Fat Cat Writer

So this is harder than I imagined; I think I’ve already used up most of my freebies for the month! My plan was to post at least a picture if I couldn’t conjure up words, but I don’t take many pictures. I also don’t use social media much, and am finding it very foreign to think that the things I do day-today are share-worthy. But, excuses. Consistency is the goal for now, even over quality.

In terms of CIM training, things are at least moving. Had to abort a run earlier this week; by the time my afternoon opened up for a run, smoke from the Dixie Fire descended into our valley to the point that the air quality app I prematurely deleted after last summer reported an unhealthy air quality. So that run turned into a weight-lifting session. Went to hot yoga yesterday and will go again today. Not sure yet for Saturday, but long run planned for Sunday. The next step is to decide which races to incorporate into training. Dennis suggested both a buffet dinner and Double Dipsea in the same text…he knows I’m a food-driven person and can easily be distracted into agreeing to crazy things (Double Dipsea) when coupled with/distracted by the possibility of a buffet.

Does it count that the sole purpose of today’s post is to highlight the training calendar I embedded in the default sidebar? Yes!

Does it look good? No, not at all. Is it updated? Well, getting there. But, for my quantity over quality challenge, I’m calling it good.

No official workout yesterday; surprisingly sore from Friday’s yoga, had a lunch date, and worked at our local cidery in the evening. Got my steps in during the evening cider shift, but other than that most of the day was spent sighing and grunting as I heaved my limbs from place to place.

Today included some weightlifting and kettle bell swings on our covered patio, and a healthy amount of gardening during the heat of the day. This got interrupted by our much more observant neighbor, who pointed out some cracking and water seeping up in the street in front of our house. The city of Sacramento was amazingly responsive; not one but two trucks showed up (on a Sunday!) within a half hour for preliminary inspections. It sounds like this will be on the city’s tab and not ours, hallelujah, although we’ll see what the final say is tomorrow when their leak inspection team comes to take a look.

(Post title courtesy of Ron Caluza, who should use it for his memoir.)

My husband once proclaimed that I am un-coachable, and he may be right. I tend to see training plans and coach’s advice as just that: plans but not realities, advice but not wisdom. I’m famous in our little family for leaving for a run with no concrete plans on the distance or route; I like to see where my mood and the scenery and the music take me. Or sometimes, not run at all, and go to yoga instead. Maybe. If I feel like it.

I justified this because I used to be a high school teacher. Running was a release and not yet another challenge. On days when I ran, it felt like it was the only part of my day where I was free of scrutiny, of external pressure. I could do what I wanted, for however long I wanted, while listening to what I wanted, with no one to answer to except for myself. So I put little to no pressure on my running, and only ran when I was internally motivated to go out for a run. This was a blast, and it even worked pretty well through my mid-30s, but now that I’m no longer a teacher and living in a new decade, it appears that things will need to change.

I recently stumbled into a CIM entry for this coming December, and now I’m facing a blank training calendar and joints that crinkle and crackle and heel pads that grumble in the mornings. The sector in my stomach that was reserved for gu packets and nut butters is now supplanted by cider and tortillas.

So, train I shall, and document it here I will. Today included hot yoga with Ron, an inspiring friend I’ve known since my most un-coachable of days, and tomorrow will consist of a morning run before a day full of other diversions…one of which will most certainly be cider.

If it’s not already obvious, I struggle with consistency.

This struggle comes from a lot of places: anxiety over what others think, a tendency to gravitate towards comfort, a fair amount of perfectionism, some very bad habits, and a streak of rebelliousness.

However, several events have transpired to remind me, relatively gently at this point, that life is short and time passes ever more quickly and, really, what is all of this worry good for?

So, my pursuit is this: through August 31, post something—anything—six days each week, without worrying (too much) about the quality. I’ll allow myself one day off each, if needed. Anything goes: essays, pictures, race reports, reflections, grumblings, insights, they’re all fair game. Little concern about the quality at this point. The end goal? Get in the habit of taking action related to writing almost every day. Make these days that I’m lucky enough to have count for a little something.

This past weekend, husband, dog and I took a road trip to Joshua Tree that ended in a last-minute side trip to see ol’ Grandpa in Gonzales.

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When booking this trip I was apparently feeling frugal, and went for savings over ambience. This was not an issue until I saw the sign in the water tank/bathroom stating that all toilet paper should be placed in a petite white plastic trash can next to the toilet, and not flushed. I have limits, or I had limits, until I ate a pizza that didn’t want to abide by these limits.

