Tales of Christmas 2010

Our tree on Christmas Eve

-My twenty-year-old brother shoved me while I was taking the picture. Then he made me forward him the photo, because it looked "artistic." *gives bro stern elder sister glare* Actually, my sister - who looked over my shoulder just now - agrees with him.

Our tree after I told my brother what a punk he was

-So cute, right? It's roughly five feet tall. We needed one that would fit inside the car. (The other option was strapping a tree on top of the car for a hour-long winding drive through the mountain highway during a snowstorm.) My brother and my father weren't here yet, so I sawed off the end of the trunk and screwed it into the tree stand myself. *proudly flexes handy-woman muscles*

-I knitted my sister a quilt for Christmas. I knitted three pieces of it in front of her, and she was STILL surprised when she opened it. (Yes, I'm v. v. v. proud of myself.)

My great-grandma and another quilt I knitted her for Christmas.
My grandmother took this pic and sent it to me this morning.

-I debated on whether or not to mention it in this post, but after last night's shoving, the debate was over - embarrassing stories can be told. My brother and I made my great-grandma's infamous eggnog. (Yes, the same great-grandmother pictured above. Her eggnog is infamous, because of how much whiskey she puts in it.) Because I beat the egg whites, I let Clint beat the cream. I thought it was cute, so I stood back and took a few pics. BIG mistake. 'Cause he whipped the cream into butter. Luckily, we had extra cream on hand, so nobody was too unhappy about it. Then the eggnog turned out great, so that made us pretty cheerful too. :-)

-Last night, after the rest of my family went to bed, I stayed up late reading my most recent B&N purchase, Isabel Wolff's A VINTAGE AFFAIR (yeah, I'm sure you're completely shocked - it's totally out of character). On page 75, I read "it's lucky to find a nail, to eat an apple on Christmas Eve, and to accidentally put a garment on inside out." I paused (mainly because it was warm under my covers and NOT warm out of bed) before deciding that it was too much of a coincidence. Besides, with my own book(s) coming out soon, I could really use all the luck I could get. So, I climbed out of bed, snuck into the kitchen, and groped around in the dark until I found the fruit bowl. I must say that green apples make fantastic late night snacks, even on Christmas Eve, but I'm not totally sure it gave me any luck: I woke up with a cold this morning...but then again, I'm sure staying up late didn't help my immune system much. :-P

- (See if you can follow the family tree in this one.) My grandmother - ie. my father's mother - gave MY mother a cookbook for Christmas. Not just any cookbook, but a local one from Louisiana. (Both sides of my extended family live in or near Texas, so this isn't as random as it sounds.) Leafing through the cookbook this afternoon, my mom discovered a long lost recipe for "Condensed Milk Pie," submitted to the cookbook by Mom's father's brother's wife. BUT, Mom says, this recipe was actually invented by her grandmother, ie. Mom's father's mother. Scandal! (P.S. If you followed all that, you deserve so many point. Also, believe it or not, the story could've been a lot more complicated: my mother has four siblings, which gives me eight cousins on one side. But my mother's FATHER had TEN siblings, which means she would have to sit down with pen and paper and a family tree to figure how many siblings SHE has.)

- We had turkey for our big Christmas meal, which means that everyone was too sleepy to reach for their computers right away. Which meant that I had enough time to sneak onto the internet and throw a blog post together.

I hope everyone's holidays have been as fun, silly, and random as mine!!

XOXO!!
SB

Percy, my dear character...

There will always be a place in my heart for the PERCY JACKSON series. It was one of the first series I really got into when I joined a middle grade team at a NY publishing house as an editorial assistant. Actually, I got so into it that I made one of my coworkers read it too, and later I caught her reading it in front of her computer one slow Friday afternoon. Then we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed and complained about having to waiting until The Last Olympian came out. Then it came out, and we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed again - and complained about how there weren't any more books in the PERCY JACKSON series and fretted over whether or not the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Halfblood series could be as good.

Then I heard that the movie was happening.

(insert fan-girl squealing here)

Then my former coworkers went to the NYC premiere, and I was totally jealous.

