This morning I found something truly beautiful on my desk.
Eva had picked roses from our rose bush and left them with a sweet card. And she used a novelty chicken watering can as a vase.
This week, and the weekend, has been a mix of refreshing and infuriating. The car battery died on Friday which threw that day off-kilter. And Saturday was very busy– Phillipsburg comic con with the Echo City duo, where I also picked up a copy of Hustler that features Ralph Greco’s article on female porn stars that host successful podcasts.
On the way home, Eva and I stopped at Pie + Tart to grab some refreshment and said hello to Parisian Phoenix author Hugo Yelagin and grabbed this delicious lamb & chickpea stew. I didn’t mean to eat the whole quart and burn my mouth, but I did. No regrets.
Then, I attended an event launching Poetry Rocks! at Northampton Community College— where artist-in-residence Anne Sipos debuted her installation along the college’s poetry walk. You can learn more about that here: Poetry walk.
Then, I had a three-hour shift at my part-time job. We were very busy and my body was not very able to keep up, so that was not a fun three hours, but it also was not the worst. Unexpectedly, my supervisors gave me an early birthday card and a $10 gift certificate that I could apply to just about any entity. So that was nice. And four of my supervisors even took the time to write personalized messages on the card.
Whether you’re a small business owner like me or a homemaker or someone who works a corporate 9 to 5 or whatever, it often feels impossible to make a dent in life’s responsibilities.
I think as I get older, and as one friend keeps reminding me I have a significant birthday coming up in May, I realize it doesn’t matter. Stuff eventually gets done or it doesn’t and the important/necessary stuff rises to the top.
Or maybe that’s just because I’m good at prioritizing and fairly awesome at time management.
The last week or so has been exhausting and/or exciting depending on your point of view. I’ve scheduled a storytelling/written word workshop with Larry Sceurman at Hellertown Library at the end of May. I’m strategizing a memoir workshop this summer in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I helped with and sold books at a storytelling event at Bethlehem’s Ice House (hosted by Patchwork Storytelling Guild). I sold books and talked with poets at the third annual Poet Palooza 3 at Book & Puppet Company in downtown Easton.
I received word that Lehigh Valley Community Foundation approved my application for a Pennsylvania Creative Entrepreneurship grant, which I will use for national and local advertising. I performed my duties as president at Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group and heard a fantastic presentation by Jill Peters.
And book orders have picked up. Still not to the level as last year, but enough to give me hope. I am finishing my local candidate profiles for Armchair Lehigh Valley.
Yesterday I went to the eye doctor and spent more than $500 for exam and glasses (at which point I was told, before being given the price, that they knocked 30% off everything because my insurance was crap). I tried on every pair of Parisian Phoenix pink glasses.
That got me thinking– as everything often does– that with glasses normally being updated every two years I pay about $30/month for eyesight.
And walking home from the eye doctor, I fell. So that sucked. But I’m fine, so yeah!
I received a call from my life insurance company today that I scheduled last week to convert my term life insurance into something more permanent. The bad news is, it’s probably going to cost triple my current policy. But that’s an conversation for me and another agent next week. Sigh. The insurance person kept me on the phone for 45 minutes and we may be continuing the conversation this weekend as she has an idea for a book.
In other news, my blind friend Nan received a print poetry book from a small press recently. We had ordered a braille one, and so I tracked down their email and reached out to see if there had been a mistake. Turns out they made an error so Nan will be getting her book. It felt good to resolve that and get her the book. And I wanted the small press to know there is a real need for these braille books.
Also today I applied for and received a business American Express. I’ve had a personal AmEx for quite some time but now the business is established enough that it can have and should have its own card. No more Ingram bills on my personal card. Yay! (And yes, I do have business banking, but the business account doesn’t always have the assets for large print orders.)
Finally, let me offer you this photo of Eva’s dog wearing Gayle’s sticker from Jury Duty.
Last night, I had the pleasure of accompanying Darrell Parry and William D. Prystauk to a reading at Cellar Beast Winehouse in Andreas, Pa., not that far from where I had breakfast at Bowmanstown Diner earlier this week (in the Palmerton/Lehighton/ Carbon County region). We joined Liz Rosen and JZ Nieves as part of a book-and-wine pairing event that celebrated this unique winehouse as well as our writing.
