Things About Beer, and Words

Today, it happened. Today, as I sat cozied up to the bar at my favorite brewery, some guy came up next to me and started talking beer. It wasn't ten minutes into the conversation that he asked me if I was the "one who writes the stories in the paper." I answered in the affirmative and he said he recognized me from the headshot with my beer column. This means I am famous. This makes me a celebrity. I have arrived. I will be selling autographs later.

It's not really that I am famous. It's really just that beer is the great equalizer. It brings people together and levels the playing field across generations, fashion sensibilities, mood swings... Beer is love. Beer makes every conversation bearable, every task (almost) enjoyable, and any company endurable. Beer is the best.

Lately I've been having a hard time writing. I mean, I can do the stuff I have to for work, but I have certainly been feeling less than inspired to spew original ideas that have any real merit. Running into somebody who reads, and actually digests, and maybe even enjoys, the words that I write, helps me feel like I am not always screaming my words into an echoless void, which might be a writer's worst nightmare - it's definitely mine.

When I left my post as the writer at the Silverado, it was more of a release of the THING that offered me a pathway into the community than it was quitting a job.  Much like beer lubricates a conversation, or a relationship, or a bad decision, writing for a local paper gave me an in. I let it go because I knew my heart was headed in a different direction, which it always it, the direction with less commitment and more insecurity, because I like adventures. And suffering. And I like having an "in," but I've found that I also like to sit back and observe in anonymous ambiguity, watching and waiting for inspiration.

I love writing about things I love. Like beer. Or history. Or psychoanalytical bullshit that I make up randomly. I don't love writing about things that I don't care about and then having to have conversations about those things with people who read my stories and expect me to be interested and/or have expertise, when in reality, I did what I was told. And doing what I am told has never been my favorite.

So back to the beer I go. For drinking and writing and making friends. And back to the writing, for thinking and understanding and being famous. Or not. Either way, as long as there's beer.

Things That We Didn't Do: On Baja Dogs and Breezes

We came to La Ventana to kiteboard, or more accurately, He came to kiteboard. I came for the beach and the beer and the warm sunshine on my face. A little fishing village nestled into a protected cove on the Sea of Cortez, La Ventana was founded in 1940 by a disenfranchised pearl diver and his family in search of a new beginning. Most parcels of land in the La Ventana bay were co-opted by the government, subsidizing small family plots until 1996 when Mexican law changed and granted ownership to the longtime farmers and ranchers who had worked the land for generations. La Ventana became a mecca for wind sport enthusiasts in the 1990s as the daily El Nortes (northerly fronts)  make for a wind sport enthusiast’s wet dream. It was a history I could relate to - a new beginning and the dream of doing my job somewhere that wasn’t cold and dreary. Anywhere that wasn’t the snowless frigidity of post-holiday wintertime in the northwest.

We got into La Ventana just in time for dinner on Thanksgiving night, and by some miracle, one of the little restaurants squeezed us in for an all-the-trimmings turkey dinner buffet, sans reservations. Later, He would say how it was the best food we had the whole time we were there, the piles of deep fried turkey and mashed potatoes so creamy that they couldn’t have been real. Even the wine tasted better than the merlots we had back home. I would agree with Him, except for the bag of totopos that the last residents of the Casita had left behind. They were salty and perfect. I couldn’t stop eating them at midnight and for breakfast, and while we laid out in the sun on the plaster roof top in the late morning the next day.  

All I wanted was a space of seaside to sit next to and write. Or daydream. Or drink. Maybe all at once. There was seaside, all right. Miles of it, white and sandy and the perfect amount of warm. Occasional Canadian kiteboarders drifted by, and the fourth generations of the family farmers, picking up sticks off the beach and being chased by little white Baja Dogs everywhere.