Then my new agent invited me to go see it with her when I went to New York a few weeks later, and that made it lots better. :-D

The best part of the movie was watching it with Jo. Actually, I was very afraid that she would be one of those people who disliked talking during movies, or moviegoers being generally loud (once, I had a friend who wouldn't let me sit next to her during a Harry Potter movie opening night, because she said I laughed too loud - I was scarred. Obviously. Since I'm blogging about it now, five or six years later).

Luckily, Jo had no problem with us whispering back and forth about what was cut, who was funny, etc. After I ran to the bathroom, she even told me what I missed without me having to ask. (Is it wrong that this made me heart her forever?)

Other highlights include:

• Grover. This guy is funny! PERFECT comedic timing. I feel like he's been in something else, but I have no idea what. He's a few years older, and a lot more into girls than the Grover of the books, but when I left the theater, I was still giggling over things he said.
  
  
  
• Uma Thurman as Medusa. For some reason, I found this incredibly entertaining. It reminded me a lot of her work in My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which in my mind was a film with a great concept that was tragically executed). Uma does evil well, I must say.
  
  
  
• The special effects. In particular, the rooftop scene with lots of water spewing around (see above) got my wow rating. It made me want to have some sort of epic power on top of Manhattan (or at least to give my main character an epic power).
  

What I wanted from the movie that I didn't get:

• A more awesome Annabeth. LOVED Annabeth in the books. This one was snarky to the point of me thinking that she had PMS for the entire movie.
  
  
• More from the gods. They were big, they were bad, and I think they only got 10 minutes total of screen time. I wanted them to be funny (like Hermes in the books!) and hang out with their kids. I wanted COSTUMES.
  
  
• The Fates to get a shout-out. Who else thinks that Judi Dench would be an awesome Fate? She could have played all three, and I would have gone home singing the film's praises from Penn Station (NYC) to Big Sky (MT). Sigh.
  

All in all though, a very good film. It wasn't the books and didn't have the same level of characterization (or wit), but as my wise and illustrious agent said, "It's a completely different genre." I liked it immensely - much more than other films I've seen recently.

Too true.

Okay, in other news, soon I will alone again in a snowy cabin. My dad and sister are already gone. My mom leaves tomorrow, and my brother leaves on Sunday morning very early. I am sad to see them go, but the idea of being alone with my manuscripts and getting things knocked out is doing a good job of cheering me up/distracting me.

However, let me show you my younger brother, who is wonderfully funny, even when he doesn't mean to be:


Where is his left leg? Well, he stepped off his board into a bunch of fresh powder and thus sank hip deep in snow. Since this little brother happens to be 6'3" (or more), his leg is about three feet long. Which means the snow was really deep.

Obviously, I'm the sweetest big sister in the world - I laughed really hard, took a pic, and shared it on my blog. :-o

(Okay, okay - if my little sister (who reads this blog) thinks this is unkind, she will tell me and I will delete this part of the post. And no one will know except those lucky early readers...)

Sigh.

I know. I have not been blogging. I have been doing other things, such as:

(Note: none of these are essentially more important than blogging, but this is what going on.)

1. Watching New Moon for the second night in a row. Yesterday, my brother and sister really wanted to watch it, but during the ending, my mom had to answer a phone call and thus missed the last 20 minutes. So, we watched it again tonight. Somehow, she fell asleep in her chair. Actually, I'm the only one still awake. Possibly because I was inputing my revision changes into the digital version of my ms. I will say that watching it makes me want to read something with steamy paranormal romance, ie. probably not middle grade.
   
   
2. Hanging out with my family. My brother, my father, my mother, and my sister all came up for spring break. It was fantastic. Right now, we're two down and two to go. I will be sad to see them go, so I'm trying to get as much quality time in as possible. (Quality time = my nineteen-year-old stripping off his shirt and drawing a circular tattoo on his arm and quoting the most ridiculous of Jacob Black's lines from the aforementioned movie until my sister laughed so hard that she almost fell down the stairs. Oh, college-age siblings.)
   