Darrell opened the evening with some poetry.
Bill went next with the opening of his novel, The Hanging Girl. The wines began with German-inspired white and progressed all the way to a dark, rich red called “Dark Angel” that the host paired with my reading from my second novel, Courting Apparitions.
I wish I could have seen the sign language interpretation of my excerpt as it was the only reading of the evening to contain a very sultry scene– in addition to the appearance of a ghost.
Darrell ended up buying a bottle of Dark Angel, and it was an impressive evening, both because of the organization, participation and the ambiance of the venue AND the excellence of all of the wines.
Today, I donned my publisher hat and I drove to Bernards Township Public Library in Basking Ridge to support poet and filmmaker McKenna Graf. McKenna publisher her second volume of poetry with Parisian Phoenix Publishing after self-publishing her poetry debut. Her next event is in Manhattan on August 22, 6 p.m., at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side.
I started my day with a squawking cockatoo, and then proceeded to come downstairs with the intent to write a draft of my upcoming political profiles for Armchair Lehigh Valley and I did an hour of work on it. But for some reason sifting through Milou Mackenzie’s different Pennsylvania house bills spiked my anxiety and allowed that little voice to take hold. You know– the negative thoughts voice that says, “You can’t do this.” And/or “all your effort is meaningless.”
But, I know I have a road trip today so I eat a hearty breakfast, deliver Eva to her father’s car, and order my Panera iced tea. In the adventurous spirit of a road trip, I go to a different Panera and I love that there drive-through is a straight lane. But what I do not realize as I drive up is that they finally tore down the Phillipsburg Mall.
They have been saying that they were going to demolish the Phillipsburg Mall probably for a decade– and all the reports stating that the anchor store Kohls would be the only part of the mall left standing. This Panera was on one of the pad sites at the mall. (A quick Google search tells me that Crown American opened the mall in 1985, a key time period for malls, and that the stores vacated in 2019-2020. Supposedly a warehouse will be erected on the site. Because every warehouse needs a department store next door.)
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially when I worked in the area as a journalist, the Phillipsburg Mall was probably my favorite in the region.
The Author Talk
The drive to the library was uneventful. The Bernards Township Public Library appears a fairly modern vibes with the architectural feel of a small elementary school. McKenna did a wonderful job reading her poems and answered questions with ease during the chat portion of the program.
These are the moments when I very much love what I do, and these are also the moments when I get to contemplate how much the community built by a publisher influences everyone involved with it.
McKenna said several astute, thought-provoking items:
Self-publishing her first book put her in control of her own destiny instead of waiting for someone to deem her worthy. I would describe this a little differently: that self-publishing gave her a hands-on understanding of the industry which allows her to navigate and negotiate her future with less naivete.
Each book/work/poem represents a moment in time, and as such, they will never be perfect. And despite their imperfections, poems will always convey the feeling they need to share.
During her recent intensive geology class that toured National Parks in Utah and Arizona, poetry allowed her to grapple with something difficult. As she struggled to learn the complex scientific knowledge of the course, she used poetry to translate it. And she then made herself a photo book of the unedited work to capture the moment in time.
McKenna sold some books. I made some social media posts. I wove around the streets of Basking Ridge to entertain myself and I headed home.
Road Trips Snacks
On the way home, if I wanted to be a nice person, I needed to stop and put gas in the car. I noticed a sign for QuickCheck and that’s one of Eva’s favorites so I figured I would stop there. I discovered it was on Perryville Road, which is pretty darn close to her surname. I figured I’d run in the convenience store and get a snack (but hopefully nothing too crazy as I have lost four pounds) and then get gas.
I decided on a cup of their Kris Kringle iced coffee with light cream, apple slices and Lenny & Larry’s complete creme bricks… I mean cookies. The package said they had 15 grams of protein and 130 calories. So why not?
Gas was fifty cents a gallon cheaper than in Pennsylvania and it’s always a nice treat to have someone else pump it. The coffee had coconut and vanilla notes, which made me regret getting a small as I could have easily finished a large. I ate the apple slices (probably my first serving of fresh fruit this week) while waiting for the car to fill.
