Also, one thing about Charlotte, before I go on to the requirements of the award–she’s by far the most diligent blogger I’ve ever come across. She decided she was going to start a blog, and then, bang! She’s been keeping it up, regularly, with great writing tips and interviews with luminaries like Alan Rinzler. She also does great book reviews, and is the author of an as-yet-to-be-published hardboiled detective novel in the vein of Dashiell Hammett. So yes, you must follow her blog doings.

Now. On to this award. I must do several things in order to account for this award. I must list seven items in each of three category.

First, seven things about me you probably don’t know:

• I don’t like very spicy food. That is to say, I don’t like things that flame your nasal hairs out and make you sweat. I’m much more apt to buy a mild tomatillo salsa than I am an “extra hot” salsa, for instance.
• I am a sucker for the American Standards songbook.
• I can’t dance.
• I struggle with my weight. Part of this is my inherent laziness. The other part of it is my love/hate relationship with exercise. The final part of it is genetics.
• I think everyone should have their own personal style. This is not to be confused with trendiness.
• I adore button-down shirts and in general prefer neat dressing to slovenliness.
• I love to cook. And I prefer to do it with friends in the kitchen or nearby.

Now, 7 posts from my own blog that I like:

• Chris Hondros, in Memoriam: Chris was the photographer for one of my first-ever feature articles. He died in Libya almost a year ago.
• Book Review: Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane: I write book reviews at my site every once in awhile, but I like this one because it deals with something I think is super important in books–characters one can identify with. Also, it gave me a chance to write a bit of a love letter to Dennis Lehane’s characters. And okay, maybe Lehane himself.
• Speaking the Gospel: This is a brief roundup on why everyone should try public speaking. I almost never write posts about business, but this is one of those things that I’m both good at and that I feel strongly about, so I did this one. It’s just a list of reasons everyone should love to speak publicly. And yes, you read that right.
• Iron Girl, Iron Guy, and the Iron Maiden, Part I and II: This is the story of our Ironman competition. We trained for six months and had a blast, and I’d readily do it again. I loved this race. It was awesome. (Yes, yes, okay, in retrospect.)
• A Phone Conversation: This is exactly what it is, a phone conversation between me and Mr. Gooddirt. I think it’s hilarious. It pretty much pegs Mr. Gooddirt.
• Track Rats: This is part of a series I’m writing called “The People in My Neighborhood.” It’s about the folks who populate my life. This one is about the people who first really made me feel like I was a part of my physical neighborhood.
• An Open Letter to Do-Gooders: I’ve deployed to Haiti twice as part of the ShelterBox Response Team. While I was there I noticed a few things. This letter is obviously not from ShelterBox itself, but it’s my perspective of what people who really want to help in a disaster situation should and shouldn’t do.

Phew. That was hard. This next one will be easier. 7 blogs I like, and, in turn, pass the 7×7 award on to:

• GrassDirtCorn. My friend Hollie Butler is very special to me. I’ve known her since I was 18. We were camp counselors together. And we used to write letters. Now Hollie tackles some good things–and not-so-good things–in her blog on food, health, and general life. I love it.
• DaphneUnfeasible. My friend Kate Schafer is a great literary agent. And she has good, important things to tell writers, on her blog.
• ChelsKnorr. My friend Chels Knorr just started her blog. She’s off to a bang-up start. I think what she has to say is intriguing. I think the way she says it is beguiling. G’wan, take a gander.
• Manhattan Nest. I’ve just started reading this one. I almost never have patience with blog posts that are this long, but I love Dan’s sensitivities and his design sense. So he’s hooked me. If you like mid-century design–or design at all–you need to take a look at this.
• The Sherman Foundation. Thomas Sherman makes great, pithy remarks about things that matter to me–art and design and marketing. I appreciate his respect of my time and attention span, but more important, I respect his wide-ranging definition of design.
• Harvey Briggs. Harvey’s been involved in advertising everything from cars to pantyhose. I can’t remember how I found him, but I’m thrilled I did. Another master of pithy copy, Harvey often points me to really interesting advertisements, but more important, he has interesting, commentary-provoking things to say. Every. Single. Day.
• Kate Gale. Is a librettist, an editor, a smart, smart woman, and a wicked conversationalist. Again, short, loads-of-fun commentary. Well worth a peek.
• Nancy Norton. I’ve written about Nancy before, but I think you should go over and take a peek at her blog. She spends part of the year near Toulouse, France, and aside from the part of me that’s an inveterate francophile, I’m always amazed at the things Nancy ends up doing and seeing–and sharing with us.