   
3. Driving back and forth from the airport. It takes over an hour and a half to go each way, and to get back to work/school at a reasonable hour, my father and sister's flights took off at 7-something on Tuesday and 8-something today respectively. This means early wake-up times. (Technically, I didn't have to go with them to the airport, but I wanted to see them off.) This means that you go into that weird sleep-deprived daze. For example, I was asleep when we got pulled over for going 14 miles of the speed limit this morning at 7:15AM, and the lights confused me like whoa. It still seems like something that happened in a dream rather than reality. Especially since he let us off with a warning. (I was NOT driving, btw. The most responsible driver in the house was, and I will leave you to guess who that was.)
   
   
4. Revising. Technically, I'm revising the revisions right now. It's epic. It's not going badly. Just slowly. The slow part bothers me, but it would be more bothersome if it wasn't going at all. Of course, I'm still on the top half of the novel, which is more problematic, because I'm adding more to it - and shuffling the new scenes around a lot. (Reminds me of shuffling a deck of cards - have I mentioned this yet?)
   
   
5. Figured out how to reply to comments on Blogger. You start a whole new comment. I kept thinking that I could reply to each comment individually, but no, that's a livejournal thing.
   
   
6. Making a huge mess of the kitchen table. I swear all those papers aren't mine. No, for serious. That's not even my laptop. (Okay, that is my printer.)
   
   
   
7. Spending epic amounts of time on iTunes. Actually, this just happened today, but it was such an epic amount of time that it gets its own spot on the list. I mean, I was on it for hours, organizing my playlists (ie. deleting the ancient ones that I haven't listened to since August) and creating new ones. Specifically, creating new ones for the manuscript I'm working on. I mean, I had a few rough ones before, but they just got me through the first (and second) drafts. Now, I actually have thirteen separate ones for different sections, and a ton of Regina Spektor for some odd reason.
   
   
   
   
8. Feeling guilty about not blogging. Sadly, I will have to break my 15-blogs-a-month New Year's resolution. :'-( I mean, I guess I could pull out all the stops and blog twice a day for the next few days and totally make it, but I feel my revisions need me more than my blog. And so I'm amending my New Year's resolution again: 15 posts on a normal month, but 10+ if I do lots of traveling that month. But hey! it took me all the way until late March for me to break this resolution which is much better than what happens with most of my resolutions. Hmm.

Whew. I am sooooo sleepy (have been awake since 5:30AM). I think I shall go crawl in bed...

<3!

Truth

I had to change the name of this blog. It used to be "Tales: The Adventures of Shelby R. Bach." I added "Life and" today.

I like the word "Life." I say, "How's life?" when other people say, "How are you?" I've done that since high school, and I might have even done it earlier. "Life" is kind of all-encompassing. There's not much it doesn't include.

The word "Adventures" had a specific purpose. I was scared. Many changes were in the air. I was trying to view them in a certain light. I'm still trying, but it has gotten easier with time.

The problem was that I didn't post anything.

"Adventures" is a big word to live up to. I'm not sure if I have had any real adventures.

I got lost in my own hometown, between my parents' house and a park less than two miles away. My little brother (adorable, a freshman at college) was quarantined with the swine flu. I bought health insurance. I borrowed 71 books from my local library (actual reading rate: roughly 80% - but I didn't finish them all). I recovered from a sinus infection. I visited Charleston and learned how to make shrimp & grits. Later that day, I found a graveyard (see right). I also found a dress for the debutante ball of my little sister (senior at the same college, tough and awesome). I attended a beautiful wedding in Virginia, but my camera's battery ran down and left me without pictures. :-( I booked flights to Montana, to DC, and to New York. I started a part-time job at a general contracting company. I wrote 70 pages of a children's novel, read fairy tale anthologies, and structured a story arc for a five-book series.

I'm a writer. I quit my job in New York in order to pursue my dream. (And also, to keep sane. New York is a difficult place to stay sane.)

Truth: That's the real adventure. Risk and dreams and faith.

