Cathy Carmode Lim

Mothering deja vu

I must have a tendency to brace myself mentally for certain outcomes. When I was preparing to enter college, I had just graduated high school as valedictorian, with stellar grades and test scores and lots of admiration-worthy activities and awards on my university applications. Even so, I already knew that I would no longer be top dog when I got to school, so I kind of worked to switch over my mindset and expectations from being the big fish in a little pond to just an average fish in a very large pond. It worked, apparently; I didn’t feel a need to be top of the class anymore, and I found I was generally comfortable not having that pressure any longer. I finished up college with about a 3.5 GPA and was pleased with that. I did a few activities and extracurriculars and largely made sure to take plenty of time to have fun and enjoy my time at Brigham Young University, in part because I’d been dreaming of going there my whole life and probably in part because I’d not been able to relax and have fun in high school.

Going into parenting, I think I also steeled myself to NOT have certain expectations. I especially did not want to expect my children to look like me or act like me or have the same interests. (Perhaps my husband is going to snicker at this statement, considering how I spend so much time reading with them, but in my heart of hearts I believe it’s true.) I didn’t want them to feel pressure to be a certain way or to live up to expectations that were not their own dreams and interests.

Having said that, I am now finding myself mildly shocked when I find out that they are doing things I did or expressing interests in some things I was interested in long ago but no longer do much with. This morning gave me two opportunities to reflect on my own earlier years.

One is something odd and not even an interest, just a somewhat strange behavior. My oldest was leaving early this morning to go on a long-weekend trip with her high school band. I didn’t really plan to wake up to see her off, but since I did end up opening my eyes at 5:30 a.m., I drifted downstairs to hug my girl and bid her adieu for a few days during which I know I’ll heartily miss her presence. She was making herself some eggs, as she frequently does (a trait she did not get from me; I rarely ate breakfast foods for my morning meal growing up: I preferred leftovers), and she told me, “It was the strangest thing. I started cooking these eggs last night at 12:20. I thought it was 5:20, so I got up and started getting ready. Then I looked at the clock and realized it was only 12:20. I don’t know if I was sleepwalking or what, but it was weird. This morning I wondered if it had been a dream, but I opened the fridge and saw the eggs, and I knew it was real!” I said, “Did I ever tell you I used to do that same thing?” No. “Well, when I was a freshman, I woke up and did that same thing a few times; I would start getting ready, then eventually look at the clock and it would register in my brain that it was only 3 a.m. and I’d go back to bed. One time I washed my hair before realizing, and since I didn’t have a blow dryer and it was the middle of the night, I tried desperately to get it to dry by lying over the heating vent.” I told her that after a few times of that happening, I started to take a moment when I first woke up to REALLY look at the clock to make sure I noticed the real time. Eventually I stopped doing that.

It was just an odd feeling to have my daughter experience the same strange phenomenon.

Later this morning, at a more reasonable hour of the day, I trooped off to the county office of education building to watch a large group of elementary school students gather to participate in the “Poetry and Prose” performances. It wasn’t a competition, but it felt a bit like one; the children were all put into small groups and sent off to rooms with judges who gave them feedback on their recitations of poems. My fourth-grader decided a few months back that she’d like to be involved, so she’s been working on a poem (Shel Silverstein, of course) to perform. (Unfortunately, I have not been as involved as I would have liked, with everything else I’ve had going on; it’s right up my alley, and I could have been helpful to her. This I regret.) Sitting in that room watching her and about 10 other students perform their poems was eerily deja-vu for me. For four years in high school, I participated in the speech team, going to competitions around the state giving speeches and performing snippets of plays either individually or with a partner. What was unnerving was seeing all the same theatrical affectations I used to sit and watch in one classroom after another, four years in a row, for most weekends from October to March. These kids were younger, but it was the same stuff: unnatural, exaggerated gestures that had been taught them and rehearsed and affected speech rhythms that sound somehow “professional.” Some of the kids were genuinely, naturally talented, and it was fun to watch them. But even some of those kids had been coached too much so they were just a bit unnatural. The judge ate it up. And that reaction just got to me like fingernails on a chalkboard. I hadn’t felt that feeling in 20-plus years and it came back to me in a flash: that annoyance at watching those kinds of too-rehearsed performances. Sure, anything like that has to be practiced over and over to be good, but a really, really talented actor or performer makes it look natural, as if they never thought about what they were doing or how they would be moving or saying things. And here these adults are turning these impressionable young kids into unnatural performers. Argggggghhhh. I honestly wanted to run away screaming and never look back.

But this same daughter has just this week told me she’d love to get into acting, and she confessed a few days ago, “I want to be a STAR.” So if she wants that, I’ll help her. But we’re going to stay away from the people who would introduce the far-too-exaggerated stuff into her repertoire. I think it’s time to start looking forward to next year and talking about how to make things entertaining but natural.

At any rate, it’s not just the fact that my girls have now, against all expectations, done things I’ve done; what’s interesting are my reactions. I was amused and surprised by my oldest’s nocturnal preparations, and at my 9-year-old’s activity I was just viscerally kicked in the gut by memories of how I felt at speech competitions. It’s amazing how memories can be so strong, the emotions attached so vivid, after being buried for decades.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised; after all, a decade ago, I did write a whole book about how my little girl was reminding me of moments from my childhood. How life comes full circle still astonishes me, though, and it will again and again while I live it.

Every day with her is special

In honor of World Down Syndrome Day, I’ve decided to post in honor of my own special child, Marissa, who’s 13 1/2. I’ve written a bit about her already, but this post is specifically about my fun little kid.