Late Friday  morning, we walked three miles along a dirty highway to cash in whatever tourist panache we had for a couples massage at the only large resort in town. We paid the going rate willingly, if for no other reason than to feel like we could afford it, and then we tromped back down the highway and then the three minute trail of sand and clay from our Casita to the beach with all of His kiteboarding gear and sat expectantly in the sand, waiting for the wind to pick up. And waiting. And waiting. In between the waiting, we wandered over to Baja Joe’s where everybody goes for coffee, and then beer, and then tequila, and some killer Asada Tacos. Saturday we repeated the process, but with less waiting and more tequila, the kiters bemoaning the quiet air over their Pacifico and nachos. Frustrated windseekers found solace in the mellow beat of a reggae band at Joe’s on Saturday night, the dance floor carelessly littered with multinational escapees of all generations and some of the farmers.

There wasn’t much accounting for Sunday morning, thanks to the Peyote IPA and the number of Baja Fogs that Paula the bartender made for us the previous night, but by afternoon, the waiting game began anew, and in anxious earnest as the wind picked up just enough to rustle the palm trees in the courtyard at Baja Joe’s and tease all of the pent up athletes. Kiters with small physiques and large kites hustled out to the beach to catch the gentle breeze, but those of greater substance knew the wind wasn’t enough to carry them offshore, so the wait continued.  

I didn’t do very well at proving that I am good at working “anywhere,” since unplugging and not caring about work seemed so much more important than getting 18 new stories cranked out and all of my deadlines met ahead of time. But it was heavenly. No place to be unless we wanted to be there, and nowhere to go except where our feet would take us. Lazy afternoon siestas were punctuated with walks up and down the beach for food, catching sunrises and sunsets if we felt like it, counting the constellations we could name and making up new ones. After a few days we found the Baja Dogs on our heels like the farmer’s kids, weaving in and out of kite shops and little make-shift patio restaurants that most of the locals seemed to run as a by-the-way businesses along the beach.

Another night at Joes’ brought in a cover band that played everybody’s favorite song from all generations and genres. The dance floor was full of expatriate and unfulfilled kiteboarders dancing to “Jesse’s Girl,” locals still wearing the uniform of the restaurants next door from the shift they just finished, old run-away hippies and Baja Dogs. Pacifico bottles rolled across the paving stones and beer splashed between the toes of bare feet while the band played AC/DC and Elvis covers. That night nobody cared that the wind hadn’t come for them. That night the moonlight and the tequila and the music was enough.

He only got out on His kite once, and even then it wasn’t His kite, but a bigger one that He rented, hoping the bit of wind that picked up one afternoon would do it. It didn’t, and after fighting His way down the curving shoreline, He endured the walk of shame back up the beach, board in hand, to get back to the more readily accessible sport of beer and tacos and dreaming up ways of smuggling Baja Dogs home to the northwest. Secretly, I didn’t mind the lack of wind, mostly because I was selfish and liked Him next to me on the beach. But Him being next to me made for less work getting done and more lazy wave-gazing, watching the hermit crabs scuttle sideways across the beach and staring at the cloudless sky as if the wind might suddenly appear visibly. I wouldn’t call it a loss, for Him or for me.

Things About Being Famous

 

I am almost there. I can pretty much taste it. It’s a very short matter of time before I close the gap between myself and Jayden K. Smith and become the world famous writer you all knew I would be. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time, sandwiched between reading “You Are a Badass” (highly recommend) and writing stories about Billy Ray Cyrus (don’t worry, he’s not really changing his name), obsessing over how to get people to share my writing on the viral scale that Jayden K. Smith’s hacking threat spread. Maybe if I was more threatening. Maybe if I had hacking skills. Maybe if I had a name like JAYDEN. Then I would be famous by now. I thought about shotgunning out a blog link out to every single contact I have on Facebook. (In case you didn’t know how pseudo-popular I am, that’s about 628 people, give or take the ones that will unfriend me after my most recent blog post wherein I didn’t capitalize The Lord’s Name.) (I apologize.)

If I shotgunned out a blog link with a minor threat of 14 years of bad luck or puppies dying tragically if the material goes unread, or worse - UNSHARED (gasp!), and at least three of my “friends” succumbed to my manipulation by sharing, and another six shared it accidentally because they are Of a Certain Age and don’t know what the Facebook buttons are for, I would increase my audience by at least 13%. That’s a lot when your audience is currently 6.5 people, and at some point, someone’s great Aunt Ruth is gonna share that piece of vital literature with her entire social network and her interweb savvy great-grand-niece would be some super cool literary agent or publishing house employee, or even the editor of a Small and Insignificant Magazine, but she would read me, and WANT me, and I would be FAMOUS. Two steps from a book deal, y’all.

