What Do These Shoes Say About Me?

A few years ago I dyed my hair to a shiny platinum blond. It wasn't a washed out white and it didn't turn orange in the sun. For a few weeks it was just perfect. But it didn't fit. There was a personality associated with such a light color; bubbly, flirty and always having fun. Unfortunately, I wasn't the type of girl to walk around with a smile on my face. Nor was I keen to have a conversation with a stranger while he stared at my chest. I rarely giggle, and quite frankly, I've never mastered the art of a really good hair flick, and that color demanded to be tossed about like I was in a shampoo commercial.
Being a platinum blond had been fun for a while, like faking an accent or playing dress up when you were younger. But arching your legs all day to keep your mom's shoes on eventually starts to ache. Sliding into your own sneakers was a welcome relief. Slowly, for the health of my hair, I went darker and a little bit redder. It seemed to fit me better, and I no longer got double takes for reading the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe on the train.
There is a whole industry devoted to helping you find what truly expresses who we are from our hair to our shoes. And since we are constantly evolving, and it's likely that who you are now is not who you were last year, it's a very lucrative industry.
The question I ask as a writer is how much of a character's own style should be shown? At the moment, two young women, one who goes about in neutral colored tops with earthy jewelry, and the other with spiky hair and Gothic attire, would be the best of friends as they emulate their favorite characters from Forks. Seven years ago, and perhaps seven years from now, the two would never speak to one another. Does having big hair with teased bangs automatically place your story in the eighties, or does it just make your character a fashion victim? What does the size and weight of a character say about who they are? If she's closer to a size 22 than a size 2 is she less superficial or is she more insecure? To me, a redhead is unique and vivacious; in England the 'ginger' is always picked on. And who knows what to make of someone who wears glasses? Do we have a sexy librarian or is it held together with tape?
As I construct my next novel, my central character is constantly wearing a mask with fashion but there is a question I am always aware of as I write: What gives insight and what feeds into a stereotype?
There is a fine line between insult and ingenuity; it's a good thing I'm in my own shoes as I try to walk it. Well, actually, they're this season's over the knee boots.

Dr. Web Will You See You Now

I need someone to be in charge of me or at least my Celiac Disease. I went to a school with nuns and have a German mother. If there is one thing I was raised to do it was to follow orders. Yet it seems no one wants to tell me what to do. Doctors assume you will go home and research everything on your own. That you’ll call them if you have any problems interpreting what you find on WebMD.
When you do call, thinking you have the first stages of the Ebola virus, you get a game of whisper down the lane with nurses. S/he will take your message, talk to the doctor about it and then call you back with what the doctor said or, in most cases, a referral to a therapist. This indirect passage of information seems a bit like morse code compared to a simple call, email or even text message. Is there a Dr. Twitter? I’ll sign up for that.
Throw more than one doctor into the mix, along with their three or four nurses, and, despite having an army that could take out the Verizon network guys, you might actually be better off going to the internet’s numerous message boards. Each doctor will claim one organ and refuse to address the rest, handing you a referral to a different specialist that can ‘help’ ie ‘handle’ you. But in my case Doctor #1 assumes that Doctor #2 will handle everything as it’s her ‘field’. Doctor #2 thinks Doctor #3 will tell me what I need to know as it’s her ‘specialty’. It’s not until I went to Doctor # 4 and he told me it had nothing to do with him that I went back to Doctor #2 and Doctor #2 ordered more tests.
Now each doctor had the information: vegetarian, celiac disease with a recommendation to cut back on dairy. Each one had a list of the symptoms and timing. Each one passed me off to a different doctor or lab technician. In the end though it was Dr. W. W. Web that helped me solve the great mystery of why I actually felt worse after going gluten free.
All of my symptoms fall under one vitamin deficiency. And the main source of that vitamin is found in, drum roll please: meat, whole grains, and dairy!
I’m still waiting for the results of my tests to tell me how much of the vitamin I need but I wonder if I won’t find out faster if I use my wiki app.

The Other Story

Writing is waiting; waiting for inspiration, waiting for your computer screen to unfreeze, waiting for the correct word to fall into place, and waiting to hear back for edits. Each stage is excruciating, and several stages put your computer's safety at risk. My approach to this test of patience is to move on and the best way is to start something new. I'll even resort to paper and pen when my computer doesn't respond to the technological equivalent of Tylenol in the ctrl, alt, delete remedy.
In a way, starting a new story before finishing an old one feels like I'm being unfaithful. I start off feeling a bit of a thrill hitting the new document icon and then really guilty as I skip over the old folder in favor of the new one. But then, something happens. Like a cheating family man I suddenly start paying more attention to my wife, bringing her flowers and taking her out to dinner. It starts out as guilt attention, a few edits here, a few edits there, but then suddenly I realize what I saw in that first story and I go back to it with renewed vigor. Sometimes that second story becomes something, but most of the time it's just a document floating on the screen.
I used to think of that side-writing as a waste of time and creative energy. But now I've come to realize that it is just part of the process of finding my direction. Sometimes I need to step away from the path in order to see the landscape. I need to leave the daily project, physically and mentally, in order to come back to it as returning provokes more passion than just continuing along. In that vein, I guess you could say this blog is my bit on the side.