Fourteen years ago, I found out I would be giving birth to a child with Down syndrome. I felt very blessed to know ahead of time that my baby had this extra chromosome. I’m the type of person who likes to be prepared, so it was nice to have half of my pregnancy to learn more about Down’s and just be ready to have a child with a disability. For me, what made it particularly nice was that her birthday was like any other baby’s birth: a day of joy and welcoming, with lots of photos, phone calls, snuggling with the new little one. If we had been surprised by her extra chromosome that day, I am sure a hush would have fallen over the room and there would have been feelings and reactions other than just pure joy and excitement over a new addition.

Marissa was the sweetest, most content baby I’ve had. She was happy to sit in a car seat or bouncy seat and just sleep or lie awake and watch me and smile back at me. She is still a very happy girl, no matter what. She has moments of frustration or anger or sadness, but they’re so fleeting it’s almost as if they never happened.

We’ve been very blessed that Marissa hasn’t had any health problems, no heart surgeries or anything that we’ve had to monitor. Over the years, she’s had a variety of therapies and extra services through early intervention programs and the school system, and she’s done really well. In fact, for a long time I could practically forget there was anything “different” about her. She walked right before she turned 2, and she has always talked fairly well and mostly clearly. She loves to read and does a great job sounding out new words. She just seems unbelievably bright to me and to others.

It’s now that she’s a teenager that I am more often reminded that she isn’t really in the same peer group as kids her age. She’s always been very small for her age, and the older she gets and the taller and more developed everyone around her gets, the more that distinction is pronounced. She is the size of an 8-year-old and behaves much like a 6- or 7-year-old, really. For a long time, she’s been quite happy playing with her younger sister who’s 4 years her junior; now she seems to be just as content to play with our youngest, who’s almost 5.

She was strictly in a regular classroom at school for some years, up until about 4th grade, when it seemed a better strategy to put her in a class with other students who had some learning disabilities of various kinds. She still gets to interact with her peers in p.e. or in art or computer classes now, but she has a better opportunity to have learning tailored to her needs in a special class. And I’m happy with that, mainly because she gets plenty of attention and seems quite happy with her class.

Marissa is eager to help and do nice things for others and she loves to hug. That actually can become a small problem sometimes because she’ll hug anyone, even someone she’s never met, and we have to keep reminding her not to do that.

At this stage of raising her, I’m honestly most concerned with her biological changes; she’s slowly starting to grow into a womanly shape (even though she’s still really tiny height-wise), and that means she’ll soon be experiencing other womanly changes I’m not sure how to address or warn her about as I did with my oldest. It’s all kind of a trial and error situation, raising her, but that can be said for any kid, I suppose!

There are tons of resources available out there now for parents of children with any disability, and there are many wonderful places to find information and support if you have a child with Down syndrome. The difference between what’s out there now and what was available just 14 years ago boggles my mind. The internet was barely around when she was born, with not nearly as much information as it has now, and my city library was where I turned for some information when I had my amniocentesis. I found a book that had a little useful stuff, but I think I was just looking for some photos of cute kids, and then I didn’t really find any. Now, there are some wonderful sites and resources that feature gorgeous photos of beautiful children and youths with Down’s, and it does my heart good. This organization, Band of Angels, apparently was around in 1998, but it wasn’t as easily found as it is now, and it just has beautiful photos. When I meet someone with a new baby who has Down syndrome, I either buy one of their products to send or tell the parent about it. It’s just reassuring to see other kids with Down’s given the adorable-photo-shoot treatment. I found it comforting, at least, when I learned about it.

In the first months of her life, I was actually given some books and tons of pamphlets and packets of information about Down’s and different resources available and services and ideas of things I could do to give her a stimulating environment and help her develop. Honestly, I barely read any of them. All that information is simply too overwhelming. When you’re just trying in those early days to get some sleep when you have a baby waking up at night for feedings and diaper changes, that’s the last thing you have energy for: reading and researching. And then as she grew, we had some good support systems referred to us, so I didn’t feel the need to go searching for a lot more.

I think it’s that way parenting any child. There’s always more you can do for them, but never enough time and energy. So you just do the best you can to make their life happy, fulfilled and enriched. Now, I just hope and plan for her to have opportunities as she finishes up with the school system to be able to live semi-independently and have some kind of work and a good support system and network of friends. I want her to have a happy life, just as I want for my other three daughters. And she seems well on her way. Marissa is one happy teen.

Happy world Down syndrome day.

The writing blues

This post is dedicated to all the writers out there.

I have been published quite a bit in newspapers, I write for my own book review website, and I’ve contributed to other websites and book review publications here and there. But some other outlets have eluded me. I’ve written two articles for our church magazines (one for the Ensign and one for the children’s Friend) that the magazines have accepted and paid me for, but which have yet to see actual publication. Over the course of probably 5 to 10 years, I frequently tried to pitch story ideas to magazines but never got one to bite (except for once, and that was at the very beginning of the journey and I didn’t realize what had just happened, so I somehow dropped the ball and never followed through: perhaps I’m being punished karma-wise for that…). So I’ve essentially stuck to newspapers and their online counterparts more recently.

And then there’s the book project. I started working on a nonfiction book about mothering when my now-almost-16-year-old was about 3. Over the course of a year, I would get an idea and rush to my computer in the same hurried manner as one who is nauseated would rush to a toilet. The book is a series of vignettes that tie together my observations of how my little girl saw the world and how I remember being as a child myself, and then connecting my realization that I could understand finally what my mother had always related to me about her feelings and experiences raising me. For me, raising this amazing preschooler and her infant sister, it was all revelatory. I hoped that perhaps the ways I phrased these insights and the positive message would resonate with other women, whether they were mothers or grandmothers.

