Month: November 2014

What’s a Runner Who Doesn’t Run?

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I’ve been to see the podiatrist for the second time this year.

It’s odd how much I’ve grown into the label of a runner over the last three years, but this year has been instructive. My non-running time has added up to be almost as much as my running-enabled time, and even when I have been able to run, it’s been in a severely diminished capacity from where I was last year at this time. That being said, my first trip to the podiatrist was encouraging. The doctor saw the inflammation on my x-ray, gave me a local treatment, a stretching regimen, an icing regimen, and seemed pretty confident that a) he’d identified the problem and b) would be able to solve it. And he was right — the tweakiness in my left foot is virtually gone, less some tightness in the morning.

My second visit has only been frustrating.

Nothing to show on the x-ray, which he says is a good thing, but it also means that the cause and source of the pain are harder to identify. He poked and prodded at my Achilles a bit and said that while he can definitely pinpoint the location of the injury, he can’t really tell what’s going on. Sometimes, he said, the Achilles can tear (if in the case of a violent and acute injury — like I stepped in a pothole and hyperextended the thing) or almost “fray” (from simple overuse… also, the idea of a tendon “fraying” is enough to send me scrabbling up the walls to throw up in my mouth). But he sees no sign of any of that sort of damage. No local treatment this time, since he can’t be sure what’s causing the pain. Just a renewal of some anti-inflammatory meds (which I’m almost convinced are just sugar tablets at this point), a heel insert for my shoe (to take some of the “pressure” off the tendon, with the added side benefit of making me feel positively geriatric), and an appointment to come back in three weeks to reassess.

I asked him if I need to think about giving up running for a while. I’m not sure if he heard the trepidation in my voice and didn’t want to crush me or if he’s genuine, but he said to just give it a week and then go out for a slow, short run… with the shoe insert. Which I’m sure is going to feel like I’m running in platform heels. So I’m going to try going for a run on Saturday, which will be my first in a month (minus the test run which I cut short less than a quarter-mile from my front door a week and a half ago). But I have to confess I’m not optimistic. Something in my gut is telling me that my feet need a hard reset; that I need to take a few solid months off to give the old peds time to shake off whatever’s ailing them, and spend the meantime tiptoeing around them and not stressing them out too badly (in much the same way my wife and I lightfoot it past the kids’ bedrooms when they’re falling into a tenuous sleep).

What am I going to do if I can’t run?

It’s Defective!

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My brain, that is.

The number of idiotic occurences piling up in my rearview is only getting bigger. It started about a month ago when I lost my editing notebook. I looked everywhere for it — at home, at work, in the cars, in the bedroom, under the sofa, in the freezer … you know, all the normal places where you might leave the single most important object in the writing of your novel outside of the novel file itself. For all intents and purposes, the thing had slipped from the earthly realm and vanished to join the lost left socks and misplaced ballpoint pens of the world.

But I’m a forgetful sort, so distressing as it was, losing the notebook wasn’t all that surprising.

Then, a trip to the grocery this weekend. We arrive home and unload the foodstuffs and all is well, until my wife goes looking for the mixed nuts. She doesn’t remember unloading them, I don’t remember unloading them. We scour the cupboards, the countertops, the pantry, the fridge; no dice. I go to check the car to see if maybe I overlooked them while unpacking the car. Negative. Finally, she finds them stuck on top of the fridge behind a bunch of half-empty boxes of cereal, because of course mixed nuts belong on top of the fridge where they can’t be seen–where else would they go?

Today, I go to get in the van to head home from work, and it stinks. The inside of the van smells like a dead raccoon moldering in a ditch. This is patently weird because by and large, we don’t eat in the van. The kids do, though, and on reflection I decide it’s possible the sprout spilled some milk and it’s going bad under the seats. On the hunt I go, only to discover, lying between the second and third row seats, a grocery bag with a four-pound pack of chicken. Two days in the sun, rotting away and befouling the plastic bag that’s thankfully still wrapped around it. Let’s not forget that this very chicken was sitting in the floor of the van the very night before, when I was out looking for mixed nuts, and I completely failed to notice it. Of course I don’t misplace a box of crackers which would be perfectly good after a few days in a hot car, or even a box of popsicles which might melt harmlessly in their wrappers; no, I mislay ten dollars worth of chicken which has to be thrown right out.

Well, today wasn’t done with me.

I found the notebook.

This would be a good thing if it didn’t make me feel so very painfully idiotic. It was on my desk at work. Right there, plainly sat on the desktop, albeit obscured under another, larger, notebook. For four weeks, it was right there, within arm’s reach. Were it a snake, as my dad likes to say, it would have bitten me dozens of times over. I’m happy to have it back, but … really? For all the digging through closets and rooting around file cabinets and dumping out of desk drawers, I couldn’t bother to displace one notebook on my desktop?