But of course it was all fine, and the nighttime sky and a few Negronis made it easy to forget about the secrets hidden in that little plastic trash can. We did a quick drive-by of Joshua Tree National Park, but Lula’s companionship on this trip meant that we sacrificed a bit of time exploring the park.

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Saturday we left Joshua Tree and spent our last night on this trip at a hotel in Monterey (with a toilet that flushes toilet paper, I might add). A huge shout-out to Bob FM, which gave us two gifts en route from Joshua Tree to Monterey: a recommendation for brisket breakfast burritos from Down Home Grill in Victorville, and an introduction to Whitesnake’s 1984 hit “Slide It In.” Such cryptic lyrics. Monterey was brisk and hopping. We lucked out that night with a table at Dust Bowl Brewing, a bounty of tacos, and a very tired dog.

The trip culminated in an afternoon at grandpa’s house in Gonzales before heading home Sunday. We lived next door to my grandma and grandpa until I was about 10. He just turned 96, and I’ve been trying to visit him as often as I can over the past couple of years. Grandpa’s got stories. He was in WWII, and most of them are about that, although he shared a gem about his time as the local school bus driver and how a kid’s 4-H lamb got on the bus and refused to get off. I sometimes record his stories while he talks, and I used to try and play them for students when I was still in the classroom. Grandpa, however, has a very vibrant vocabulary, and I could never quite get away with sharing those recordings in class.

This time he shared an oldie but a goodie, which began with “Now, I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but…” and culminated with “Can you can believe it, the whole train had crabs!” He signed up with the Navy in 1942, when he was 17 years old. As he tells the story, his dad drove him to the recruiting office and dropped him off. He and everyone else ran around naked and took all kinds of tests before being shipped off to Farragut, Idaho by train for bootcamp just a couple of days later. He said that after seven days on the train, somehow, every single person ended up with crabs. They got off the train in Idaho, were given a razor and told to get naked again and shave everything (he was sure to emphasize that part), and then given some kind of blue ointment. He chuckled about that for most of the visit. He still lives alone and has family visiting him every day, but a sweet neighbor does much of his housekeeping and grocery shopping. He made sure to inform me that there was no hanky-panky going on between him and her, and that’s how he stays crab-free today.

My sister recently joked that she gave her husband a startlingly accurate rundown of the 1994 ABC TV miniseries, Stephen King’s The Stand. This was notable not due to her relative youth when this classic aired for the first time (she was about nine at the time), but because she’s never actually watched it. I was (and still am) the Stephen King fan in the family, and my begging for the miniseries on VHS paid off, it played in the background basically all the time..

I’m also having a hard time watching this version of The Stand. It’s boring, and I don’t think it’s just because I already know the story. I think the biggest issue is the flashbacks. Their approach to flashbacks turned the story into a big jumbled to-go Panera salad that you didn’t check util you got home and realized what a mess the whole thing actually is. Putting it in a nice bowl helps, but you’re always a little sick and regretful after.

I don’t blame the creators of this newest The Stand for using flashbacks, and can’t help but to wonder if it’s a nod to Lost (J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof are open about The Stand and its influence on their work). Lost is still the go-to example for using flashbacks to tell a complex story effectively. The show had its faults, but many of the episodes told beautiful stories and and of themselves, with tension escalating and intrigue piquing and plots both thickened and propelled forwarded. Over several flashbacks, we learned how Kate got to be as annoying as she was, how Sawyer got that chip on his shoulder, why Locke was so…Locke. You’d be the same if your own estranged father managed to con you for a kidney. And season four’s The Constant is arguably one of the best hours of TV ever put out there.

But we don’t get that with CBS’s The Stand. There’s no tension. There’s no intrigue. Nothing is titillated. Characters are not advanced; they’re so hollow, they leave only the most fleeting of impressions, like a fart in the wind. Maybe it’s a time issue; with nine hours, maybe it was wise to not bring up Lloyd Henried’s troubled history with starving rabbits, or Larry’s experience in the Central Park monkey house as a child. Instead, we’re shown that Lloyd was desperate enough to snack on Trask, and that Larry is not known for being a good guy, but there’s no “so what” to it. Similarly, Stu is apparently only there to advance information about the plague and the medical response, and later to advance information about Boulder to new comers. He doesn’t stand on his own, and seems pretty bemused at where he finds himself. And what happened to the Harold/Stu/Fran love-triangle? What about Fran’s diary? What about Fran’s fear that she waited too long, and that Stu falls for Dana? Any potential tension is dispelled in the first episode, when we see Stu and Fran happily visiting a food truck and running into Harold. I suppose we were supposed to be surprised that they ended up together, and wonder at how those two beautiful people picked each other, and maybe newcomers did feel that. Personally, I felt sleepy, and a little envious of Fran’s pouty lips.

