Month: August 2015

Crunch! Car Crash Changes Plans

IMG_20150828_153133529[2]I was expecting to write a very different post today, but . . . life happened.

I was all dressed up and heading to Corvallis for a Timberline Review literary magazine event. Traffic on the coast was terrible. I just wanted to get out of Newport, which was flooded with tourists. I was on Highway 20, but still in town, when my phone rang. I know. I should have ignored it. But it was my dad, and I was afraid something was wrong, so I made a sudden turn into a parking lot to answer the phone. At least that was my intention. Bang! Crash! I lost control of the car, hit something on my left and was headed for a fence. I did not know until the other car pulled in beside mine that my car had been hit from the rear. The driver was local, uninsured, and in tears. Her tiny black dog was hysterical.

The front of the passenger side of her car was smashed, the headlight in pieces, wires and such dangling, radiator leaking. My back bumper was damaged. But where did the piece of car lying on the pavement come from? Big piece. It took me a while to figure out it came from the front, where the real damage was, where I ran into a metal post.

People came running out of the nearby candle shop. Someone swept up a big pile of glass and car parts from the street. We were both shaken but apparently not hurt. Our air bags did not deploy (the recalled ones I didn’t have replaced yet). A fire truck came, followed by a police officer, crew-cut, shades and all. He filled out a report. I told him I turned abruptly. I was willing to take all the blame, but the officer insisted that the law says that if the other driver hit me from behind, she was following too closely, so she would be cited and I was in the clear.

My Honda Element is drivable, but it needs repairs. The estimate is $3,000, with possibly more showing up when they take things apart. I have Cadillac insurance. State Farm will pay for repairs and a rental car, and I will be okay (although my bumper stickers are toast.) The other car, an older Honda Accord, was towed to the same place I took my car. The woman doing my estimate looked out the window and said, “Oh, that’s totaled.” It’s not fair. It’s not right. I’m sure the other driver needs her car as much as I need mine, and I doubt that she can afford a new one.

My phone has a new name: “that f-ing phone.”

It’s a knee jerk reaction for me. Phone rings, I grab it, I look away from the road to see who’s calling, and if it’s family, I answer it. Not anymore. I’m turning the phone off when I drive so I won’t even know if anyone calls.

It happened so quickly. I sometimes think about what I would do if I were about to get in an accident, how I would try to protect my face or my hands. But there was no time for a thought or a word. I just knew I was hitting things and had to get away from the fence that was coming right at me. Since then, I keep hearing the crunches and seeing that fence over and over in my mind. Driving scares me now.

When I was done with cops, insurance and repair people, I called my father. He gave me a good tongue-lashing. I deserved it. “Let the damned phone ring,” he said. “Call back later.” It turned out he was fine, just calling to see how my medical tests had turned out. I get those results this afternoon. Fingers crossed.

Today I am aware of how blessed I am, so blessed I feel guilty. I’m not rich, but I have enough. I can afford a nice car and good insurance. My body still works as well as it did before the accident. I can still write, play and sing my music, walk the dog, and go to lunch with my friends. Not everyone is so lucky.

Dear friends, turn off the phone. It’s not just texting, it’s telephone calls, email, checking the weather, fiddling with the GPS and all the other features on our Smart Phones. It’s hard to resist their allure, and you cannot safely use the phone and drive at the same time. When I slowed to turn off, I didn’t even know there was anyone behind me. I didn’t look. My attention was completely on the phone. Smart phones are smart, but sometimes we people who use them are idiots. A phone call can always wait. Always. Minus the phone, I would have spent my evening eating hors d’oeuvres and listening to poetry. Instead I was filling out a report for the DMV. It’s not worth it.

Next week, I promise, even if the house burns down, God forbid, I will offer a blog full of happiness and beauty. Or dog pictures, which are the same thing.

Leave me a message at the beep.

I Should Have Listened to My Mom

When you visit the doctor’s office complaining of chest pains and pressure, people tend to panic. Even when you tell them you’re pretty sure it’s gas. Driving to Portland, stuck in traffic, thinking I should have gone to the ER because it hurt pretty bad, I sent up a prayer for God to tell me what to do. He sent me a giant burp. Which made me laugh and say, “Thank you!” But doctors still think, HEART ATTACK. And I kept thinking of how Rosie O’Donnell described her own heart attack and how women experience heart attacks differently from men.

But I was on my way to a conference in Portland, middle lane of I-5, cars not moving. I was going to teach a class, pitch to agents, represent the Timberline Review, attend workshops and network, network, network. Meanwhile people from my church kept dying, and I would be playing music for a funeral the day I got home. I had received a scary recall notice for the car in which I was sitting. I had nonstop music activities, Writers on the Edge president duties, and a troublesome situation with a certain someone in my life. Plus I had to leave my dog behind. A little stress?

I don’t do well with stress. Neither did my mother. As I took my troubles to Google that night in my hotel room, I suddenly remembered the night she went to the hospital with similar pains. Forever after, whenever my brother and I misbehaved, my father would scold us with the words that our mother was sick because of us. Dad never beat us, but he sure could pour on the guilt.