Well, I’m not the type of person to write strictly for the pleasure of writing. I mean, I do love the process, but I’m a goal-oriented, type-A personality gal. I don’t just dive into the creative process and emerge refreshed and satisfied with my work; I feel it must have some sort of audience (Along the lines of the truism if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?, one could say I think, if a writer puts pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and those words never see human eyes, did they ever exist?). Someone must read my words.

So. Getting the words to an audience is the hard part. Writing is generally fun, occasionally frustrating, to be sure, but mostly a pleasant creative burst and satisfying work. Even editing is fun for me. But putting them in a forum where those sentences can be appreciated by other humans is a most unsatisfying business. It entails poring over websites, Writer’s Market tomes, and so on trying to find publishers or agents that will even consider my genre of writing. Then a perfect query letter that captures the essence of what I’ve tried to say in my book has to be crafted and sent to carefully vetted editors and agents. It entails a good number of trips to the post office. (I was on a first-name basis with some of the postal service workers in the office close to my house in Alabama while I was sending out packets in the push for publication of this book.)

Over the course of a year, I wrote the body of my grand oeuvre. Then I edited and reworked and re-edited. I changed the title. I overhauled. I went to a writers conference and had the manuscript looked at by a well-known agent. I reworked. I submitted countless query letters; I read books and articles and posts giving tips on how to craft the perfect query. In short, I was consumed by trying to get published.

There were a few bright spots in which a couple of agents requested more material after a query, but overall, I collected an astonishing number of rejection letters. They stuffed a file folder full. It was depressing, frustrating work into which I poured my whole soul and countless hours and stamps and got pretty much nowhere.

After those few years of work, I finally decided to self-publish. This was nearly 10 years ago, before the ebook, but at a time when you could easily self-publish using print on demand. But I had seen some “self-published” books that had gone through this quick and cheap process and I was not impressed with the result. They looked cheap and unprofessional, and if I was going to do this, I planned to do it right. So I decided to do it the “old-fashioned” way. I hired a book cover designer to create my cover; I investigated printers and finally selected one; I chose paper and materials. I edited and re-edited and did the layout myself. I ended up with a pretty nice-looking product. I chose to have 2000 copies printed because it wasn’t much different in cost to 1000.

I then researched how to market. I did the best I could to find outlets for my book and tried to snag a distributor, but that was just as difficult as finding a publisher! So I carried my book to some stores that were local and independent and were willing to consign the books or buy them outright. I did book signings in Birmingham and the Gulf Coast at cute indie stores. I set up a website and sent out tons of emails and put my book on Amazon.

I think I sold 200 copies. Now, I have boxes of books sitting in my garage in a neat stack in a far corner. I wonder if I should torch them. Or just recycle them. Because honestly, when I go back and read my writing, I hate it. It sounds trite and goofy. It sounds like the cheesy, earnest books that somehow did get published that I generally disparage. Some people really did enjoy my book and my writing in general. But not nearly enough to empty all those boxes. I’d love to make room in my garage and clear those books out, but it just seems like I’d be throwing away money. Those boxes represent a few years’ worth of my life, of toil and sweat and (copious) tears, of unpaid work and investment of my husband’s hard-earned money. So I’ve kept them through one move to a different house in the same town and then a move all the way across the country. There they sit.

I’ve moved on. That project is behind me. I suppose I learned a lot from it. I’ve been able to help some friends who write and hope to get published as well; I’ve learned how the system works through my own trial and error and know how to help them. I am probably the harshest critic of my own work, as well, but from what I read, that’s not uncommon for any writer. I remember reading somewhere when J.K. Rowling published one of her Harry Potter books that she commented something like, “Well, it’s done, and it’s been sent to my editor, but I’m not really satisfied with it. I just know I’m not editing it anymore.” We as writers get sick of the same passage and still may not like it, but there comes a point we’re just done.

I’ve worked on a few other projects; I wrote a children’s book I thought was pretty clever and went through the whole process of query letters and rejections yet again (talk about soul-sucking and draining and depressing) with no result. My 9-year-old loves the story, though. I thought perhaps that was supposed to be my niche. Apparently not. I tried writing a young adult novel, and dedicated a month and about 70 pages to it and then took a break when my dad died. I never resumed because I just thought it was crap.

I’ve since decided my real talent is in writing nonfiction. I love to research and interview people. So I wrote a couple of articles for a large online news organization and have tried to do more research to make it a book. But that’s stalled because I haven’t found more people to interview.

And so goes the life of a frustrated writer. I absolutely must write. I must create. The urge to set ideas down on paper (or screen), to distill, to organize, to make something out of raw materials, is all-consuming. It just is who I am. I feel empty when I don’t write. The keyboard is an extension of my fingers and allows me to set in stone what are just swirling ideas in my consciousness. I don’t just enjoy writing; it is who I am. I’ve managed to write the whole time I’ve been a mother, despite interruptions and crazy schedules and the important needs of my family, because I wouldn’t feel whole if I didn’t.

So the process satisfies that part of my self, my personality. But the publishing is still something that eludes me. I desperately want to traditionally publish a real book. It is my end-all, be-all, pie-in-the-sky dream and goal. I’m almost 42 years old and I’m still stretching and striving toward it, shedding tears of frustration and wanting to hit walls with my fist (or head…) because it hasn’t happened yet. But I keep trying.

Here’s to goals. And dreams. And a toast to all those who are still striving for their own, whatever they may be. You writers, my fellow travelers, this tear’s for you.