And wouldn’t you know as soon as I ended up on the road again the damn oil light came on. And the car is scheduled for an oil change in eight days.
The drive home was also lovely, and I enjoyed singing along to my music.
But if you’re curious about the cookies–
They tasted like hard discs of sprinkles. The vanilla flavor was that candy-ish flavor one gets from sprinkles, but the texture was hard, and I don’t mean hard like a cookie wafer but hard like an almond. When I got home to examine them closer I saw each serving had 130 calories, but each package of six cookies was three servings. So I had wasted almost 300 calories on some awful cookies. In addition to protein, they had some potassium and iron. The ingredient list looks like the whole cookie is wheat, pea protein and oil.
If you miss my ridiculous banter, you may want to visit ParisianPhoenix.com because most of my activities now relate to the publishing company because I’m trying to develop enough business to make a living now that Stitch Fix has closed its Bethlehem warehouse.
Speaking of Stitch Fix, one of my friends who has gotten fixes religiously since I started with the company got an email today that whatever warehouse shipped her fix instead of ours did not scan the package as it left the facility so neither Stitch Fix nor the carrier has a record of it. Therefore, if she does not receive a fix today or tomorrow, she is to let them know as then they have reason to believe it is lost.
Yup. Did I ever mention that we were the most efficient, safest working warehouse in the network?
Random Cat Photo: Touch of Gray
Anyway, back to my day. I started my day assisting the Teenager with course registration at her college. She is studying BS psychology and had a good plan. She had courses and backup courses and I planned on catching up with my NaNoWriMo word count (if you don’t know what NaNo is or you have opinions about the NaNo controversary, my take is here) before meeting Nan and a poet friend.
She could not get into ANY of her classes, nor ANY of her backups, nor ANY classes at all in her department. With my help, we found Intro to Women’s/Gender/Sexuality studies, Theory of Religion and Intro to Sociology. She’s also hoping– but probably doesn’t have a chance–to get into astronomy. The professor was on of her pet-sitting clients.
With this new course load, I think she should apply for an interdisciplinary major of her own design, the new BA in Cult Leadership.
I managed to pull 500 words for my novel before heading out to get Nan.
I decided to give Nan her “Christmas present” early. I put that in quotes because I would have gotten it for her regardless of the season. It kept popping up on the available Amazon Vine items that I can review. If you’ve heard about Nan enough, I probably don’t have to tell you she LOVES NASA. She has followed the space program since before man landed on the moon.
Nan won’t go out for the day if there’s a NASA event going on. She has cable simply so she can watch NASA TV.
I got her a decorative desk piece that has an astronaut on the moon with some sort of moon lander or rover. And the space suit has a ledge where you can place your cell phone and the lander thing is a pencil can. The most impractical gift for a blind person. It’s a sculpture you can’t see, with features for items you don’t use.
I’m relieved to say– she loved it. She loves that she can put her two pens that she keeps for sighted friends on her desk. She loves that the sculpture has enough detail that she can look at it. And she loves that for the first time, she has something space-themed she can display.
We took it up to her room and arranged it on her desk and headed to our appointment. We had made arrangements to meet a new friend, we’ll call her the Italian Poet. We were workshopping some of her poems.
Now here’s some motivation/inertia for you: If you write, paint, photograph, whatever, you must find others who share your artistic sensibilities and draw from their energy. Sometimes you share feedback, sometimes you seek inspiration together. Sometimes you learn, sometimes you teach. But the union of people in a space can build spirits and keep you going.
And after Italian Poet encouraged me to pursue my educational goals and I prodded her to finish her Ph.D., Nan and I embarked on our annual tradition: Gobbler bowls at Wawa.
We live a simple existence. Then we taste-tested a peppermint watermelon sparkling water. Nan did not approve. I did. But, as Nan says, I do seek out the weird stuff.
The Teenager used Nan and I for a photography project.
I went to the gym for leg day where I squat 120 pounds on the barbell for eight solid reps. Definitely liking that!’
Yesterday was my official birthday and the festivities exhausted me so heartily that I have waited until this morning to write about it. Since the medical establishment has not discovered rhyme or reason about my recent health issues, I made the decision earlier this weekend to eat what I felt like consuming, have a good time and return to my disciplined habits tomorrow.