I’m starting to think it’s not just my aging brain, not just simple forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. I think my subconscious was actively trying to keep the thing hidden away from me all this time. How else could it hide for so long in virtually plain sight? Had I stayed locked in with the notes I was taking, would the narrative-shattering idea which struck me yesterday have ever lit in my brain? I think it far more likely I would have finished my first pass and rolled on with the rewrite without pausing to re-evaluate the work as a whole — something I was forced to do on account of having lost my notes from the beginning of the edit.

Or maybe, as I am wont to do, I’ve made entirely too much of a meaningless coincidence. Things don’t always have to mean things. Nah, it’s probably just my brain rotting away from the inside. I’ll be in the shower, looking for my keys.

Here, Hold This Pork Chop

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Some days, working in a school is everything you fear.

Other days, it is transcendent.

Here’s an actual thing which was actually said by an actual student. “Girl, hold this pork chop while I go over there and beat that girl’s ass.” She actually held out a fried pork chop to her friend, who took it for safekeeping, and proceeded to go over there and beat that girl’s ass. And the cafeteria wasn’t even serving pork chops that day.

A classic case of too crazy to be made up. Sometimes, being a teacher is awesome. Thank you, pork chop beat down girl, for bringing joy to my day.

A Late Entry

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I’ve previously noticed about myself that I’m a glutton for punishment.

As it happens, I’m pretty adept at doling it out for myself too. Nobody is harsher with my work, less impressed with my excuses, or harder to satisfy with my accomplishments than me.

And I’ve done a fair amount of kvelling here on the blarg about the knots that working on this novel has tied me into. The self-imposed deadlines, the lingering sense of doubt about whether any of the writing is any good, and the general disarray with which I’ve approached the edit, just to name a few. Last time, however, I pointed out (with not a hint of ego!) that I was done with phase one of the edit and slowly bringing the ship around for the next leg of the journey. That leg starts tomorrow, with all the notes that I’ve made on the draft and the (troublingly extensive) list of holes I have to plug to make the thing seaworthy. In short, the task ahead was looking gargantuan, but achievable.

Then, this morning, I had an idea. A fantastic idea. An awful idea. An awfully fantastic idea, and a fantastically awful one. The idea that I’ve had is an excellent one.

I love this idea. I think it does wonders for the story and it provides an element that perhaps has been missing all along while escaping my notice. It affords me a way to tie up some loose ends which I will readily admit were a bit hastily tied in the first draft and need some serious re-tying in the second. It gives me a chance to bring some redemption to a character who could sorely use some and some doubt and aspersion for one who is a little too pristine and unsullied. I can get a lot done towards the fixing of this story with the inclusion of this idea.

I also hate this idea. It came out of nowhere and I wonder if including it will feel a little bit Deus ex Machina-ish. Including it will also include the re-writing of several — by which I mean more than I can count on one or maybe two hands and possibly also my feet — critical sections of the book. It will mean lengthening the narrative to make room for the new stuff, and I sort of feel that the story is at a good enough length already. It will mean not so much tweaking and trimming in rewrites as breaking and smashing and gutting.

“It” is a new character, and the idea for him struck me while I was watching, of all things, “Mater’s Tall Tales” with my two-year-old this morning. In short, my novel is about characters living on two sides of a magical divide and figuring out how to make that work — this guy’s role would be to keep the rest of them from doing so. TO BRING BALANCE TO THE FORCE.  Well, maybe to my narrative. He’s sort of an antagonist to the antagonists, but he’s certainly not on the side of the protagonists. To sum it up without giving details away, he’s a monkey wrench. And while throwing this monkey wrench into the whirring innards of my story might do really fascinating things to the narrative, it will without a doubt do to the actual machinery of the story what actual monkey wrenches do to actual machines, which probably involves breaking it beyond recognition before I start putting it back together again.

I may take a day to ponder the ramifications of making this change, because it’s a whole boatload of extra work I was not planning on having as I began the second phase of this edit. Then again, the benefits could be immeasurable. Of course, to continue the monkey wrench metaphor, maybe all it will do is break a machine that’s operating perfectly well on its own.

What to do? At what point is it too late to make changes to the entire landscape of a narrative?

Part of me wants to accept what I have, forget this new idea, and move on with the work I’d set out for myself. Another part wants to run with this idea, invent this guy and stick him into the story, then start the long work of cleaning up the mess that follows. I can’t decide if I’m thrilled or destroyed at the prospect.

Dammit.

Inkblots on My Heart

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Chuck’s Challenge this week: A Three-sentence story. The briefer, the better.

A few months back we had a similar challenge to tell a story in just 100 words. On that day, I cut loose and churned out five disparate stories with a common theme. This challenge felt like another exercise in letting fly with whatever came to mind and rolling with whatever sounded good. I had hoped to come up with at least three or four ideas again, for a smattering of takes on the topic. But I got stuck on just one idea, and nothing else seemed to take shape. So for now, it’s just the one.

Inspired by the Cake song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket,” here’s “Inkblots on My Heart”.

 

Inkblots on My Heart

They fell in love when he borrowed her pen. For a while, they wrote their sweet romance on the walls. But the girl next door had a really nice set of ballpoints.