While walking Lula this afternoon, I decided to listen to the intro to The Stand (complete and uncut) again. I got to the part where he’s explaining why he agreed to go along with the complete and uncut version. Something about the way that King described the Cliff Notes version of Hansel and Gretel struck a chord:

If all of the story is there, one might ask, then why bother? Isn’t it indulgence after all? It better not be; if it is, then I have spent a large portion of my life wasting my time. As it happens, I think that in really good stories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. If that were not so, the following would be a perfectly acceptable version of “Hansel and Gretel”: Hansel and Gretel were two children with a nice father and a nice mother. The nice mother died, and the father married a bitch. The bitch wanted the kids out of the way so she’d have more money to spend on herself. She bullied her spineless, soft-headed hubby into taking Hansel and Gretel into the woods and killing them. The kids’ father relented at the last moment, allowing them to live so they could starve to death in the woods instead of dying quickly and mercifully at the blade of his knife. While they were wandering around, they found a house made out of candy. It was owned by a witch who was into cannibalism. She locked them up and told them that when they were good and fat, she was going to eat them. But the kids got the best of her. Hansel shoved her into her own oven. They found the witch’s treasure, and they must have found a map, too, because they eventually arrived home again. When they got there, Dad gave the bitch the boot and they lived happily ever after. The End.

I don’t know what you think, but for me, that version’s a loser. The story is there, but it’s not elegant. It’s like a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal. It goes somewhere, but it ain’t, you know, boss.

Stephen King. The Stand (Kindle Locations 56-60). 1990. Random House LLC. Kindle Edition

It feels like a low blow to use Stephen King’s own words to critique a valiant attempt at adapting one of his most important and challenging works to TV in an era during which that requires more courage than ever, when any asshat with an internet connection can spout off about something about which they know basically nothing…but here we are. On the upside, I don’t think it’s bad, and it’s not a loser (that title is reserved for the 2017 rendition of the Dark Tower, which I hope to never acknowledge again). It’s just not, you know, boss.

One final musing: it’s highly ironic that they picked a man with Alexander Skarsgård’s face to play the man with no face.

Our front yard originally had this triangular patch of ivy lined with white rock, impaled with a gigantic flag pole as well as a street lamp. My dad and husband ripped out the ivy, hauled away the rocks, and I designated the triangle to be a “experimental zone.” I vowed to plant whatever I wanted, hoping for the best in our clayey soil, and just see what happens. Over time, it’s become the highlight of our front yard. This was where we’d frequently find Bingo, sometimes camouflaged in a wine barrel planter, other times pretending to be a wild jungle cat behind the orange sedge. Sadly, Bingo was one of the many casualties of 2020, along with the orange sedge.

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In another sense, this blog was a casualty of 2020. This is also a blog of many rebirths. It started as a blogspot in 2005, abandoned when I started a teacher credential program in 2006. I made a few half-hearted attempts at a teacher blog, including visiting a hypnotherapist, but the drafts I wrote were so filled with rage and revolutionary zeal I could hardly bring myself to reread them, let alone send them forth into the world. 

My excuses for not writing have been plentiful and hollow. One of the bigger guys has been: what to write about? The advice is to write what you know, and I know education. I also know that the thought of writing about education full-time drives me crazy and gives me migraines and sends me into deep spirals of despair-tipped anger. I know running, but the world does not need another running blog. I cook and garden and knit and engage in lots of the activities that women of my age and station are said to engage in, but not to an extent that I’d write about them. Like I said, my excuses are plentiful.

So. The calendar has been turned to 2021, and this blog shall henceforth be known as an experimental zone. I don’t know what I’ll write about, nor do I know if the writing will be any good. My plan well thought-out, nuanced, and informed by science: I shall write, about something, a couple days each week. I will put it out there, like the experimental zone in our front yard, and just see what develops.