The posts should be more frequent from here on out.

(P.S. Truth number 2 - I'm still not unpacked.)

Life's a Beach.

Well, it’s been less than a week, and I’m already headed back to New York.

It’s a really brief return, though. In fact, just long enough to change planes – my mom, my dad, and I are headed back from Maine. The sunset outside their window is extraordinary:

(Note: it looks better in person.)

Anyway, the bro and the sis are off at school. College campuses are definitely a trip, especially in the years immediately after graduation. They look really familiar, but it’s a completely different world than the one you now live in. You look at the students, and you know what kind of thoughts they’re thinking. They echo in your head, because they’re the same ones you remember thinking yourself, years ago, when it was your turn to walk that campus.

(Undergrad are the years when you still think you’re brilliant. I won’t be the one to burst their bubble.)

The brother (a.k.a. the freshman) told us in kind yet not uncertain terms that we were overstaying our welcome. He was ready to start the business of making new friends. We said goodbye.

Then, we went to the beach. This is why I love my parents (one of many reasons). It was their idea. Stuck in Coastal Maine with several hours to kill before our flight home? Let’s go to the beach! Why not?

We went to Popham Beach. The coastline is primarily rocky. So, there aren’t many sandy beaches in Maine, and this one’s popular. Especially with endangered piping plovers.


(I’ve actually been to this beach before, on a science field trip during Maine Coast Semester several million years ago, ie. in high school. We saw piping plover nests, and we sketched the wild roses in bloom on the dunes.

These rosebushes aren't in bloom. The red bits are rose hips.

That’s right. The science classes were kind of intense: we were required to go on field trips twice a month and do art. I’ve never been terrific at ecology or biology, but some of it stuck: all weekend, whenever I recognized a plant, I would announce its name like a revelation: “Silver Birch!” “Stag-horned sumac!” “Something that starts with a C! (It likes saltwater!)”)

The guy in orange is my dad. He dresses like a Southern gentleman.

We waited for traffic to clear on the path to the beach and then stumbled down to the water.

My mom said, “Nothing says “tourist” like long pants and a camera.” (Yes, I had both. Fully visible.)


Maine is beautiful. If it weren’t for the cold, I could live there.

Next adventure - Unpacking. (There are 20 boxes. It'll be epic. Wait till you see those pictures.)

The Adventure Begins…

So, maybe it is a little crazy.

I quit my job, which I loved, so that I could leave New York, which I do not love.

The actual resignation was weeks ago. I moved today.

One of my dear friends and I were discussing the crazy things. We decided that we were both are liable to pull crazy stunts like the above. Kimmy, for instance, is living in a not-so-nice neighborhood and doing the Teaching Fellows of New York Program. She loves her job. She loves finding books that her high schoolers will love so much that they don’t give them back. Plenty of people would call that crazy, but she denies it.

We decided that when you are doing something a trifle insane, you have to shut off the part of you that calls it crazy. It’s probably for survival. Otherwise, you wouldn’t ever do the things you need to do.

Personally, I view quitting my job, packing up my life, and moving to California as an act of necessity, verging on desperation rather than an act of bravery.

But the insanity charge is starting to sink in.

It was the questions. “What’s in California?” people asked. (Sunshine.) “What about a job?” (I’ll find one.) “Do you have family out there?” (No.) “Friends?” (A few.)

Then, they compliment me – tell me I’m brave, etc. That’s when I start to recognize what a crazy thing I’ve done.

But life’s an adventure, right? If I don’t do it now, before the age of twenty-five, it will only get harder.

Also, I have a month-long stopover at my parents’ house to get used to the idea. I’ll sleep some and help them organize the house before their house. My younger brother and sister head off to college this weekend – he will be a freshman; she will graduate next May. It’ll be like being an only child again.

Also, I’ll get to read whatever I want. That’s amazing. I’m in the middle of a galley a friend Kirsten gave me – The Girl With Glass Feet.

...

I can’t believe that I’m back in Charlotte. I can’t believe I actually moved. It still feels like I’m going back in to work on Monday.