Anyway, Mom’s pains were exactly where mine finally settled, top of the stomach just below the ribs. There’s this valve there, the pyloric sphincter, that was the source of her troubles.  When I read the name, I sat back on my cushy bed and thought, “Oh my God. That’s exactly what I have.” Yes, I’m a little bit of a hypochondriac, but I think this will turn out to be the diagnosis. It’s a chronic pain at the entrance to the stomach that happens when it doesn’t open and shut properly. Like mother, like daughter.

When we’d start to get upset, Mom used to say, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.” She wasn’t kidding.

So I showed up at the doctor’s office a week after the original pains had settled below my ribs. She went into hyper-drive, ordering an EKG (normal), chest X-ray (normal), blood and urine tests (normal), and an ultrasound (not till Thursday). She put me on Prilosec, one pill every morning, and took me off foods like spices, tomato sauce and—say it ain’t so!—chocolate. A week later, I’m feeling better. I’m probably going to live.

Meanwhile, Annie had to go to the vet. She had a fungal infection in her girl parts. For the last 10 days, I’ve been hiding antibiotic pills in her food and massaging said parts with cream. Fun! She feels better, too. Or at least she has stopped licking down there. Now I think she has fleas.

After the conference, I rewrote my entire novel in two weeks and sent it to two agents who were interested. Cross your fingers. I have a pile of Timberline Review submissions to read, another pile of authors to consider for the Nye Beach Writers Series, songs to prepare for church and for the kids in religious education, another book to finish writing, and a dog that wants to walk at precisely 3 p.m.

Stress? What stress? I saw my shrink on Wednesday. She upped my meds and had me do breathing exercises. In, out, in, out.

Too much information? I know. I was going to write about the fires destroying huge swaths of the western U.S., including big chunks of Eastern Oregon. The smoke has made its way to the Willamette Valley and points west. Terrifying. None of my troubles compare to this. Please pray for rain.

And if you have chest pains, don’t wait a week to go to the doctor, even if you have a busy schedule. It might be gas, but it might not. I was lucky.

County Fair: Where Else Can You Eat Elephant Ears?

IMG_20150815_144942706_HDR

IMG_20150815_150137232_HDR
Not every fair has a tomato tasting table.

I grew up going to the Santa Clara County Fair in San Jose. Even got one of my first jobs there. That fair was HUGE. You could walk all day and not get to the end of it. Top-name acts played in the bandstand, giant halls were filled with needlework, baked goods, and people selling things like kitchen knives and Magic Fingers massage chairs. The food, the rides, the horses, the tractors, it went on and on. There were fireworks every night of the fair. It was also hot, smelly, expensive and crowded but that’s the county fair. You eat junk food, drink beer, dance to the music, play the games and pet the goats.

The fair here in Lincoln County is a little different. Billed this year as the all-new fair, it wasn’t much different from before, except that admission was free. Still no place to park, same booths selling corn dogs and elephant ears–big floppy sheets of sugared pastry, same old tacky rides, same goats and chickens, same guy playing guitar on the main stage to a sea of empty chairs. The big featured act was a couple who impersonate Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. But as they used to say in San Jose, Fair Time is Fun Time. I’ll let my pictures say the rest.

IMG_20150815_145820200_HDR
You’ve got to have a guy selling kitchen tools.
IMG_20150815_144656490
A new feature this year allowed kids to put on firefighter clothes and operate the big hoses.
IMG_20150815_143420686
Writer Candace Brown, a longtime long-distance friend, came down from Washington to represent the truck and tractor magazines she writes for.

It was all writing all the time

On normal days, I juggle several lives at once. I’m a writer with new writing to write, old writing to sell, and published books to market. I produce three blogs that require my responses to a steady stream of comments, especially my Childless by Marriage blog. I seem to have become the Dear Abby of the childless set. But I’m also a musician with a “day job” as a church choir co-director, plus numerous solo gigs, jams and open mics, and a constant need to practice on the piano and guitar. I also have a massive house and yard to maintain in addition to taking care of myself and my dog—and she’s not much help. Bills, laundry, groceries, doctor appointments, walking the dog, worrying long-distance about my elderly father, trying to find time for my friends . . . you know, real life. Sometimes I get all tied up in knots trying to do it all.

But sometimes I get to run away. Sometimes I get to focus on just one life. That’s what I did last weekend when I drove to Portland for the Willamette Writers conference. I have been part of Willamette Writers since shortly after we moved to Oregon. I co-founded the Oregon coast branch with my friend Dorothy Blackcrow Mack. This year, as part of the new Timberline Review staff, I was there to represent the magazine and celebrate our first issue, to teach a poetry class, and to pitch my unpublished books to editors and agents. I helped judge the Saturday night open mic, too. In between, I participated in workshops that got me inspired, educated and anxious to write, write, write. Tom Robbins was there. I got to study with Jennifer Lauck. I hobnobbed with Bryan Doyle. As equals! Well, almost. I also ate, ate, ate. Those cookies with peanut butter in the middle? OMG!