Exciting book news

I must say there have been some recent announcements about publishing contracts that have caught my particular interest, mainly three that I can think of.

A few weeks ago, the most high-profile story was that J.K. Rowling will be publishing a novel aimed at adults, details of which will be released later this year. Now, I can’t find the reference, but I seem to recall reading that the book is already written, or at least that seems to be the implication. I’m not naive enough to believe that it will “live up to” the Harry Potter books, but there is no doubt that it should at least be worth reading. Rowling is a skilled writer when it comes to plot and characterization, and the wit and warmth with which she infused her stories were most welcome. As long as she brings those talents to the table with the new book, it should be a fine novel. But I don’t expect it to capture the world’s fancy as much as Harry; I don’t think that’s possible. But as a writer, I know that Rowling won’t be content to sit back and do no more writing from here on out. It’s not about earning more money; it’s about the compulsion to write. Once a writer, always a writer. It’s not possible NOT to write.

Now the other two announcements have been exciting for me. One is that Carlos Ruiz Zafón has a third book coming in the “cycle of novels” that began with The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game. Those two books were delightfully gothic and drew me in utterly to a fantastic world set in post-war Spain. Just the fact that they featured a “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” should be a hook for book lovers. I can’t wait to dive back in to that world in The Prisoner of Heaven. It looks by the Amazon.uk website that it will be released there in June, and apparently, according to the U.S. Amazon site, it will be released on that same date here. Thank goodness! I was afraid I was going to have to wait longer. Sigh. Three more months. I am hoping that the third book is more like the second in terms of strong language (the first had 10-plus uses of the f-word, but the second only had one, which made me scratch my head a bit; authors tend to stay in the same pattern of that kind of stuff).

The last announcement also has me waiting eagerly. Young adult writer Cassandra Clare has written now two series of novels about the world of Shadowhunters, in her Mortal Instruments set and Infernal Devices series. Now I hear that she’ll be writing a third series, The Dark Artifices, about Shadowhunters, set in Los Angeles. One could argue that she’s milking it a bit much and the whole concept is getting old, but her writing is so deliciously entertaining that I’m not going to fault her that. Her characters are so enjoyable, the romance irresistible, and the writing laugh-out-loud funny. So I’ll be happy to belly up to the bar for more. Keep ’em coming, Cassandra!

Anyone else looking forward to some great new books?

A tribute to a one-in-a-million man

Since he turned 45 yesterday, I decided today would be a good day to recognize the superhuman support and love of my husband, Marce. I met him when he was 25, and in a way it doesn’t seem possible we’re in our 40s now, that nearly 20 years have gone by. I’m quite sure when he fell in love with me and decided to propose he had no idea what his married life would have in store for him.

We did have some discussion while we were dating about my mental health. I had returned from my mission, gone through the heartbreak I did with my longtime friend, and been started on lithium after a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. One evening we took a drive to visit my mission president, a man I love a lot and greatly admire, and who was sensitive to my needs. He and his wife sat and chatted with me and Marce; we had only been dating about two weeks at that point, and I didn’t really expect it to get serious. My president asked about how I was doing emotionally, and I told him so far, so good. His dear wife whispered to me, “He is a good young man. Hold on to him!” (She was more right than I could possibly have known that evening.) On the drive back to school, Marce asked me, “What did he mean about taking your medicine?” That gave me the opening to just tell him everything about what I’d experienced and where I was at that point. He listened quietly as he drove, held my hand, and seemed very reassuring and nonjudgmental, which meant a lot to me.

Sometime in the few months after that, I decided to stop taking the lithium because I just didn’t feel I had bipolar (I just didn’t fit the symptoms of the “bipolar I” or the typical disorder, as I think I’ve written about already). The medication could have dangerous side effects, and I needed to have regular blood tests to make sure it wasn’t damaging my liver. I felt since I wasn’t sure about the diagnosis taking a possibly harmful medication didn’t seem like a good idea. Unfortunately, around that same time I got engaged, finished college, and started my new life, and got so busy with a new full-time job and a marriage and new place to live and everything else that I neglected to consider my mental health. If I remember correctly, I didn’t do anything about it immediately (though I know I did find a psychiatrist sometime in that next year). I also started taking birth control medicine, which is chock full of hormones, which I have also learned was probably not a great addition to the cocktail of my personal chemical makeup. Again, unfortunately, I didn’t know any of this at the time.

Marce and Cathy wedding — My sweet love on our wedding day.

What my dear groom experienced in the first year of our marriage was a number of occasions of me flying off the handle at nothing. I remember one trip on a day off to an amusement park, where I went ballistic over something someone near us did and shouted at them. I don’t remember the details, and honestly, just thinking about the idea of it anymore and writing it down mortifies me. But it’s what happened. I was a mess. On that occasion and others, Marce would just quietly try to divert my attention and take me away physically. He rarely made any comments or judgments.

The two of us have very different temperaments and backgrounds. My family was very open and didn’t hold back our opinions. We argued and yelled and were loud. His family was a strict Asian family, and the children did not talk back. There was no argument between children and parents, and yelling wasn’t tolerated. On top of those differences, I had a background in speech and some debate and a need to win. Marce played basketball and never debated. I’m sure it mattered to him if he won basketball games, but he just wasn’t (isn’t) a competitive type. Put that together, and you have no arguments, sure, because it takes two to argue. But I’ve certainly hankered for it over the years. If he had been the arguing type, we’d have had some doozies. As it was, I’ve yelled and screamed and done wacky things, and he’s listened in silence with a nearly emotionless face.

