The Things We Bring with us to Stories

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Over on twitter, someone was expressing love for Anna over Elsa in the movie Frozen. I opined that Elsa was the more interesting character. The other person disagreed. Then I had to figure out why I thought Elsa was more interesting. I think Elsa is more compelling because I know Gleek, who desperately needs more of Elsa’s story. She is trapped, liable to do damage on accident, and really needs to see a path toward self-acceptance and balance. I cry at Frozen and at the songs from Frozen because of the person I know who needs that story.

Disney has done a really good job lately of hitting pockets of emotion for me. Rapunzel from Tangled reminded me greatly of my somewhat mercurial and artistic Kiki. Brave brought me face to face with some of my emotional tangles about motherhood, decorum, and freedom. I’m not saying that Disney is always getting it right, but they’re doing a fine job of actually tackling some of these things. Thoughts on all of this led me to tweet:

How we react to a story depends greatly on the baggage we’re carrying when we arrive at the beginning of it.

I’ve heard from people who were flat out bored by Frozen. I know others that love it. I know people who are very concerned about subtext in the lyrics. I know others who felt like the whole movie was silly fun, without depth. All of these people saw the same film. The difference is what they brought with them when they entered the theater.

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Thinking About Revision

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A week ago I printed out the full draft of my sister’s novel. Then I read through it making notes as I went. I stuck post-it notes in the places with large plot problems and wrote in the margins for smaller ones. This afternoon I spent a couple of hours talking with my sister about problems and possibilities. It was really fun. The book needs work, but it is not broken.

After we got off the phone, I realized how much I want to do that for my own book. I want to have a completed draft and then begin fixing it. Revision is exciting for me, because it requires seeing the project anew. But before I can do that, I have to finish a draft.

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At the End of a Very Long Week

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I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair. Especially in the last few days thoughts of cutting my hair have been increasingly common. This is not because I want short hair, or any particular haircut at all. I just want something to be different. That “want something to be different” is being projected onto my hair because the last few weeks have been so miserable. We’ve been sick, Link has been miserable, and my head has not been clear enough to see how to navigate any better. I want to be able to control something, and hair is easy to change. (Though harder to change back.)

We’re not out of the woods yet as far as being sick goes. Though today I’m catching glimmers of light which have me believing that the woods edge actually exists. Some days I wasn’t so sure about that. I can now imagine that we’ll have a day with no post-cough vomit in it and that day may arrive between now and Monday. I don’t yet believe in days with no coughing. I’ll just be happy if we can keep coughing below the threshold where bystanders fear for the coughing person’s life. It would be lovely if Patch could go back to school next week. Even lovelier if Link could as well.

LTUE is next week. If your near Provo Utah and are at all interested in writing or in discussions of Science Fiction and Fantasy, I definitely recommend that you attend. I’ve got an array of program items and I’m hopeful that tomorrow I’ll have a chance to begin planning for them. I know lots of other people who are fantastic and will be teaching on amazing topics. It is a symposium that is well worth your time.

Howard will be at RadCon in Washington. He’ll have books there. I know because I mailed them on Tuesday. He’ll also have almost 40 pieces of art available in the art show. I mailed those today. The only thing left to do is pack up Howard and send him. We’ll do that next Thursday.

I still hate the gasping, whooping sound that accompanies so many of the coughs in our house. It is like being strangled by your own throat muscles 15-20 times per day. But we’re coughing less and sometime in the next month we’ll be done coughing. Ultimately the swabs testing for pertussis came up negative, so there is some question about whether that is what we have. The county health lady with whom I’ve been exchanging email suggested parapertussis, which I didn’t even know existed. It is like pertussis-lite and not covered by vaccines. However if our experience has been “light” then pertussis is deadly and everyone should be re-vaccinated. I am of the opinion that if something quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, and swims like a duck, I’m just going to call the thing a duck and treat it accordingly. So I’m going to continue to call it whooping cough.

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Tayler Update

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Sorry for the radio silence. I was really tired of blogging about whooping cough and sickness. Unfortunately those things continue to be the primary defining characteristics of life in the Tayler household right now. Quarantine lifts tomorrow morning, which means that Gleek will get to go back to school. Patch and Link will have to be evaluated. None of us are contagious anymore, but the coughs are still alarming and disruptive. Howard did not catch whooping cough because of antibiotics. He caught flu instead, so while most of us have been whooping, he’s been doing fever, aches, and bronchial coughing. He appears to be on the mend, but is still not well.

So here is a small cheerful thing. I have a basil plant in a pot. It smells lovely and adding fresh basil leaves to various foods is a very happy thing.

