This Is Where I Stop Fooling Myself

It's been going on for a few years, now:

I buy myself a fancy little coffee at a fancy little place, and I consider it free of carbs, calories, and sugar because I didn't see the barista put any in the fancy little cup.

I mean, I could make a fancy coffee myself. But it would require my actual observation of fatty milk and sweet flavory things. And then I would know for sure that maybe it wasn't the best thing to be coating my teeth, stomach, and thighs with.

But I can't keep forking over four bucks to trick myself.

It has to stop.

I'm have to go out abd buy some cream and some caramel syrup. It might be just as unhealthy as the java in the fancy little places, but it will definitely be cheaper!

Confession

Even after 12 years of having boys, I can't tell the difference between Clone/Sand/Storm Troopers.

Giving My Lying Self a Dose of the Truth

Something wasn't working.

I had blown through revising the first 70 pages of my MS. The conflict was clear, the characters were introduced and flushed out, the scenes were set. Stuff was cut. (A lot of stuff was cut). Stuff was added.

And then....crickets.

One-third of the way through, I had hit a wall.

All the action had slowed down. The flow stopped. It. Was. Boring.

So.

I took a walk, a long, rainy, Easter walk.

And I thought. What would be unexpected here? What would be a good twist? What could move the conflict forward? Deepen the character? Up the stakes in her choices?

I didn't come up with anything yet. But I will.

Because just identifying the problem, telling myself I needed to completely undo and redo it, instead of trying to justify that I could tweak it a little bit, was a huge relief.

I'm free.

So until Tuesday, I'll be taking a little break. Inviting the possibilities. Not forcing anything.

I'm excited!

The Saddest Book I've Ever Read

On Tuesday between classes, I drove home a half-hour to read more of Still Alice. This debut novel by Lisa Genova chronicles the mental deterioration of fifty year-old Alice Howland--Harvard Professor, author, wife, mother--as early-onset Alzheimer's Disease takes over her mind, her career, her marriage.

My tears plopped shamelessly onto the pages where Alice, once strong and independent, makes memory mistakes at staff meetings; as loneliness swallows her; when she attempts to rely on a preoccupied husband who's in denial.

Genova's work pits the cognitive self against the spiritual one. Alice struggles to categorize her new self between intellect, of which she'd had much, and emotion, which she is beginning to discover.

It's about one woman's search for truth--the sad, hard, complicated truth--while most of her family has given up.

After Alice makes some difficult and unsupported choices, she comes to know the youngest daughter she's never understood.

"'You're so beautiful,'" Alice tells Lydia. "'I'm so afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are.'"

'"I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you,'" Lydia says.

"'What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?'"

"'Then,'" says Lydia, "'I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.'"

This work gently straddles the line between narrating and teaching. Ultimately, it is a call-to-action. For earlier diagnosis of the crippling disease, for the understanding of its victims.

"I encourage you to empower us, not limit us," Alice reads at a conference. "'Work with us...help us. Encourage [us]...

"'My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment...I will forget today, but that doesn't mean that today didn't matter.'"