Currently, I am sipping my peppermint coffee, while combating a vague lightheadedness and lower blood pressure and taking my beta blocker. I miss the robustness of my strong Supercoffee dark roast and had I known my blood pressure was low, I would have made some, but I feared it was high from my diet of Sheetz spicy chicken sandwich, jalapeno poppers and a premium sampler of salty fried snacks, pastries upon pastries, and sugary candy galore… because it was my birthday.
Little Dog stayed with us for a few days and her mother returned for her yesterday, bringing with her the largest pastry I have ever seen which I later discovered was an elephant ear and what I am eating now, which appears to be some sort of blueberry scone with a touch of lemon if I am not mistaken. But someone must tell whatever bakery Jan is visiting that the term “elephant ear” is not meant to be life size.
The Teenager wanted so terribly to take me for a nice meal of my choice, but I told her– you know what I want? Some decadent road trip snacks to eat on our way to Pocono Raceway for the Sports Car Club of America Road Racing Northern New Jersey Region Joe DeLuca and Linda Gronlund Freedom Major. (scca.com)
One of my high school peers works as an official at the track, so he invited the Teenager and I to come sit in the pits and watch as many classes as we wished and potentially stay for the cookout at the end of the day.
But I get ahead of myself.
The Writing Stuff
Little Dog and I slept in until a delightful 5:30 a.m. yesterday and then I copyedited the text for the next title in production for Parisian Phoenix Publishing. (We have 11 titles out now, one a tad delayed but due out as soon as we make the final tweaks, and this new one is #13, which since it is a tarot journal seems apropos.) Anyone who wishes to make my birthday even more exciting should consider buying one or several of our books. Here is the whole list on Amazon, including one book that’s not ours but shares a title and confuses the algorithm.
I finished the text of the tarot book, sent it to Gayle to mock up some design while we wait for the author to approve the text, and then headed to a meeting at Panera Bread with Larry Sceurman to retrieve his final proof on Coffee in the Morning. As it was my birthday, Panera gave me a free pastry after I already ordered my asiago bagel with chive cream cheese and Larry paid for my refreshments due to my day of birth.
I am happy to report that the changes to Coffee in the Morning are minor, and very good catches on the part of Larry and his wife, Barbara. The team spirit at Parisian Phoenix creates an atmosphere where we all really are putting our best foot forward and making sure we all look good in the end.
From there Larry and I attended the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group to surprise Darrell Parry, who was giving the morning presentation and afternoon workshop on poetry. I may have left with an invitation to be the October speaker and a nomination to serve as the group’s president. More on that here.
With my commitment to attend the races, I could not stay for the afternoon workshop. I went home and collected the Teenager and we drove over to Sheetz to gather our road trip snacks, redeem birthday points for gas ($2.92 a gallon) and head to Pocono Raceway with a Spotify playlist The Teenager carefully curated.
The Racing Stuff
I have not visited Pocono Raceway in 30 years. This area used to have two major racetracks, Pocono and Nazareth, and Darrell lived about a mile from the Nazareth track. It closed shortly after we graduated college, which is also damn near 30 years ago. I am not a NASCAR or Formula One fan, but my life tends to intersect with motorsports. My dad was a diesel mechanic known to race microstock, participate in tractor pulls and ride his Harley, anything to tinker with an engine.
When the Teenager was a year old, we went to the dirt track every Friday night to watch him race and when his racetrack closed, he told me not to attend his new venue as he deemed it too dirty and not family-friendly enough for the baby. I also have vague memories of going to drag races in New Jersey during my own childhood.
Once we found Bob and Erica up at Pocono, we settled in for our first class, Ford spec. Next came I believe a GT Lite class. Then the little min-formula one type cars with the small engines. The last class we saw was the Miata spec class, with three Minis and a Chevy Aveo sharing the track with them.
I definitely enjoyed the spec classes, as the cars are so similar that the race relies more on the prowess of the driver versus the classes where the cars have so many differences. In the mixed classes, the gaps between cars are much wider and that makes the race less interesting from a spectator perspective. The slow cars tend to be less interesting to watch also as they take so long to go around the track that you almost forget they are out there.