Wanted: Defense System

Family gatherings are an emotional gauntlet that I need industrial strength protective padding for. I had managed through the years to forge a few emotional shields for the the usual attacks:
"Your cousin is so beautiful she was mistaken for Gisele Bunchen." -"Not Bar Rafaeli?"
"Guess who got a promotion after only working there two months?" -"She's not dating her boss again?"
And the ever classic, "Guess who's having another baby?" -"She really should switch to the pill."
(Despite the national statistics I never hear about anyone getting fired, divorced or defaulting on their mortgage.)
Now though, I need a padded body suit to make it through a toddler's birthday. I was prepared for the baby status question (not yet, thanks), prepared for the house buying question (not yet either, thanks), even prepared to hear about every one's more successful career (yes, still writing, thanks), but I wasn't ready for the gluten question. Or rather the gluten questions.
I'm all for education and I'm all for polite or concerned questions but I haven't quite tweaked the responses for the following:
"Well, maybe you'll lose some weight now."
"Never, ever again? Like forever? What about if you found out you were already dying, could you eat pizza then?"
My favorite is, "What do you think was the traumatic event that triggered it?" If only I could have said it was a family function...
I'm hopeful that, like the others, I will find a good comeback in time, but what I don't think I'll ever be able to accept is how those conversations always lead to death. Because whenever you talk about someone's illness, it always leads to someone else's who is not there and who will likely not be there again. Celiac Disease isn't comparable to getting a tooth pulled or even a bone broken. It's a worse category. The Disease category. And unlike my ability to avoid all things bready (and yummy), most things in this category don't have a 'behave and be fine' get out of jail free card. So every conversation I have is somehow turned into the 'it all leads to death category.' It's worse than a groom and his friends the night before the wedding.
Every aunt and cousin over twenty had something morbid to say and would often leave my company as if I was the one that brought it up, when all I did was nod and give a sympathetic smile. Even my own mother, who is never short on things to critique me on, was quick to add to a group conversation the health status of a relative undergoing a rather intense treatment.
As she fanned the flames of an overly depressive evening I caught her gauging my reaction and I couldn't help but wonder, is this all a massive plan to make me so desperate to change the conversations that I'll get pregnant?
She did send my nephew over to me shortly after...

New Year, Same Me

In college my friends and I couldn't get enough of makeover shows. Whether it was about cleaning out a hoarder's house, neighbors re-doing one another's living rooms, or the re-styling of a newly divorced working mother of three, there was something inspiring about the reinvention, not to mention addictive. Once my afternoons were spoken for and the days of TLC marathons behind me, reinvention was reserved for the new year.
There is something that gets under my skin about January 1st. Everything is the same; health, job, apartment, family and yet the fact that it's a new year seems to be the ultimate motivation. Maybe it's all those magazines with NEW YEAR, NEW YOU articles covering everything from getting organized to a new diet and exercise regime to, no, I'm not exaggerating, plastic surgery. Perhaps it's just guilt over all the chocolate covered carbs that somehow found their way on my plate. Whatever the reason, as I watched Ryan Seacrest try to measure up to Dick Clark, my life came under the rather unforgiving microscope of introspection. As the snow fell, an early spring cleaning was underway.
While in the middle of throwing out tape cassettes from the late eighties (so many pre-playlist mixed tapes that still make me proud,) and sorting through magazines for a new hair cut, a choice needed to be made: Is this going to be a reinvention or rediscovery? Should I throw everything away like the hoarder's house? Reinvent myself with an outside perspective? Or simply work with what I have; a clean up and polishing off? In the end I went with all three.
Seven trash bags, two bags of clothes to donate, hair dyed to a more sophisticated brunette,and split ends trimmed off; it wasn't exactly reality show level but it was a makeover. I wasn't made teary by the result, but I was able to breathe a bit easier... I have no doubt that my hair will become a bit ragged in a few months time and that I will only fill up the available space with more stuff. The important thing isn't so much that I changed but that I prepared and made room for what's to come. Because, you really can't change for the new year, you can only be ready for it to change you.