Do Stuff, Write About It

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.”
― Neil Gaiman

It is that easy, and it is that hard.

If I write, every day, I will find that I have things to say.

So I believe.

A few days ago, I did a lot of stuff. I will write some of it down.

Friday was the day we had decided to have family over to celebrate my birthday.*

I got up relatively early. The day before, I had spent a long time cleaning the living room: moving couches and sweeping underneath them, dusting everything, putting away clutter. I'd made a start on the two bedrooms. I made more progress on the bedrooms and kitchen, and then I went out for errands - stopping to get cash to pay my nephews, gas to rack up the Rewards Visits, make some returns of retail therapy merchandise, and then on to pick up nephews.

My nephews did tons of work at my house: they trimmed the lawn (Dear Husband had mowed the day before) and cleaned my car (we had driven dogs to and from the Pet Hotel and fetched Dear Daughter's dog from Dear Almost-Son-In-Law's parents place). The  nephews swept and mopped and cleaned and cleared. Then, before and after they showered- each choosing a bathroom- they cleaned the bathrooms.

I wasn't idle, either. I worked hard on continuing to sort and pitch and recycle the STUFF that I had been clearing and cleaning from the various Convenient Flat Surfaces in bedrooms and on snack bars.

Then I got busy cooking. Even though it was my birthday, I was cooking. Yes I was! Because one of the things I have remembered is that I like to cook for people. So I made my famous macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli, and had chilled pears and watermelon chunks. I also was about to make a delicious baby spinach and mandarin orange salad- but found that the salad spinach that I had bought JUST THAT DAY was slimed! EW! So Dear Husband was sent out to fetch more salad, while I made my famous herb mayonnaise salad dressing and visited with the first arrivals- Auntie B and Cousin S Lee.

I had bought a Bumpy Cake because I love it and because calories don't count on your birthday (that is my story and I am sticking to it. Besides, I had worked off cake and ice cream with all the housework that day and the day before.) And ice cream. Because it is summertime and because Bumpy Cake loves ice cream.

As it turned out, my mom couldn't help herself, and bought me a Bumpy Cake as well.

An embarrassment of riches. We sent left over Bumpy Cake off with the nephews, because it won't be my birthday forever** and the calories will eventually catch up.

I also made rice and black beans, with shredded cheese, salsa, and sour cream on the side, because nephew M doesn't like cheese, and we couldn't have the poor boy starve, now could we?

Eventually, my mom and my sister and her hubby joined Auntie B and Cousin S Lee; and later son J, his wife J, and my grandson J (we call them J3 from A2, since they are from Ann Arbor) arrived.

Lots of food was eaten by all and we were all delighted watching grandson J discover the delights of delicious pears and it was a good night.

I took Ibuprofen and two senna tablets before bed. I already ached from the housework, and I didn't want to get constipated from the pain killer.

I know, too much information.


* One can never celebrate a birthday often enough. As of this writing, I have celebrated my birthday before (while up North with family and friends), on (at a Tigers baseball game) and after (twice so far) the actual date. I will be celebrating at least once more, as I have a birthday credit at a local fancy-shmancy restaurant. So there!

**Somehow, no matter how many celebrations we manage, the birthday excuse eventually expires. Usually in less than a month.

The N word

I can't say it. I'm a white woman of a certain age, raised in a certain place, in a certain era, and I can't say that word.

The following incident happened with a group of teens that I'd been working with a few summers ago. In the teen theater troupe I was directing, we have occasionally had Hispanic or Black youth as participants, but only occasionally. There were no youth of color in our troupe at the time of this incident.

During this particular summer, an incident occurred. Not during rehearsal, thank goodness, but after, when some of the teen boys were hanging out being cool together.

So, imagine three guys, 14 or 15 years old, hanging out.

Chillin'.

Three white, suburban boys, who think they are gangsta.

So, they are hanging out, goofing around, yelling back and forth to each other outdoors in this public park.

Calling one another the N word.

I wasn't there (rehearsal was over, and I had headed home). The boys' moms were around, but not right near them ('cause that wouldn't have been cool).

And I might never have heard about the incident at all, except that-

As it happened, in this public park, there was a Black man and his child.

Who heard the boys- gave them a look- and took his child and got in his car and left.

Enough was observed by one of the moms so that she talked to her son and to the other moms who talked to their sons and then I heard about it. The moms told me about the incident, and asked me to talk to the boys, because I wasn't their mom, maybe they would hear me.
 
  I tried to talk to the boys.

JE, I said, you aren't Black.

Yeah I am he said.

NO, I said, you're NOT, and that is not your word.

I don't think the boys ever "got" it.

I felt terribly disturbed, though. It still bothers me.

It makes me cringe and it makes me want to slap those privileged white boys upside the head.

Even being 15 doesn't excuse being ignorant, when people have first gently then firmly tried to point out the error of your ways.

Part of what disturbs me about this is the lack of understanding/appreciation of history.

words

I love words. I have a fairly good vocabulary, if I do say so myself.

My vocabulary is large and sort of-- organic. It's rich, ready and available and always growing both by adding new words and by deepening the understanding of words I already have.

For instance, I was about to comment that my dogs are like recalcitrant children.

I know the word recalcitrant. I know how it feels, what it suggests and I was fairly certain I knew what it meant-- but not crisply, sharply certain.

recalcitrant: Marked by stubborn resistance to and defiance of authority or guidance.

So now I realize that Jackson is recalcitrant. What is the word for Jasper? I mean, is doofus enough?

doofus: An incompetent, foolish, or stupid person.

Maybe Jasper isn't a doofus. Maybe he just looks like doofus sounds. He isn't foolish or stupid. He's just clumsy and usually gets caught when he's up to mischief.

Maybe he's a schlemiel.

schemiel: A habitual bungler; a dolt.

That's closer, I guess.

Habitual.

We all have habitual words. I find it's hard to identify one's own habitual words, while it's easy to identify someone else's.

I am not talking about, like, I mean, the words, you know, that somehow, like, get, you know, uselessly, I mean, just, like, strewn about within, you know, sentences.

I am talking about words that we as individuals drag out and use far more often than most of the population.

For instance, my husband is fond of the word demeanor. He uses it correctly. It's simply that it comes up far more often in his speech than in most people's conversation.

Once, an entire graduate level class of mine all seemed to find it necessary to use the word visceral several times each class meeting.

I wonder what my habitual words are these days?

"When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra." —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1872