I am dreaming here. I can see it now. In between worrying that Google Docs is going to suddenly realize that I have used up ALL of their internet space with my constant rambling and shut me down, and wondering if I bought a sophisticated pair of booties to wear with skinny jeans if people would take me more seriously, I am conjuring up a picture of where I am headed, and it’s frighteningly exciting.

Ever since I watched Romancing The Stone, I knew I was destined to be an eccentric writer with a messy bun and stacks of random literary starts scattered around my airy, high-rise big city apartment like so many tiny plants, just waiting for the exact right amount of sunlight and moisture to germinate into flourishing specimens of literary AWESOME. Except I would have more dogs than Kathleen Turner.

Of all of the GREAT IDEAS and CREATIVE VISIONS that come to me in my dreams (no, really, they do, but they’re kind of weird), I have yet to settle into the focus that is really the thing that will get me where I want to go. I, in predictable fashion, am all over the place like a ping pong ball in a zero gravity capsule, floating indiscriminately in and out of lost food particles and droplets of drool. I need a weighted vest to hold me down to my couch and brain blinders to keep my mind tracking down one path. THE PATH. I have proven that generating material is no issue at this point, cranking out thousands of useless words every day with no specific mission other than PAY THE BILLS. But it’s time to direct all of that wanton energy into something good. Good enough to get big. Big enough to open doors for All The Things (see video below).

But then I am gonna need things like trendy photographic head shots for my professional portfolio and business cards. I have business cards right now but I am mildly embarrassed to give them out, maybe because they don’t have a trendy head shot on them. Or maybe because I don’t like my phone number. Or maybe because handing out business cards makes me feel too much like a grown up. But only grown ups make the Big Bucks so I guess it’s time to embrace the business card suck.

Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling to basically express my displeasure at how much work it takes to become famous. Not that I am against work, but… If you know of any shortcuts (i.e. literary agents looking for the Next Big Thing, etc), I am all ears. (And feel free to share me with your great Aunt Ruth.)

Things About Starting

So here's something new: A GUEST BLOGGER! Wherein I get someone who knows way more things than me and is WAY better about writing these things to share words on my blog. How lucky am I??? Pretty much the luckiest, but all y'all already knew that. This first guest blogger is extra special because she's ACTUALLY WRITTEN BOOKS. In fact, she's something of a hero to me in her discipline and writing practice, in addition to a real job and All Of The Excuses that we all have. If you haven't checked out the Books of the Between, or my personal favorite, Dead Before Dying by Kerry Schafer, or more recently, Closer Home, by alter-ego Kerry Anne King (I am not sure which one of them wears the cape...), now would be an excellent time to do so. I am sharing this post of Kerry's because it resonated deeply with me, and because I like the part about the string.

Here's a little about Kerry from her website (www.kerryanneking.com), where you can also find the following post on her own blog, which is worth a follow:

Kerry Anne King lives with her Viking in a little house surrounded by trees, the perfect place for writing books and daylight dreaming. She spends her days working as an RN in a clinic, spinning her tales early in the morning and in the evenings after work. She believes passionately in the idea of the "whole self" and is ever in pursuit of balancing mind, body, and spirit. She also writes fantasy and mystery novels as Kerry Schafer.


JUST START SOMEWHERE

Kerry Anne King


Decision making is not my strong suite.


I can hear my Viking snorting as I write these words, even though he's not even in the house at the moment. He's all about making decisions, and they are generally good ones. For him, the world usually flows in direct lines from cause to consequence. He's boggled by my difficulty.

My Meyer's Briggs temperament type is INFP. Some of you will know what that means. If you don't, let's suffice it to say that my brain prefers to ponder the whys and wherefores of the universe rather than the common sense realities of the world around me.

Making decisions? I'm like a kid in the proverbial candy store. So many choices, and I'm never allowed to choose them all. Making a decision is like closing a door on possibility.

