-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!!
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.)
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.
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.)
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.)
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?)
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.
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.)
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.
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...
You may not know what that is. Colby had a few friends from college come down for the event, and they said their only previous exposure to debutante balls comes from Gilmore Girls. So, without further ado, a few definitions to get us through the story:
Debutante - (a.k.a. the "deb) a young lady of 21 years, who is formally coming out to society. The event at which she "debuts" is called a debutante ball. (In some societies, it's 18 years of age.)
Presenter - the man who accompanies and presents the debutante to society. It is almost always the debutante's father.
Marshal - a young man of the same generation as the debutante, who is understood to protect the debutante's interests/honor within the society. Marshals are usually the debutante's brother, cousin, friend, or boyfriend.
So that you get a visual, here are a few pre-event pictures:
The hall where the presentation takes place
One of the rooms for dinner - pre-guests
All 24 Debs, getting their pre-event group picture taken
It smacks of something, doesn't it? Something you might have seen on Platinum Weddings or Bridezillas?
Back in the day, coming out to society was also an opportunity for fathers to show off their daughters as young women eligible to marriage. My sister's hairdresser - when he was shoving her product-stiffened hair into a french twist - called it "Pimp My Kid," which is actually pretty accurate. Now, it's less about having a run-through of mock-wedding and more about upholding our Southern traditions, but some bits remain. The dresses you see before you are actually wedding dresses. The white kid gloves that extend past your elbows are required. Afterwards, a lot of the debs dry their bouquets as keepsakes.
We are not a Southern Belle-type family. When I was a deb two years ago, I was dragged kicking and screaming. I was still attending Vassar at the time. My feminist ideals were being compromised. My sister (a student athlete and aspiring athlete) and mother (a former tomboy) are of the same mind.
Of course, that said, we've lived in the South for long enough that we couldn't blow it off entirely. An actual Southern belle - a ninety-six-year-old woman who befriended my mother at bible study - thought she was doing us a huge favor by lobbying to get us into this club. Once we were accepted, it was hard to argue with someone who was a matron of society. And then, she passed away, and we really couldn't argue with her. We did it - albeit reluctantly - in her memory.
This time around, from my position as my mother's assistant, it was very busy. I was the person who shuttled around friends or bought last-minute necessities like pantyhose or ran to find the baby powder needed to put on the elbow length gloves. I realized there was a sliver of glass in my foot after Mom had already zipped me in my dress. I didn't have time to go to the hospital, so I cut a hole in my hose, grabbed some nail scissors and some tweezers, and performed minor surgery. (This was an achievement. I'm very, very squeamish.)
When it started, the ceremony just seemed vaguely silly. Here's what actually happens:
1) One at a time, each debutante walks into the hall with her bouquet and stands smiling while a herald announces her name at a podium.
2) Her father/presenter comes out in his coat and tails, and he takes her hand as she curtsies and the herald announces her father/presenter's full name.
3) Debutante and the presenter walks down the length of the room under a spotlight while the herald announces how many of the deb's ancestors were debutante club members. Little old ladies - debs themselves, decades back - look on and think private opinions about each girl's dress, father, and later marshals.
4) At the other end of the hall, the deb curtsies a second time before her father passes her off to the two marshals. The herald announces the marshals full names.
5) The marshals take the debutante's elbows and walk her across the room. At the other end of the room, the deb and her marshals pause for one final smile before exiting the room.
6) After every deb has had a turn, all the debs come out with their fathers for a grand finale: the girls dance with their father and each marshal in turn.
The boy dancing with the deb is my handsome young brother. He waltzes too quickly for the music, but he looks good doing it. The man with a similar outfit and the woman in the gold dress are my parents. The gray head in the right hand corner of the screen is my ninety-four-year-old great-grandmother.
Very silly, but tradition is often silly. There's a story in here somewhere but not quite yet. It's still too fresh, too immediate.
Mainly, after it was over, I was glad for the opportunity to celebrate my wacky, wonderful sister.
It's not just that she's coming out in society. She's turning 22 on Thursday and applying to grad schools next year. Soon, she'll be well on her way to becoming a physical therapist, the kind that everyone wishes they had - so pushy that she asks for things that your body doesn't want to do, but so cute/charming/persistent that you can't turn her down.
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.
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.)
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.
Our tree on Christmas EveOur tree after I told my brother what a punk he was
My great-grandma and another quilt I knitted her for Christmas.
ost, 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 w
hites, 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. :-)
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
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.)