Okay. That’s it from me. Thanks to the blogosphere in general for this, and, more specifically, thanks to Miss Morganti.

1. A gold bracelet. Packed it away “for safekeeping” a decade ago. Reminded of it in November. Hunted madly for it in December. Found it. Wore it out. Immediately lost it in park. Hunted madly for it with headlamps in three-acre park across street. Found it. Packed it away “for safekeeping” again. This time, for real.

2. Some confidence. Store is somewhat dimished.

3. Some inhibition. I’d forgotten how much I like submitting essays to places.

4. Some patience. Some things I am just too old for.

5. A toenail. Seriously. I was sitting there watching Downton Abbey, and the damn thing just popped off. Gross. Thing is, I’m not even training for anything, and so there is no reason for said toenail to come popping off. Took with it a lovely polish job, too.

6. 3 pounds. Gained and then lost again; gained and then lost again. Who knows where they go?

So THERE.

You can find Paula on Etsy at Very Tres Chic.

And front of dress:

I love this flight for this reason. Red eyes are not my favorite, but this one gives me solid time to be alone for awhile, listen to some music (Coleman Hawkins at the moment), and try to make sense of it all.

It was by far the best residency ever. Not only do I feel settled in as a student, now (it’s my last full semester, if I can get my thesis pulled off), we had an incredible list of writers, editors, and agents come trooping through our doors to offer us lots of good nuggets of useful information that I can put to use in my work soon.

Among these were, in order of appearance:

Alan Rinzler. Alan is the editor of such writers as Joseph Hellerman, Norman Mailor, Toni Morrison, Claude Brown…eurgh. The list goes on. He is a gentle soul of infinite proportions and equal wisdom. I have a lot to learn from him, and I’m looking forward to continued correspondence, even if via such far-away venues as his ‘blog, on which he posts great editorial tips and tricks–and, occassionally weighs in on things like social marketing for writers. Lovely.

My colleague Charlotte Morganti spent an hour with Alan distilling some of what he taught us. Her interview is up at her blog.

Deb Lund. Deb is appearing early in this list even if she was one of our very last presenters. This is because Deb cared enough to show up early in the week and get to know us. It’s true, she does live on Whidbey Island, and so it was “easy” for her, but she was kind and lovely and she became a part of our campus very easily.

Deb is the author of some fun fun fun fun! picture books, but she is also the originator of some really effective writing tricks for writers, including those of us not working on picture books. The last day of residency is always a critical day because we have had nine days of lectures and we are up to the gills with information and learning. Still, she managed to keep us all excited and writing, and creating even when we thought it’d be impossible. Fantastic.

Lauri McLean. Laurie is an agent at Larsen-Pomada, San Francisco’s oldest literary agency. (I think.) More important, she truly understands writers. Even more important, she is of the same mind as me when we think of marketing. In fact, I asked Laurie within minutes of meeting her to sit in on the class I held at Whidbey this residency. What a treat. We have some upcoming things going on together, so I am assured I’ll get to see her again–this makes me very, very happy. It’s so nice to meet someone of like mind! I’ll never get tired of it.