Big door. POSSIBILITY in all caps.

Take this blog, for instance. I've been meaning to blog regularly here for months. But every time I sit down to blog my brain immediately goes into the realm of POSSIBILITY and I give up and walk away to do something other.

Maybe I should blog about books

Maybe I should blog about my own, personal, day to day growth

Maybe I should have guests.

Maybe I should blog about mind, body, spirit health

Maybe I shouldn't blog at all, because my life is already hectic and maybe nobody will read any of this and my time would be better spent elsewhere.

Fortunately, I've developed an ability to compensate for my indecision over the years. I function well in my day job as a clinic RN, making decisions as I go and getting my work done. At home, I manage the day to day household operations just fine. And for other stuff that feels too overwhelming, I've developed a mantra:

Just start somewhere, and take it from there.

Getting started is the hardest part. Once things are in motion, it's easier to keep them going. It feels a bit like a game I used to play with my older brother when we were in boring situations (like driving for thousands of miles in a car. Or at least it felt like thousands of miles.) He would take a long string and tie it in a ball of knots. And then I would untie it. The hardest part was finding the right end to get started; after that it was all a matter of time and patience.

So, today, I'm starting somewhere with this blog. I have some ideas I'd like to implement. Mondays as personal growth days. Wednesdays, guest posts by writer friends. Fridays, information about various aspects of whole health. Maybe these things will happen, maybe they won't.

One way or another, it's time to take the ideas out of my head and start putting them on the page.

What about you? Do you like decisions made or to leave all those doors of possibility open?

Things That Aren't Funny

Teaching school has done wonders for my sense of humor - in that it's pretty much completely obliterated. Things that I used to be able to find the funny in have lost all of their comedy.

This includes but is not limited to 9th grade health students with VERY QUESTIONABLE personal hygiene habits giving me sneak attack wet willies from behind. The old Liv would have laughed it off and made a snide remark. But 'Ms. Stecker' quickly explained to said freshman the legal definitition of battery (thanks to a study session with a BLEA recruit).

Once upon a time I could find the humor in coming home to an epic dog accident spread wall to wall in my 6x10 foot bathroom. Or finding dog hair a foot deep between cushions of the couch EVERY SINGLE DAY when I vaccuum. Or that my daughter now considers herself a "plunger ninja" - a title of great accord and importance in our flood-prone home. It used to be funny to me, all the little things. Not so much lately.

Not Funny.

Also not funny is a renegade, 140 pound bloodhound hanging out with the state DOT road crew on the Columbia River Bridge. Or at the logging shop up the road. Or at the overprotective neighbors with three tiny children for hours on end. Or at the bar. Or at the school where I work. Or anywhere OTHER than the fence that I keep piling, twisting, pounding, digging and hiring teenagers to fix.

Riding with my 16 year old as she learns to drive, adventures in whiplash style, isn't funny to me. I haven't replaced the white knuckle fear for my life with hilarious anecdotes about will planning and why letting my teenagers learn to drive in different states AFTER they were out of the house is a much better idea.

Also Not Funny

Least funny of all is a 12 year old gagging over a bowl of delicious homemade pineapple curry which I felt represented a turning point in my 15 month hiatus from cooking anything interesting due to the aforementioned child's lack of culinary adventurism.

A few years ago, the antics of highschoolers in a classroom setting would have given me ample fuel for hilarious storytelling. Now I go home from alternative fitness without finding the humor in kids walking with their hoods up in 80 degree weather to hide the earbuds that have been clearly outlawed, or jumping in frigid river water on a $1 dare behind my back. Not funny you guys. Also not cool.

Ok. A little bit funny.

I have turned into a fuddy-duddy. A stooge. A stick-in-the-mud. A geeze, as my mom and aunt would say in fond reference to the unamused old-man status of my dad and uncle. I don't laugh enough. I am not sure if I remember how. And while I blame the kids, I know that the problem rests with me. The funny is still there - the ridiculousness of every day life surrounded by adolescing idiots. I just forgot how to dig it up.

