1912.

And I absorbed them all into my ether until I’m quite unseparate from those melting minutes days.

We didn’t stay that way too long because Rebecca took pity and pulled out something she wrote or I wrote and asked me to read. All this naked nearness — without silly sounds to plug the ticking clock — let me hear who I was and what I wanted and who I was, to me, the most important part because we do forget.

There’d be these simple, so complicatedly simple sentences she’d give me, which against the billowing silence grew round and profound and distilled the deepest confusion of the soul into its smallest part — you know who you are, you know who you are, you know who you are.

She knew who I was.

She made it so I would know too.

Now there’s noise, most which I make myself. Taking the time to take time is lost like feathers to the wind. I hear, I say, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” and it makes me tired and scattered. I’ve forgotten to look inside. There’s too much outside.

But I’m quite unseparate from those melting minutes days.

Because there is always the silence.

It calls like November, like crossed hands on a chest, an empty chair, dried flowers breaking when you don’t notice, when you’re asleep even while awake; it cries, it keens, it pulls at you.

It knows who you are.

And if you’re lucky you find the person, you even, who listens until the noise outside fails to scare you into who you are not. Any more.

Entertaining, especially holiday style, ranks way up there as one of my favorite feel-goods. I dig putting menus together, selecting festive cocktails, and planning stupid party games my husband nixes (i.e. throw random strangers together, hand them one word written on a file card, make them talk about it amongst themselves). (Every time, he says no and breaks my spirit) (I call it a “Conversation Party.”) (Or I would. If my spirit weren’t broken and hanging precariously by one fragile soul thread.)

Lately, we haven’t had as many people over like we did in the old days, pre-recession and economic suckage, but I still like to fantasize about what I’d do if I were to plan a shindig. At the very least, I enjoy coming up with appetizer/drink ideas to bring to other people’s parties. That’s fun, too.

Coincidentally, last week, I was invited to a party hosted by Fresh & Easy (the grocery store, Pervo EntendrePants), and came across so many cool apps and drinks to serve that I had to share it with you. So you can serve them at your Conversation Party your husband would probably let you have if you asked. (I mean, come ON! The strangers get to know each other during the forced conversation that would only be awkward for probably the first 10 minutes. Or until everyone left immediately.)

At any rate, here’s what I would serve:

-FOOD-

Cranberry Sausage Skewers

What you do:

Take Fresh & Easy’s Cranberry Sausage (sliced), sweet potato cubes and tomatoes, put it all on a skewer, quick grill it, then glaze with Fresh & Easy pineapple/cherry glaze.

Butternut Squash Risotto Cakes

What you do:

Scoop out balls (watch it, Pervy) of Fresh & Easy’s Butternut Squash Risotto and freeze about 20 minutes until firm, but not frozen.
Then coat the balls (I HEARD THAT) with a beaten egg mixture and Panko bread crumbs. Place on a baking sheet, spray with extra virgin olive oil, bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, let cool, and serve.

Pumpkin Bisque

What you do:

Warm, pour in shot glasses, serve. (I loved these bisque shooters because sometimes pumpkin overpowers, but these offered just the right amount of festive deliciousness.)

Fresh & Easy Triple-cream Brie, Spinach and Artichoke Purses, Shrimp Platter, Fruit and Dip Plate.

What you do:

Try not to eat all at once. These are ready to go, and major temptresses. Especially the Brie. Best I ever had, no lie.

-DRINK-

Fresh & Easy Dreamstone Pink Moscato

What it is:

A pretty sparkling wine that’s a great start to a party. And it’s less than $5 a bottle. This also makes a cool hostess gift.

Fresh & Easy Doon Buggy Red Blend

What it is:

A blend of 90% Syrah, 10% Merlot that is mellow and under $10.

Fresh & Easy Pumpkin Spiced Apple Cider

What it is:

A non-alcoholic, seriously flavorful, holiday-ey drink. This was my favorite. It’s a really nice option to offer people who don’t drink.

-THE EXTRAS-

If nothing else, you must procure the Fresh & Easy Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake.

Take it from a cheesecake head (I went to college in Wisconsin!)

And to sum up: Enjoy the holidays. Let me know if you talk your husbands into my Conversation Party brainstorm. First two words to discuss: AWESOME IDEA.

{{Fresh & Easy does not know I posted this. But they did give me granola and nut clusters (SHUT IT PERVY.)}}