We stopped at Wawa on the way home for water and due to sale prices I ended up with fancy Hawaiian volcanic water for the same price as Deer Park.
And the special thank you goes to Santander Bank for making me feel ancient by sending me an email to remind me that my oldest account with them dates back almost 24 years and that they wish me a happy birthday.
My traveling companion M is in town so I stopped very briefly to say hi. He’s staying at a hotel between Sheetz and Wawa, and he’s never been to either, so I have a Pennsylvanian duty to educate him.
His hotel has a few artisanal touches in an otherwise uninteresting and rather lackluster environment.
I received a message from M last night while I was at Barnes & Noble at the Noble Quills poetry open mic where Darrell was featuring. (See YouTube video below.)
My most-exhausting-work week ended with a few lessons. I noticed that no pair of shoes I own will alleviate the foot pain I am experiencing, though experimenting with different tape/toe separator arrangements I can select the type of pain I prefer to experience. With this in mind, I have purchase three different varieties of toe separators from CVS today. ($22 worth of merchandise that I got for $15 and I paid with my HSA debit card.) I achieved 101%, 101%, 94% and 100%.
I had my follow-up with the neurologist-physiatrist today. The Baclofen appears to help my stiffness, and though I do experience a weird jerky stiffness at the end of the day after I sit and then get up, I have not fallen and I seem to move easier. She filled out my accommodations paperwork… so hopefully I will get a share of the easier work. I offered several ideas of how to provide easy accommodations. (I shared the same letter with my doctor and Stitch Fix.) The doctor remarked that my gait had noticeably improved and I think she laughed when I told her I preferred walking in cowboy boots because of the sound and the feel. (She was wearing a mask, so I can’t be sure.) She also seemed to make a quiet noise of approval upon the mention of a service dog.
I had an hour between appointments and in that time, I hung out with The Teenager’s dog (F. Bean Barker). It was Festive Friday at work so I wore my favorite “Fleece Navidad” Christmas sweater.
I then met with my therapist. He was one of three people who served as references for my service dog application and because I mentioned I had a therapist on my medical team, they sent him a psychiatric evaluation to fill out. He wanted to review it with me, because he wasn’t sure of the weight of his role in the whole process. He was much relieved to hear that I had had the in-person interview last week (read more about that here) and that I had received the email an hour earlier stating that my home visit and canine therapeutic evaluation would be scheduled early in the new year.
So I said I would approach the paperwork as if they just wanted to know if I was stable enough to care for myself and the dog.
By the time I returned home from that appointment, the UPS man had left a special package on my doorstep. It was Larry Sceurman’s debut novella, The Death of Big Butch. And some other books from Parisian Phoenix Publishing. As is my custom, I did an unboxing on film.
The Teenager and I did some chores around the house and loaded up the car with the dog and the books and made deliveries: to the author (where books were signed) and to people anticipating the release. And, because Larry lives near a 7-Eleven, the teenager needed to stop for a Mountain Dew Slurpee.
She happens to have one of her new sweaters on from her latest fix.
And the joy of bringing Larry his books warmed my Grinchy heart.
And watching Larry decide how to sign his books, debating which of his signatures should be his author-specific nomenclature, also had an impact. I’m proud of his book. I’m proud of the product the Parisian Phoenix team made– and I’m told the effort and the quality of the book are more than Larry had ever expected to see from his stories. After all, when he pitched his stories to me, Larry had figured he had a short story anthology to offer the world.
And poor Larry, I told him he had a novella in Big Butch, and still had enough stories for the anthology, and that one of the longer anchor stories in the anthology really should be a full length novel. He’s stuck with me for a while.
Barbara gave us some cut-out cookies. Buttery, not thick not thin, with a lemony or vanilla-y hint of something so scrumptious. Roll-otts as my Pennsylvania Dutch in-laws would say.
Larry and Barbara also gave me a large bag of cat toys, which we gave to foster Khloe for right now. She’s protecting them and sleeping with them like a dragon hoarding treasure.