I’m not writing any of this because I’m proud of it. Very much the opposite; I’m embarrassed as all get-out. In many ways, my yelling and anger doesn’t fit with what I consider almost my “real” personality. But it’s happened, and it’s impossible to say that it’s __ percent my hormones/brain chemistry and __ percent my personality/upbringing/etc. I’ve already written about how it’s not possible to separate my “true” personality from what’s been caused by my mental disorder. I just am who I am; what I’ve done and experienced makes me who I am now. I hope that all of my flaws (chemical or not) have at least helped to turn me into a better person over the years, rather than cement me into place as a meanie.

It could be accurate to say that Marce may have needed to be more assertive or actually discuss issues with me more rather than just be silent. But that’s an issue for his blog, if he were ever to write one. What’s important and relevant is that over the course of being together for 19 years, he has never yelled at me; he has never left. He has always loved me and been supportive. I don’t think he’s judged me harshly, despite my giving him good reason to do so. He has done that from the very beginning, up until now, when we can at least put some good labels to what we experience together. Because at this point, it’s not just MY mental health issue; it’s OURS. (Although I have said at times when I’ve had the worst moments that he’s lucky he can at least go to work or somewhere else and get away from me for a while, whereas I can’t get away from myself and what’s happening in my head.) We are in this together; we’re a team. What’s his problems are mine and vice versa; what are his strengths could also be mine, and vice versa. I’ve known from fairly early in our dating days that I just felt comfortable, myself, with him, that I didn’t have to pretend to be something or someone I wasn’t. I was at ease; I felt loved. I’ve also known that we complement each other perfectly. We have truly made a great team.

Many other men may have bolted long ago from what I’ve put my husband through. But he is not other men. Sure, he has weaknesses, but he is an unconditionally loving husband who is dedicated to the institution of marriage and to me, personally. He and I believe that our marriage can last forever, and we’re working on it so we can be happy together for eternity. I now have confidence that is truly possible because I have 18 1/2 years of knowing for sure that my husband is committed to that. I am very blessed. His support has made all the difference in what have been some really challenging times. So, happy birthday, my love. I hope that my strengths and commitment to you have shown you how much I love you and appreciate all you’ve been to me.

Not a book snob, but I do have some standards

As much as I’ve loved reading for almost 40 years now, and other people know how much I have read, I’m still astonished, and other people are astonished, at times to discover that I have not read certain classics. I haven’t read these books, for instance: A Tale of Two Cities (though it’s on my Kindle now and I’ve started it), Les Miserables, Moby-Dick, War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Don Quixote, Walden, or The Canterbury Tales. Glancing at lists online that various people and organizations suggest as the top-40 or top-100 must-reads, I am even surprised to find there are some books I’ve never heard of! (I didn’t think that would happen for me on a “famous-classics” list.)

Frankly, since I’ve been reviewing books for so many years, I’ve tended to get skewed toward reading mostly new books. This has been especially true since I started Rated Reads in 2008: I’ve wanted to focus on new works that wouldn’t have gotten as much word of mouth as older books so the site can be more useful to visitors. So the upshot has been: fewer classics.

Even so, I think I’ve done a fairly good job over the years covering quite a few classics. And I’ve discovered some new books that should qualify as “new classics” because they’re so well written.

But I’m OK with not reading the classics or the classically literary newer books that are deep and filled with meaning. I don’t see it necessary to be a book snob. I’m perfectly happy just reading fluff sometimes. I will admit, for instance, that I did eat up the Twilight books, before they got really popular and that’s all anyone who was female, ages 13 to 55 or so, was talking about. I hadn’t planned on reading them (Stephenie Meyer is a fellow BYU graduate, and when I read in our alumni magazine about her book about a vampire who falls in love with a great-smelling girl, I thought it just wasn’t up my alley), but when a trusted reading friend handed a copy of the first book to me and said, “I want to see what you think about this,” I indulged and got hooked. Sure, they’re basically female brain candy, but it’s sure nice to have some tasty Hershey’s kisses to indulge in sometimes, isn’t it? (I say this deliberately because there are also great books out there that are still kind of indulgent but I’d consider more the equivalent of Godiva or Valrhona.) The Twilight series has provided a whole bagful of kisses. I do like a good romance and clean(ish) love scenes. I did get tired of hearing about Edward’s marble chest, though. I just don’t care about muscles and finely chiseled chests, apparently.

Given that I enjoy fluff now and then, I do have standards. I think now might be a good time to share authors I do not like. Yep, I’ve written about some of my favorite books and authors, but now I will write briefly about authors I detest.

James Patterson, at least as part of a writing duo. I read Sundays at Tiffany’s because I thought it was such a clever premise. The writing stunk. It was short and unmemorable and childishly written. I suppose I should try one of his mysteries, but I’m skeptical after being burned with his ridiculous prolific co-authoring. Actually, now that I think of it, I suppose my entire list of “hates” is of authors who churn out books to a loyal fanbase who will fork over $28 for any new tome from their favorite author regardless of the quality of the writing. Me, I’m not that loyal, I guess.
Nicholas Sparks. Another prolific author who writes what I consider to be formulaic crud. I firmly believe that if the only way a writer can elicit an emotional response from readers is by using death as a tool to pull relentlessly on heartstrings, he doesn’t have much talent. I generally appreciate nuance. (OK, I did already say I loved Twilight. I can’t explain that.) I read two books by Sparks, I believe, as a reviewer and have seen a few movies based on his books, so I am pretty sure I can say I don’t need to read/see anymore. SOMEONE ALWAYS DIES. Sorry if this is a spoiler, but it must be said. I figure, you read one Sparks book, you’ve read them all.
Richard Paul Evans. I think he’s a very fine man and has done some real good, and I love his success story. But his writing is sophomoric. Sorry, but it’s true.