Things About Getting In Trouble

Of all of the things in my life that I am good at, Getting In Trouble is hands down my specialty.

It started when I was a nice little girl and all of the things that seemed like Really Good Ideas at the time ended up being exactly what my mother was not hoping for in a nice little girl. Like being mean to my even nicer little sister. Or cutting my bald-until-four-years-old cousin's hair off when she was five. Or sending fan mail to Christian Bale after I saw Newsies. Or running away on a black and hot pink ten speed bicycle to the payphone at Ronnie D's where I called my aunt and she sent me packing right back home on that hot mess of a bike.

It continued into my adult(ish) years in a religious community where my shirts were too tight, my house was too messy, my music was too sensual and I was an unsubmitted nightmare of a wife and mother and churchmember. It continued when I got the ambulance stuck in 2 feet of snow out meadow creek road, and when I qualified for a payment plan on a computer so I could start going to college against The Will Of The Lord. It went on when I got a divorce, then a boyfriend, then another divorce, and it hasn't showed any signs of slowing down.

Anyway, if somebody could make a living out of getting in trouble I feel like I could NAIL the interview for that job. Recently I have curbed my trouble-garnishing habits to less socially irresponsible things than boyfriends and bad credit. I have learned to invest my mischievous energy into Saying All Of the Wrong Things and probably soliciting certain death at the hand of either a terrorist, a republican, or my mother (they might have to leg wrestle for the privilege).

I recently wrote a blog post about Fear, and being the attention seeker that I have ALWAYS been, I used a bunch of tags like "terror, terrorist.." etc. The next day I had 900 hits on my blog from Israel. The country. I should be more concerned, especially after the  Boxcutter Incident, but knowing I have a brother who works for the NSA makes me feel reasonably safe that I would have a few mintues of warning if an attack was imminent, to make my way across the border into Canada and the polite safety of our Northern Neighbors.

As if beckoning international attention wasn't enough, with all of this political bruhaha smothering the food and beer posts right off of my Facebook feed, I might have inadvertently posted something not conservative enough, or much too conservative, which inevitably leads to a comment fight between my dad and my Most Liberal Friend, a smattering of  snarky comments from an assortment of cousins, and makes me want to delete my entire online life which would spell the end of my attempt at fame. You can take your pick of gun rights, #coplivesmatter, #idiocracy ala Donald Trump, Kim Davis, Syrian Refugees or Planned Parenthood, but there's a 102% chance that I will be on the exact wrong side of the fence from everyone. Not that I mind really, because it is a maddening world.

To top it all off, my friend Beth Woolsey, of Five Kids Is A Lot Of Kids fame, generously ran one of my old blog posts about Wetting The Bed, because if you're going to be exposed to a whole new audience of readers, it might as well be about one of the most shameful experiences of your life, right? Anyway, my poor Mom, God Love Her, can't understand why bed wetting needs to be mentioned ever at all. Here I go reverting back to doing All The Wrong Things Again. I have to say that she's come a long way in that she's able to love me unconditionally through my Poor Life Choices these days (really Mom, I appreciate your tolerance for reals). Plus I imagine she doesn't want to leg wrestle an Israeli or a Republican for the privilege of attacking me. (Now I will probably be in trouble for saying I was in trouble when I wasn't really in trouble at all. Story of my life.)

I would say that I am making a resolution to quit getting into trouble so often, but we would all know how grossly shallow that promise would be. And it's not like I ever run into mischief INTENTIONALLY. Well, not usually. But for the time being I will try to keep my misbehavior limited to using my cell phone in class, liking inappropriate memes on Facebook, and eating too much cheesy bread (don't tell my challenge group).

Things About Writing

I know I have a lot to learn. I know I am far from a great writer. In fact, I can make a list of the things that I need to work on:

1) Focus and organization. I mean, my blog is all over the place. One day it's about rebellious teenagers and the next day it's about macaroni and cheese. What the heck? Can't I pick a subject and stick with it? I know some readers have expressed surprise that my blog "didn't go the direction they had anticipated". Which is really interesting, since it never goes the way I anticipate. But it would be hard to do so since I have never really anticipated it going any real direction. This is one of my weaknesses. If I was more focused and organized, I could have a foodie blog. Or a beer blog. Or a mommy blog, since I think a lot of people would like to lump me into the "mommy blogger" category. I am reluctant to commit to this, due to the fact that I am more or less a terrible mommy (see this blog) and I would rather be lumped into some category like "cool blogger" or "totally rad blogger". But I am a mommy, and I am a blogger, so apparently....