Maybe I’m naive or egotistical, but I really love the craft model of publishing I’m creating– including my authors in every stage of the process and creating a book we all believe in, from the author to the publisher, the artists to the designer. I never thought publishing could empower, but I’m learning so much that I never realized I wanted to explore. Talents always feel better when you share them.
**author’s note: I’m sorry, not sorry, that this piece has become rather long and a tad historical. I will divide the piece with subheadings so that readers seeking particular topics can scan quickly. But for those who love historical context and rambling storytelling combined with my unique chaos, have at it.
It’s a quiet October morning, before the sun rises, and I am sharing my thoughts with you regarding our experience last night at the 4th Annual Easton Book Festival (2022). I’m posting in my personal blog, as I don’t know if I have fully formed thoughts (other than I had my concerns that the grassroots chaos of the festival, part of its charm, might drive my organized self to lose my mind and LO! and BEHOLD! I had a great time. Perhaps the cusp Taurus in me is mellowing into a new calmer self, my Gemini side).
I appeared briefly in the original Easton Book Festival “trailer,” look for me on YouTube with my salmon dress which looks rather orange and my trademark scarf. I join a lot of local celebrities so that tickles me.
The pandemic appeared in the festival’s youth and the city has decided to renovate (and in my humble opinion destroy) Centre Square, where the Book & Puppet Company bookstore is located. They have reduced the circle from two lanes of traffic to one and eliminated all the parking in front of businesses. They have also been toying with the traffic patterns, often closing main streets and making the traditional heart of the downtown one way. As someone who has lived in this community for more than a quarter of a century, I’m annoyed.
My history with downtown Easton
The city has two main parking decks currently in the same basic vicinity, which is good, but they have destroyed one convenient central parking lot and pocket park to build a new deck, which is not open yet. The oldest of the parking structures will soon be eliminated, as are on-street parking permits for residents. As more upscale apartments and multi-story structures join the historic downtown, the footprint of the city is changing. Or perhaps gentrifying.
My first apartment, with poet Darrell Parry, who is on the board of the festival, was an absolute dump but so much fun. We were two recently out of college, engaged kids with a pile of student loan debt and cars that barely ran. I worked at Lafayette College in the Public Information Office and Darrell worked at Caldor, a department store that, like many, no longer exists. It started his career as a shipper/receiver and honed his skill as the master of packing boxes.
Our rent for our strange one-bedroom started at $450 a month, with off-street parking and basic utilities included. We couldn’t afford cable and dial-up internet so we chose internet as we had television our entire lives and the World Wide Web was new. We would often scrape our change together and walk to Coffee and Tea Time Café, which also no longer exists, and I believe the structure is now part of the freshly-reconstructed Hearst Magazine offices that have moved to Easton from New York City. And on spaghetti nights we would order garlic bread from Colonial Pizza, which does still exist, since the restaurant was practically across the street. When we would call to order, they would often say, “Is this the neighbor?”
And then after spaghetti and garlic bread, we would go down to The Purple Cow Creamery, which later had to change it’s name to Bank Street Creamery, but you can still go there for ice cream. It’s not the same owners as it was in my day, but it has remained a hot spot of the downtown.
And since I’m already aging myself, I might as well add that Book & Puppet stands pretty much next to a place called The Crayola Factory. When I was an intern at Binney & Smith (now rebranded as Crayola since that’s the name everyone knows), I was tasked with writing and pitching a then under-construction, exciting new attraction in the former Orr’s building, another defunct local department store, called Two Rivers Landing. It would contain The Crayola Factory and the National Canal Museum.
(And I happen to be a Crayola junkie and a canal aficionado.)
You see, in my day, you could actually walk through the real Crayola factory in Forks Township and follow this blue line through all the stages of crayon and marker production. When you arrived at corporate offices in the morning, if they were making crayons, the air would carry that trademark warm aroma of wax, and if they were making markers, it smelled like burnt plastic.
I can remember sitting in my cubicle in corporate communications pitching my press release about this new family attraction to national magazines. My small, unattributed contribution to history. I did a lot of fun things at Crayola. Including dressing professional dancers in phallic crayon costumes at New York City’s Rainbow Room.