It’s fairly safe to say that any author whose writing I find sophomoric or whose plots are formulaic will make this list. Obviously, I make a few exceptions, but in most cases, I’ll avoid this bunk and stick to writers who craft three-dimensional characters, create fascinating worlds, who have amazing imaginations, who can just put together the same old words in the English language in ways that somehow seem new and fresh.

Even when it comes to fluff, I have some standards.

Latest discoveries

It’s going to take a whole lot of posts to cover my life and experiences in this department. So I started at the beginning, but I’ve been jumping around since that first post. I’m going to try to explain a bit where I am now.

We moved to California in late summer of 2008 from Alabama, where we had lived in one town for 10 years. We were pretty well settled there, even though we hadn’t expected to stay there for so long. But our children’s needs, primarily, induced us to move cross-country. Though I had some time to plan and prepare for the move, the whole thing didn’t go nearly as smoothly as I would have liked. It took ages to get into a house of our own, during which time we lived with family and had all of our possessions in a storage unit. Then we waited and waited for our house in Alabama to sell, and after a year of waiting and one very low offer that fell through, we decided to rent it out. The stress of all those things, combined with the financial stress of paying two mortgages for a year, made life very difficult. I just felt depressed and frustrated and irritable pretty much all the time.

I had been seeing a psychiatrist in Alabama for a year or two, during which time he’d put me on an antidepressant that seemed to help fairly well. But with the move, it just wasn’t doing enough. So I started surfing the Web one morning and found a site that turned out to be very useful. It’s just a very simple-looking site by a psychiatrist who has shared many of his insights online. He also wrote a book called Why Am I Still Depressed? I pored over the site and then ordered the book. I decided that it was time to see a psychiatrist in my new town, rather than having my general doctor keep writing scripts for the old antidepressant.

The site had really struck a chord with me; its information led me to believe I was experiencing what this doctor (James Phelps) describes as bipolar II. Armed with this bit of information, I found one of the two psychiatrists in town that my health insurance covered and made an appointment. My new doctor and I talked, I shared my opinions, and he prescribed a new medication; he called my condition “atypical bipolar disorder,” but it’s just a slightly different name for what Dr. Phelps called bipolar II. The new medication seemed to work fine, and just knowing I had new information and a new medication gave me hope.

Three years later, this is still the diagnosis I’m working with. I’ve tried some different meds and a different doctor (I’ll write other posts on those topics), but we’re still going with that. Honestly, though, I still wonder how many other factors are at play. Dr. Phelps’ website talks about how thyroid disorders are sometimes tied in with bipolar II, and since I’ve been hypothyroid for about 12 years now (well, that’s when my doctor and I discovered it), I can’t help but think it may play a part in what I experience, even though I have been on thyroid replacement medication for all that time and it’s supposedly controlled (according to blood tests that my current doctor administers every year: and THAT, again, is a whole other topic). I also have noticed that I feel particular sensitivity to hormonal fluctuations, during pregnancy and postpartum and my monthly cycles, and those must be factors as well. I’m fascinated by how things work, and the complex interplay of hormones in the body is so interesting to me (I even wrote a paper about hormones for a research project in English in high school before I knew how personal it was). So I would love to figure out exactly how all these things work together to create my particular issues. Doctors, however, basically don’t seem to care about this (How could they not? Do they not have any curiosity?), at least when it comes to treating me. They just want to know that they’re finding a good medicine to treat me, and that’s all that matters. They have a point, I suppose, but I’d just love to know how all this works inside me. As far as we’ve come in being able to treat mood disorders, it still feels like we’re kind of living in the 19th century treatment-wise compared to all the other feats of medicine that exist.

So I could say now, “Well, this is it. I’m almost 42, and I’ve finally figured out what’s going on with me.” But even though I feel fairly confident that I’m on the right path — and it’s a big relief, I must say — I still wonder if in 10 years my diagnosis might change and I’ll look back and say, “Gee, we were close but not quite there.” At any rate, this is the best we have right now, and we’re going with it. It’s something, and something is better than nothing. I suppose, when it comes down to it, this is really just an extension of my previous post, “What’s in a name?”, because we have a name but that name could very well change. It’s just nice to have a name; it helps me to wrap my mind around what I experience, it helps me on occasion to explain to others if I feel so inclined, and now it might help you.

What’s in a name?

So I’ve thought a lot about how difficult it is to just put a name on what I experience. For years, I really wasn’t sure what I had, as I mentioned before and will need to write more about. So if it was hard for me and doctors to label my condition, then explaining it to others is even more of a challenge, even now. Then, even if there is a name, communicating correctly to others so they will really understand is even more challenging.

For a comparison and introduction to my thoughts on this topic, I have a daughter who has Down syndrome. Over the years as I’ve been involved with organizations that advocate for people with disabilities and have spent time talking with other parents, I have been actually very grateful for the fact that my daughter has a very straightforward diagnosis. I’ve met people whose children obviously have cognitive challenges but who have spent hours and hours in doctors’ offices and with other specialists, trying to determine just what their child is dealing with. It’s vital to have some kind of diagnosis in hand in order to effectively move forward with some kind of treatment and/or (especially) educational plans and specialized services. It’s no doubt sometimes a challenge to have a child with a disability (again, whole other topic here), but it seems to me that it’s even more difficult when you can’t put a name to it. I’ve had 14 years of knowing I have a child who has Down syndrome. She’s received the services she’s needed, by and large, over the years, and it’s been relatively simple to make those happen.