2) Writing less about alcohol. Or mentioning it less. Or drinking it less. I am not sure which of those would really work out IRL. (that's cool talk for in real life, in case you weren't sure.)

3) Following conventional writing rules. I have been told that my writing is missing dashes. A lot of dashes. And then sometimes, when I'm all "you-have-no-idea-how-frustrating-it-is-to-type-dashes" as such,  then I think you understand why. Sometimes the dashes just go without saying.

4) Going along with #1 and having more technical adherence to my writing style, as in, Mrs. Black's rubric for the five paragraph essay type stuff... I know that from paragraph A to paragraph P I tend to circumnavigate my creative theme, if I even have a theme.

5) Being less long winded. I have heard that my blogs are sometimes long and the reader might get bored and trail off. You'd think that my unpredictable writing direction would keep you interested. Jeeze.

6) Not having kids overflow the toilet every time I try to sit down to write. This really affects the focus and organization I don't have. Not to mention necessitating the frequent mention and/or use of alcohol.

(No, but really. That just happened. I just mopped up gallons of dirty toilet water with towels that just came out of the wash from the last catastrophic toilet event. Thankfully we hadn't gone to the trouble to fold them or put them away. Because then I would have cried. Clearly we need to discuss what does and DOES NOT go down the toilet. I think they're trying to flush the puppy sized spiders or dirty underwear or something. Or at least my washcloths that have all gone missing. Now my coffee is cold and I can't remember what I was saying. And I am pretty sure there is still toilet water on my feet. Which I am choosing to ignore. At least this time I had already ripped the carpet out of my bedroom so the flood just soaked into disgusting bare subfloor.) That was an extremely long parenthetical phrase.

Anyway, all of these grevious weaknesses lead me to one thing: I need help. In fact, I might need Way More Help very soon, and not just with my plumbing - I have an interview with a "newspaper" next week (ominous music in the background [Michael Jackson's Thriller is on]). But all of that question mark riddled suspense aside, I have an opportunity to go to a writer's retreat with a Way More Succesful than me mommy blogger who is intensely hilarious, and more importantly, she's bringing Smart Friends. Who know stuff about writing. The only catch is that the retreat costs some money, which should probably go to taking care of my power bill, etc. A friend of mine suggested that I ask for sponsorships. Which I feel like a schmuck doing. But maybe if someone rich and powerful, or several poor, powerless people, out there likes something I write,  but would like to see me write better, or maybe even someday get published, here is your opportunity to support me anonymously. (Don't worry, I won't tell.)

The retreat itself will cost $350. That covers my food, lodging, instruction and one solo session with a writing professor for Real Help. Gas to get there would be $266 more, since it's a five hundred mile drive (one way). It runs Thurs- Sun May14-17, 2015, but I have to pay now (I have an invoice waiting for me at PayPal). Here is the link so you can see how awesome this would be for me:

The Magic In The Mess

If something moves you, maybe pity, or desperation, or just the incentive to get me to go away for a few days and leave you in peace, you can send contributions to my account at GoFundMe,  just put in the comments or somewhere that it's for the writer's retreat, and not a new pair of Uggs or something, so I'll know. (I will take donations for the Uggs too. ) I will also accept cash, checks, Canadian Money, Monopoly Money, gas cards, bags of recyclable plastic bottles and postage stamps (these go for a lot on the black market).

I hope this posts contains enough grammatical errors to make you realize how badly I need this retreat. And not just for the wine and zumba, although they will help. I signed up for a top bunk suite, which means I will share a room with somebody at least as cool as me, but I have to remember how to get up on to a top bunk. I will start practicing now.

Thank you in advance for your support. I promise I will let you down less frequently in the future.