It was all writing all the time. I could forget everything beyond the Doubletree Hotel. Yes, I kept getting text messages about church choir, and yes, I had to play a funeral Monday morning, and yes, I needed to call the vet, take the car to the shop and a dozen other things, but for three days, all I had to do was eat, sleep, write and talk about writing.

It’s amazing and a bit alarming how many people want to be writers. Hundreds of writers attended this conference, most paying a big chunk of money in the hope of getting that nugget of information or that successful meeting that would rocket their manuscript onto the bestseller list. It happens. Every year, we have success stories, people whose careers were launched at the Willamette Writers Conference. That’s why people keep coming.

It’s a weird conglomeration of folks. Writers are not necessarily social people. They’re more comfortable alone with their books and their computers. The conference setting forces them to “network” and we don’t all do it well, but we do our best. We sit down next to another writer and ask, “What do you write?” Thus the conversation begins.

A central activity all weekend is “pitching” our books to agents and editors. People walk around looking like they might throw up or faint because they’re so nervous as they approach the “pitch marketplace,” a room full of “buyers” sitting at little tables waiting to hear their pitch. This year, we had eight minutes. We were herded in one door and escorted out the other when the organizer shouted “Time!” Handed an evaluation sheet on the way out, we staggered down the hall, some euphoric, some suicidal, most somewhere in the middle. Three out of four agents wanted to see my work. But this is not my first conference. It’s just like speed dating. Maybe there’s a spark, but it might fizzle the next time you meet.

Eventually the conference ended with a last speaker who urged us to “never give up.” Then it was time to take off my lanyard with the card that identified me as part of Timberline Review, as teacher, editor, author. I felt so naked without that identity when I finally walked to my car and left the hotel. I immediately took a wrong turn because I couldn’t read the street sign until I got too close to turn back, then ran into a five-mile backup behind an accident on I-5. Ah, reality.

Yes, I got weary of lining up at buffets and in the ladies room. Yes, I was sick of taking the elevator up and down. Yes, my body was starting to whine about sitting too much. But oh it was nice to live just one life at a time.

Taking a Vacation Day in Paradise

IMG_20150729_131430517[1]I live in a vacation paradise. People travel thousands of miles to visit the Oregon coast. And with good reason. It’s gorgeous here. We’ve got forests, beaches, parks, fine restaurants, lighthouses, the aquarium, fresh air, moderate temperatures, and more. But those of us who live here frequently find that we rarely pay attention to all of that. We’re too busy taking care of business at home and at work. Beach? Oh yeah, that’s nice. Maybe tomorrow.

But some days are just too fine to sit in an office staring at a computer. Plus a girl just gets tired, you know? So one day last week, I joined the tourist parade and took a vacation day. Leaving Annie sleeping at home, I got in the car and drove south, turning where the muse led me. You might want to try this trip yourself someday.

Heading south on 101 from South Beach, I turned east on Beaver Creek Road, across from Ona Beach. When I came to the fork with South Beaver Creek, I turned right. Many of the scenes in my not-yet-published novel Being PD take place in this area, and I found myself reliving some of those scenes as I drove through miles of estuaries, pastures, forests and farms. The road was smooth and curvy, the scenery beautiful, and the traffic non-existent. I had heard this road led to Waldport, but I had never tried it for fear of getting lost. No problem. Ultimately I came to a T intersection at Bayview Road and turned right. This road ran along the north side of Alsea Bay. Ultimately it came out at Highway 101.

Over the bridge and through Waldport, I came to Gov. Patterson state park and joined the tourists at the beach. I spread out my blanket, sat on the sand in the sun and wrote in my journal, looking up to watch people passing with their dogs and kids, the waves breaking white and full, the sand dotted with driftwood forts. And the woman walking along talking on her cell phone all the way to the end of the beach and back. Luckily, I had forgotten to charge my phone so it was turned off.

When I got hungry, I drove south to Yachats, a tiny town with a lot of great restaurants. Bypassing the Drift Inn, Leroy’s Blue Whale and the Green Salmon, I decided to try Ona. It’s a little expensive, a little pretentious, but the view of the Yachats River and the food are worth it. My crabcake sandwich with curry sauce was delicious. Unlike at my usual hangouts, I didn’t see a single person I knew. Everyone was visiting from somewhere else. Why not me?

After lunch, I drove around the corner to park beside a car just like mine—silver Honda Element—and take pictures. What a place. It’s got to be a sin to ignore it. When the owners of the other Element came up the path from eating their lunch on a bench overlooking the surf and saw our cars together, they did a double take. We compared years and features and shared our mutual love of the vehicles some folks call “toasters.”

Time to return to reality, but first I stopped in Waldport at Well-Road Books, a well-stocked used book store with bountiful shelves and soft music playing. One book after another called to me. I came out with a stack of novels I can’t wait to read.

This morning, looking out at blue skies and everything in bloom, it’s hard to believe it will be gray, raining and windy in a few months. Now is the time to enjoy this place. Isn’t this why we moved here?