What makes her situation simpler also is that her condition is easy to observe on the outside. The physical characteristics that are signature Down syndrome traits are literally written on her face, and pretty much everyone knows by looking at her that they should have some types of different expectations from her. I don’t want anyone to think that I want people pre-judging my daughter or having low expectations for her because that’s not at all what I’m trying to say. But when she behaves a little differently than most people and hugs everyone and talks with a bit of a speech impediment and so on, I can feel fairly comfortable knowing I don’t have to try to explain away what she’s doing because many people will already know there’s a reason to cut her some slack behavior-wise.

A similar “rule” applies to people who have physical disabilities. Many of those can easily be observed; if someone is in a wheelchair because of paralysis or uses a cane because of a limp or even has a seeing-eye dog because of blindness, that person instantly can communicate without needing to say a word that he or she has a particular challenge to which others might need to be sensitive (although they generally just want to be treated like everyone else, their situations are at least fairly clear to others, and then others can choose how to be most sensitive and kind to them). But mental health issues are completely invisible. No one can tell by looking what someone who struggles with mental illness is having to cope with.

The companion issue is that mental illness simply is not as readily understood as physical illness. Each individual in this world has a package of trials and difficulties (as well as talents and skills and interests) that is unique. Some face tremendous trials in this life. Some are open about some of the things they face, and others prefer to be quite private, sharing details or even basic information with very few others. So some people who are diagnosed with cancer will talk readily about their illness, their treatments, their prognosis, their fears and frustrations. Others will keep quiet. But those who do share more, for instance, a cancer diagnosis, will likely be quickly understood. “Cancer” is a word that is easily communicated in our society; listeners will think “chemo,” “surgery,” “radiation,” “sick,” “death” or “remission” when they hear it. They will feel compassion and a desire to help, perhaps with meals or rides to a doctor or something similar.

On the flip side, however, is mental illness. Mental illness today, with its various diagnoses like schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and so on, is coming out of the darkness in a way; more people talk about it in society, but it’s still not as easily understood as physical illnesses. There is generally no stigma associated with illnesses like cancer (although, frankly, there can be a bit with some illnesses that can be linked in part to unhealthy habits), but there is lots of misunderstanding, confusion, and stigma associated with mental health. Either people think that mental illness really doesn’t exist and a sufferer is “making things up” or trying to get attention or something else, or they think that their mental problems are bad habits that just need to be broken. Someone with depression could be told to look on the bright side or to just force themselves to get out and about, for example. Or others may simply recoil a little bit from someone who has a mental illness; they may be seen as weak or “crazy” or “scary” or unbalanced. Mental illness can make others feel uncomfortable and nervous, rather than compassionate and eager to help and lend support.

So back to the name. When I have chosen to share with someone, briefly, that I deal with issues of mental health, first, over the years, I wasn’t sure what I did have, and now that I (basically) do, I still can’t just say, “Well, I have atypical bipolar disorder or bipolar II.” No one knows what that means. Communicating requires that both people understand the meaning of a word. Like I said before, if I say, “I have cancer,” I can pretty much leave it at that and someone else would know what I meant. But if I wanted to briefly mention, “I have bipolar disorder,” half of people wouldn’t know what I meant. Even if they did, my version of this “spectrum” is practically unique to me, so it would require several more paragraphs to get across a basic meaning that one or two words couldn’t convey, as “cancer” would for that illness.

What’s the upshot? It’s just a lot easier not to ever tell anyone what I deal with. One, I can’t say it quickly and move on to other topics. Not possible to communicate what I need to quickly. I might find someone who is very sensitive and eager to talk to me about it, but it’s going to lead to at least a 15-minute conversation, and sometimes there’s no time for that. Two, if I do say what I have, and someone else basically understands what I’m talking about, there’s always a possibility they may have a negative connotation in their minds that will lead them to make judgments about me that I’d rather them not make.

On my bad days, I’d be happy to stay at home, keep to my bed, and refrain from human interaction so as not to offend or cause any problems. But many of those days, since I do have four kids and lots of responsibilities, I still have to be out and about, getting things done. I’m then more likely to be impatient or super-irritable or sometimes just want to cry over something dumb that wouldn’t bother a normal person (or me at some other time) at all. It’s those days I wish I had a sign on my forehead that just says, “Please excuse me. I have a mental illness; I do my best to deal with it constructively; I take medication, I see a therapist regularly, I try to relax and take care of myself as much as I can given my limitations. But I have a family; I have responsibilities, and life goes on. I’m standing in this line that has taken forever and it’s making me feel completely at the end of my rope. I’m valiantly doing what I can here, but my best on this kind of day isn’t too great. Please give me some leeway and smile at me encouragingly or just try not to judge me.” But my forehead isn’t as big as a billboard (thank goodness), and this sentiment wouldn’t fit on it.

So no, there is no outward sign of my inward distress to give people around me (strangers or friends) any indication of what I deal with regularly or if I’m having a bad day in particular. (Very close friends will understand if I just say a few words because after years of talking and explaining, some shorthand will work. But this only applies to a handful of individuals in my life. You know who you are.) There are no physical indications, no typical characteristics to tip anyone off. And if I were to say something to someone else, I couldn’t really capture the essence of what I want to convey in just a few quick words. It’s frustrating. Again, this is all part of why I’m writing on this blog. I’d like to extend to others who don’t have my particular challenges the kindness of helping them to see more clearly from my viewpoint, all at their leisure whenever they’d like to read this. And for those who experience similar feelings, I hope you can feel a kindred spirit.