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Quarantined Sunday

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The sun was out and bright today. The sky was a brilliant blue. It was the kind of day that is always a blessing in mid-winter when so much of the weather is gray. I viewed the day through fogged up windows because we’re boiling water constantly to humidify the air in our house. It condenses on the windows and fogs the view, but it relieves the coughing some. I did not go outside because we’re not supposed to. That’s what quarantine means. Stay home. No one is checking up on us or enforcing the quarantine. It was just doctor recommended and since I would wish this illness on anyone else, I’m honoring it. Gleek is cleared for school tomorrow, Howard is cleared to run errands. The boys and I stay in the house.

This morning I handed out antibiotics to five people. It is the second day of treatment and I can already tell the difference. The coppery taste at the back of my throat has vanished. Howard reports the same. Our moods are improved and I feel alert for the first time in at least two weeks. Today I can feel like this illness is just a thing we will deal with. Yesterday it was a terrible looming thing that had taken over our lives. I don’t think a night’s sleep is the only difference. Stress and depression are not listed as symptoms of pertussis, but I’m going to add them to the tally of things I’ve experienced because of the disease.

I’ve had lots of vaccination discussions as a result of catching a vaccine preventable disease. The pertussis vaccine does not impart immunity, it increases resistance. Direct exposure can overcome that resistance. We live in a highly-vaccinated state, but outbreaks still happen. Gleek is the one who caught this first and she was re-vaccinated less than a year ago. Many people are ready to jump in and blame people who don’t vaccinate. I think the reasons for outbreaks are more complex than that. I’m hearing from friends all over the country, many of them are health professionals, and they’re all reporting a resurgence of pertussis outbreaks. Lower rates of vaccination can contribute to that. There is also the fact that doctors are much slower to hand out antibiotics than they were fifteen years ago. I had to argue and get a second opinion before we got the antibiotics we needed. In an era where antibiotics flowed more freely, outbreaks were likely quelled much more quickly. Note: I’m not saying that doctors are wrong to be careful about giving out antibiotics, just that this could be part of what happens as a result. I’ve also heard it posited that there is a pertussis strain that is not adequately covered by the current vaccinations.

I will be providing as much information about our case as I can to those whose jobs it is to watch and understand outbreaks. Our job is to get better, to prevent further infection, and to notify those who may have been exposed.

Hopefully tomorrow we can have a day where I blog about something not cough related because it would be lovely if I could spend my time thinking about something else.

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In Which the Taylers are Disease Vectors

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The Tayler house is officially a quarantine zone. The urgent care physician agrees with my diagnosis of Whooping Cough (pertussis). We are awaiting lab confirmation, but we have classic symptoms including the whooping sound with coughing. We are all fully immunized, we have it anyway.

If you have been in contact with any of my family in the last few weeks, particularly if they coughed near you. I am really sorry. And if you start to feel congested or have a cough, please go to your doctor and ask for Azythromyacin antibiotics. If you catch it early, you will not have to endure 6-10 weeks of horrible coughing. You’ll just get better quickly.

This has been my public health apology and notification for today.

This whole process has been somewhat frustrating for me because I suspected whooping cough last week. The minute I started coughing I knew the cough was not a standard cold. But I can’t go back and un-make any decisions. The best I can do is make sure that I appropriately notify everyone who may have come into contact with us.

Gleek is well into the recovery phase. She was the first to cough and got off relatively lightly. Her cough never got very bad and would have remained undiagnosed except for the rest of us. Patch has developed the classic whoop sound. Mostly he’s fine except for the 15-20 times per day when he’s struck with a coughing fit. Link has it worst. He’s exhausted, running a low-grade fever, and coughing to the point of vomiting once or twice per hour. I feel relatively fine except when I get a coughing fit. Then I gasp and whoop just like Patch. Howard is just starting to feel the beginnings of a cough, which means an application of antibiotics should help him skip the worst of it. Kiki was home about a week ago, but has yet to exhibit any symptoms. If she does, we’ll immediately start antibiotics for her. Patch and Link both missed a week of school last week and they’re likely to miss all of next week as well.

This whole whooping cough experience has been frustrating and depressing. I do feel some vindication at the confirmation of my diagnosis, but I would much rather have not dealt with this. I would like to be done with it, but prognosis is that we’ll have coughing in our house for several weeks more.

In related news, I will not be participating in the Month of Letters challenge this year. It is a wonderful thing. I’ve done it the last two years and I highly recommend it. But it does not seem wise nor kind to deliberately send physical objects out of an infectious zone. No paper letters will be leaving my house until I’m certain we’re no longer contagious.

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Still Coughing

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We’re still mired in being sick. Today this made me angry. I expressed that anger by cleaning and running all the errands. Sometimes that makes me feel better. Didn’t really work this time around. I’m still grouchy and angry. Though I am very grateful to friends on twitter who made me laugh more than once today. This was a day much in need of laughter.