Okay, so now you see why I did not start this in the Parisian Phoenix Publishing professional blog. Because I’ve transformed into an old woman telling you the way it was in my day. And if I want to throw it back another generation, whenever I get off topic, I like to reference Arlo Guthrie‘s “Alice’s Restaurant.” If you don’t know the song, you’re young enough to find it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music. “This is a song about Alice. Remember Alice?” the lyrics say, even though the song seems to have nothing to do with Alice for most of the 18-or-so minutes the song goes on.
This is a song about the Easton Book Festival and “Sex in the Text.” Remember the Easton Book Festival?
This is a song about Alice. Remember Alice?
Arlo Guthrie
Darrell hates that song.
Opening Act: Poetry galore
I will not make a James Bond reference off of that title to relate it back to “Sex in the Text.”
Darrell ParryNancy Scott and Eva Parry (“the Teenager”)Reading BrailleJoan Zachary
Lynn Alexander opened the poetry segment reading from her collection, Find Me in the Iris. Followed by our own Nancy Scott, then Darrell and Rebecca Reynolds. Nancy read from newer work, including a poem about her recent move. Darrell read from his book, Twists: Gathered Ephemera, with a rather stunning introduction delivered by Lafayette English professor and festival board president, Chris Phillips. Rebecca read from each of her books (Daughter of the Hangnail and The Bovine Two-Step) and her work in progress.
And if you ever wanted to watch someone read Braille, here’s your chance.
Sex in the Text: Making Love Between the Pages
So, for some reason GLVWG (Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group) and our (Darrell, the festival board, myself and Book & Puppet) connections did not yield more panelists for this discussion. So, Darrell and I talked about making the panel into a talk show type format where questions could be placed on index cards and William Prystauk, author of the Kink Noir series, and I could ask the questions of each other Oprah-style and discuss.
We had a fantastic time and the questions were thoughtful not only from a literary perspective but also from a societal values perspective.
It was a refreshing night, and I hope the spectators enjoyed it as much as Bill and I did.
This post may not be the most exciting as I sit here stinky after a small home workout— smelling the petroleum heavy heat of asphalt. But it is a hopeful post. My roses sit heavy with blooms, and the first flowers have opened behind the bush.
Such a metaphor for life. The whole “bloom where you are planted” concept.
I have been working hard— like I want to stop, I want to vomit, my muscles burn. Andrew at Apex Training has been amazing, helping me stretch and challenge spastic muscles in my lower body.
I have had two days now with no hip or back pain, and I can drop into bed and lie anyway I want.
My weight has been up and down thank to Taco Bell and Mothers’ Day cake and ice cream and generic Takis.
But I went for my check-up bloodwork yesterday, and the phlebotomist told me my insurance doesn’t cover vitamin D unless my doctor codes it a deficiency. We skipped that, but my ferritin has risen from 28, just barely in the normal range, to 36. Still far from the middle of normal but rising.
That might be my theme for right now— rising.
And my bad cholesterol, which should be under 100, has fallen from 109 to 107. Again, not a huge leap, but progress. Progress made during a difficult, difficult time of my life.
My pill dispenser has made it easier to take all my vitamins and allergy meds. And I started the process of putting myself back on a low dose of Lexapro,
Maybe it will help.
My personal cat, Fog, decided to love me today. And I wrote a poem about buying my new socks from the Dollar Tree.
The teenager has been nursing an ear infection all week so between that and the roses bloominfection, spring has really sprung.
She returned to school today.
Today I made a leftover sandwich— some old smoked Turkey, slightly wilted lettuce and my coleslaw mix stirred into chipotle mayonnaise.
I spent the morning with my blind friend, Nan, and took her for her bloodwork.
Came home and the dog came out just in time to see that the paving crew had Taco Bell for lunch.
My trainer asked to reschedule my session today, so I told him I would do something at home.
This was my half-assed work out. My trainer asked me to select exercises and do them with intent, and instead I fought with the dog, picked some exercises I thought would move the important parts and retain the ground I made versus improve. Here is a video.
I also received a payment from my short-term disability insurance through work, and I’m grateful as this is giving me time to strengthen myself and recovery from my mallet finger. Hopefully, this will prevent further “domino effect” on my health. I see the neuro-physiatrist at the end of the month.