An ordered mind

So I wrote yesterday about how I like things in my home neat. I have thought about this a great deal over the past few years because it at least in part directly correlates to my state of mind. I find that I must clean and organize when my brain is in two different modes: overloaded and in high gear.

I have times when I’m full of ideas and just raring to go, and I just get moving. My mind is spinning but not so fast I feel completely overloaded. Then there are other times when my mind is spinning so fast I can’t possibly keep up and I feel like my circuits are going to short. These two slightly different speeds in my brain (which are separate from my “normal” and “slow” speeds) lead to two different outcomes and emotions, too. When I’m spinning in a “good” way, I’m excited about all the ideas that seem to be popping up out of nowhere. It’s exciting to experience that rush of inspiration, of creativity, and I rush around a bit to try to keep up. When my mind is spinning out of control, though, I can’t possibly rush fast enough to keep up; I also find that this latter situation, which leads to anger, frustration and exhaustion, is also induced by busy-ness that’s outside of my brain and outside of my control. So if my life isn’t too full of appointments, expectations, to-do lists that are foisted on me by others (including my four children and their schedules), and I am free to let my brain spin and give me ideas, it’s all fine. But when the outside expectations and to-dos pile up and I feel, especially, that I have no say in them, my brain just spins like about 100 caffeine-dosed hamsters on 100 wheels, and I short out.

My house benefits from both situations, my family, not so much. When I’m full of ideas of how to make my house more organized and I’m not walking around with those hamsters in my head, I am eager to just get to work and make things nice and neat. When the hamsters are doing their thing, I do some work, but I mainly order my husband and kids around and/or complain about how the house is messy and it’s contributing to my overwhelmed state. The mess in my head is so all-encompassing that any mess in my physical living space just exacerbates the inner clutter a hundredfold. Clutter inside means clutter outside is unacceptable.

So I’ve wondered a bit if I would be so organized and neat if it weren’t for my brain’s tendencies to go into high gear so often. But I think I would. I’ve just always been neat and clean. But that concept brings me to another one: is it even possible to tease out my personality traits from my brain’s chemical issues? My brain simply is who I am. And THAT is a discussion for another day.

Let’s just leave my post here today with this thought: SPIN SPIN SPIN HAMSTERS HAMSTERS HAMSTERS. My house is looking pretty good.

House of order

I have decided that I could probably become a professional organizer if I so chose. But I don’t choose that, so I am strictly staying in the amateur leagues. I go on tears of ultra-organization in my house periodically. Over the course of a couple of months in the fall, I must have gotten rid of 15 medium-sized boxes’ worth of stuff. Well, probably more. And that’s after I’d already gone through and gotten rid of a bunch more stuff in the spring. And that was after going through and getting rid of stuff after we first moved in to this house 3 1/2 years ago, and that was after getting rid of a ton of junk before we made the cross-country move here. I keep asking myself how it’s possible that I have all this junk if I keep getting rid of it. Does it sneak back in to the house like the ants we keep killing off? Or like our female cat, who keeps insisting on going back out? It’s a mystery.

I must admit that I impose order on everyone in my house, my husband and daughters all. I have brought in some boxes from the garage and plunked them down in the office and/or bedroom and instructed my husband that he must go through them and sort and organize them within a short amount of time. He grudgingly obliges. I tell my girls it’s time to sort through their rooms and piles of accumulated stuff every six months or so. When they give me drawings or other doodads, I duly admire and ooh and ahh and then remind them that I will recycle most of them but keep a select few in their special folder. Otherwise, we’d be swimming in pencil and crayon artwork, drowning, really.

I’ve been reminding my husband and daughters, “_____ doesn’t belong there. Please put it where it lives.” Everything must have a place to live that makes sense for its use and for our need for it, and I insist on it going back to its domicile as quickly as possible after our temporary need for it has ended.

When I get better organized, I always must show off my new setups. For instance, I did this last week with most of the electronics cords and little gadgets that had become tangled up in the small canvas bin they had previously occupied:

As always, I was pleased as punch with the result and made sure my husband had seen it, and that my 15-year-old, who’s old enough to really appreciate these things, had seen it as well. “Doesn’t it look great?” I asked like a child with a freshly-drawn piece of art for the fridge. “It looks so neat and tidy now, doesn’t it? So much better than before, right?”

I cleared out a drawer in my office credenza that previously was a holding bin for stuff I didn’t know what to do with and used the divider that came with that drawer and another drawer, which I didn’t really need to divide. I had thought about using a store-bought utensil divider or something similar, but this worked just fine in the end without a trip to the store. Yay, me!

I also thought I’d add in here my fancy-schmancy way of planning meals. Well, about a third of the time. I decided to print up a list of dinners I make on a regular basis. I put several line spaces between each and made each dinner item in big print. Then I laminated them, cut them into little rectangles, and put magnets on the back. I put them into zip baggies (I decided it would be easier season-wise to separate soups into a different baggie) and placed them in a drawer in my kitchen. I had a small whiteboard that’s magnetic, so I (try to) plan a week’s meals at a time by just going through my baggies and sticking meal magnets onto my white board. Then I can get an idea at a quick glance of what I plan to make for the week, what to shop for, etc. I think it’s pretty clever. Here’s what it looks like:

My husband likes to stop by garage sales when he passes them on a Saturday errand. When he brings things into the house, I have a hard time not snapping at him. “What?? I just gave away a bunch of stuff to the band rummage sale, and you’re bringing in more junk?” I moan. A couple of weeks ago, he managed to get a few things that were fairly useful, but he also got a board game we will likely never use; I just got rid of about five or six we never used. Argh.

Don’t mess up my neat house. Darn. Too late.