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The Cough

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The cough showed up sometime in December. Gleek brought it home from school, or possibly from somewhere else, but she was certainly the cough’s first host in our house. I didn’t think much of it. Coughing happens in winter time. But it didn’t go away. Then Patch started coughing and so did Link. I felt it coming for me only a few days before ConFusion. I did my best to fend it off, but I did not succeed. Somewhere in there it became not just a cough, but The Cough. It will lurk for hours and then pounce causing a fit of coughing and throat spasms, which are just lovely for those of my children who have more sensitive gag reflexes. It is also not fun to listen to: cough, cough, cough, sputter, gag, cough. When I hear it begin, I pause and listen to see if I need to go help with clean up once the coughing subsides.

Other than the side effects of coughing (abdominal strain, headaches from gasping for breath, sore throat, and clean up) I don’t feel really sick, just more tired and less focused than usual. Gleek is up and around despite still coughing. Patch and Link are both home from school. Again. In fact my morning was spent communicating with teachers via email, trying to sort out how to handle an extended absence. Because I’m not certain when Link will be able to head back to school. We did the obligatory doctor’s visit yesterday and determined that The Cough is likely a viral affliction and mostly what we need to do is wait it out. The doctor did swabs just in case, but mostly treatment is symptomatic.

I don’t like The Cough at all. It is annoying and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. I went yesterday to find look at various possible remedies for reducing coughs. So far cough drops have been the most effective suppression method. We’re also boiling a huge pot of water on the stove in the hope that humidifying the house will help. Even if we could reach the point where Patch and Link were well enough to function at school, that would be good.

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Writing Habits

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I have friends who write novels. Many novels. Long novels. I have friends whose books are shelved face out at Barnes and Noble. Some of them have been on the New York Times Best Seller’s list. I have friends who shepherd their books solo through drafting, editing, design, and releasing out to the reading public. Many of my friends have won awards for the words that they have written. I don’t really covet the awards, shelf placement, agents, editors, sales, or recommendation lists. All of those things come, or don’t come, after the primary effort is done. First my friends had to write the words. Hundreds of thousands of words. They sat at their keyboards and worked until they had a novel, or two, or ten. This is something I have yet to do. It is something I admire. I’ve blogged, written essays, created two picture books, drafted short stories, and crafted a memoir. These things are not insignificant. They are good and important works, but I have not written a novel.

My novelist friends succeed where I have not, because they have habits that I do not have. I’ve been watching them lately and looking at my daily schedule. I’m trying to figure out which habits I can fit into my life and what things that are currently in my life will have to get pitched in order to make space. Because no one gets more than twenty four hours in a day, not even novelists who create alternate realities. The time for considering is almost over. I need to start shoehorning writing habits into my days. I’ll start with one or two and see how far that gets me.

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Thoughts on My Birthday

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It is always interesting to me what transformations occur on my internal landscape when we hit my birthday. There have been years where I reached a landmark age and felt strange about it. Some years I’ve really needed affirmation and appreciation. There were times when I needed it and didn’t get it. Other times I needed it and it arrived. For several years I posted short stories on my birthday, but then came a year when that felt too stressful so I stopped. I’ve had forty one birthdays, which is a large enough sampling that I can confidently say that I don’t know how birthdays will affect me in the future.

So much of how I approach my birthday depends on the months that came before. This year I had an extremely affirming Kickstarter experience in December followed by a wonderful convention last week and another convention to look forward to. I’m feeling full-up and that fact of my birthday feels somewhat irrelevant. I like feeling this way about my birthday, because on the years where I really needed recognition I wanted to feel this way instead.

Except I think I might be wrong in this. There is true value in celebrating a person, not because of anything they did, but because each person is a miracle worthy of celebration. That core fact sometimes gets buried in the trappings of gifts, notes, cakes, and balloons. Then we lament the physical symbols of celebration, when what is truly lacking is the recognition of value. It is so much easier for me to celebrate someone else than to celebrate myself. It is easier to see how amazing my friends are than it is to recognize similar things in myself.

“How old are you Mom?” Gleek asked as we drove home this evening.
“Forty one.” I answered.
“Really? I thought you were like 38.” She kept talking and I got the sense that somehow she didn’t want to think of me as being that old.
“I like being Forty one. It is a good age.”
“I thought people got upset about being forty.”
“Some people do. But I’m here. I’m healthy. I’ve accomplished many of the things I want in life and I’ve got time left to accomplish more. This is a good place to be.”

It seems like a good assessment. I’ve got a whole year ahead of me to enjoy being forty one.

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