I’m curious what she will have to say, and I’m thinking this may be the end of my quest for answers about my cerebral palsy.
It’s been a demanding week with my body in revolt for most of it.
I’ve succumbed to some bad moods but for the most part kept it together— and even enjoyed another pizza outing with the teenager and my blind friend Nan where we have officially determined that Nan and I think Nicolosi’s eggplant parmesan is our new favorite pizza. The teenager is in the chicken-bacon-ranch camp.
The teenager has been housesitting and her own dog F. Bean Barker seems to prefer sleeping in her crate downstairs to being in the teen’s bedroom alone with the two foster cats, Mars and Khloe.
Mars & Khloe
It has taken a few nights of sleep deprivation to discover this.
And it’s cold. And rainy. So the dog and I are both grumpy.
But this week I have started a new routine— getting up at 4:15 am so I can write for 30 minutes before work. In addition to my publishing business (Parisian Phoenix Publishing), I also need to commit to my writing.
Speaking of commitment, I’ve been trying to buy a bookshelf all week.
But I did buy a microphone for the business so that hopefully we can record some authors reading their work and have discussions with and for writers as part of our marketing material.
Nan and I got together today to run errands, see what was going on with Axiom, drink chai and read poetry. The best publication we looked at today was definitely *82 Review which featured Nan’s poem, “Brewing Chai.”
The magazine is very very diverse in its style and I am very excited to read more.
One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long time is “A Child in Need of Services” (a flash submission) where the speaker talks about the origins of their three talents, with such humor and joyful voice that you just don’t see the ending coming. The author is Amanda Skofstad.
We retrieved Nan’s laundry and I parked the car at the high school and walked the half mile in the cold rain (uphill as the teen would remind us) to the gym so the teen could have the car after school to go to work.
But I made it to the gym… for session 73 at Apex Training with my trainer Andrew. I love his current approach— a lot of back and shoulder based weight training for the upper body and creative more-or-less body weight exercises for the lower body so we can develop some muscle memory in those body parts that don’t understand how to play on a team. We also did some hex bar work and other stuff. I always feel good when I leave.
But by far, the hardest exercise for me today was wide stance squats. That had me struggling, concentrating, breathing and thinking I wouldn’t make it through. For squats. Bench squats at that.
Let me explain.
My cerebral palsy makes this the ultimate torture. Remember— my quads, hamstrings and calves never relax. My heel tendons are too short and my ankles don’t have the right mobility. My knees point in because of my femoral anteversion, and that just means the top of my femurs go into my hip sockets at the wrong angle.
So when I do that wide stance bench squat, I need to practice the most muscle control I can. I have to plant my feet and manually rotate my toes to what feels like uncomfortably out. And when I rise, I need to maintain balance, push with my upper region of my legs and force my hips out so they can force my knees out.
It’s damn hard.
But I can feel those body parts trying to cooperate and that’s exciting. If Andrew and I had more money and could work less at traditional full time jobs, I would love to train every day.
I posted this to Facebook:
I came home and stood in the rain for ten minutes holding an umbrella over the dog and she still wouldn’t pee. I took a shower, got dressed and gathered laundry. The washer wouldn’t work. My seven month old washer.
So I made myself an omelet of peppers, two eggs, heaps of Black Bear Mexican turkey, a slice of black pepper Cooper, a half slice of horseradish cheddar and piled it on my last slice of ShopRite bakery seeded rye.
The teenager came home and I googled the error code on the washer and she moved the whole wash tower and ripped the rear access panel off. When the drain pipe wasn’t back there, I had her read me the exact model number so we could Google again. We found this video, by a man with nice hands: Fixing the washer.
The teenager watched about half a minute, grabbed a bucket and ran to the front access panel. Within seconds, she had removed the whole plug apparatus and flooded the bathroom with gallons of wash water.
“How am I supposed to get that into a bucket?” she asked.
I continue watching the video. There’s a tube you empty first.
“There’s a tube!” she yells.
Oh, Pop Pop on the Mountain, wherever he is in the afterlife, is laughing his ass off now.
The apparatus is clogged with poly fill, a metal ring, quarters and other nonsense. That is fixed now. Drain hoses cleaned. Wash loads continue.
Angel Ackerman 