Melissa Manlove. Melissa is a children’s book editor. I’ve yet to meet one I don’t like. But this one…this one…well. let’s put it this way: Randomly, Stefon and I broke out into the theme song from the Muppets over lunch. Melissa pitched right in. And she knew all the words. This was right after Stefon, Chels, Melissa and I finished drafting the storyboard for our soon-to-be-award-winning children’s picture book, Are You My Hostage? It is a charming coming-of-age story about a bumbling bank robber who must find his way in the complicated world of larceny. Along the way, he discovers his hostage’s favorite food; that he really mustn’t bring his laundry to a robbery, and other truths.

Hunh! Oh, and the editing thing: Melissa is a really, really good editor. She understands stories. She had good ways to get to the heart of them. She makes me want to get to know my characters better.

Cheston Knapp. It is so rare that one gets to invite the managing editor of a fine literary magazine over for Scotch. Rarer still that he stays until 1AM, talking about everything from floppy hair to glossy crackers that only look inedible. There is talk about books and work and general happiness and suddenly the entire bottle of Scotch is gone, and it is time for bed. Lovely, especially in the company of other smart writers, who also happen to be friends.

–

And that doesn’t even include my regular faculty, or any of the other fantastic writers studying with me.

Often when I return I am incapable of much of anything. Tomorrow I will return home to an empty apartment, and I will be lonely, at least until Jim comes home at 5 or so, but I will snap on the TV and watch some classic films and talk myself off the ledge of wanting to dedicate my entire life to being a crazed solitary writer, if only because a girl must eat and a girl likes to be social.

But sitting here, alone but not alone, it is easy to think that I can take what I learned from this past residency and eat from it and only it until I pop, and I’d probably have some fine, fine work when I was done, and that that would be enough to sustain me for a very, very long time.

*Yawn.* I’m going to read something new now.

“I dreamed we won the MegaMillions!

“We went out and rented a UHaul and backed it up to the toy store and crammed it full of a ton of toys and then drove all over the country giving them to kids.

<Sighs.> “It was awesome.”

<3!

It’s just that this week has been alarmingly stressful. Between the jetlag (an average of four hours of sleep a night does not make for a happy girl), a burgeoning cold, very little exercise, and one very cranky, mostly former client, this person was pissy beyond belief.

Fortunately, everything has sort of ironed itself out now, although I’m still dealing with one or two things. They should resolve themselves soon.

Anyway, the whole point of this is: I wrap presents when I am feeling frazzled. It makes me feel organized, mostly because of this little section of the cabinet above my desk:

This is the place in which I store the most recent stash of gift bags, ribbon, and paper. The other thing about this shelf is, almost everything in here in re-purposed. In fact, I don’t think I’ve purchased gift wrap or gift bags for years. Lara once gave me a present wrapped in gorgeous textured silver-stars-on-navy-background paper, and I used that for five years, in bits and bobs and scraps. On the top shelf is everything from Mylar from balloons to the pink paper that the dry-cleaners stuff my shirt-sleeves and cover their hangars with to some of the packing paper that the movers moved us with back in 2009.

Likewise, there is some of this paper:

We did a race in Crystal Lake, IL called the Wooly Mammoth. It was 2007, and I was still running ARFE, and we had recruited several new friends to adventure racing to do the race. (Mr. Gooddirt was working for Gatorade at the time, too, so we also dragged some Gatorade friends out to race with us.) At the end of the race (race report here), the race director had course maps left over (4 feet x 5 feet), so he gave all five remaining maps to me, in the spirit of staying green. Over the years, I’ve used this paper to make stationery and bookmarks, and I’ve wrapped presents with it too. These are the scraps of a stationery project.

So. The gift-wrapping. What is it about gift-wrapping? Is it the sharp corners, the creasing? Is it the sense of getting the most out of whatever materials you have at hand? For me, gift-wrapping is specifically associated with two times in my life:

1. It was 1994. I was an intern at The Atlantic Monthly. Their fiction internship was an unpaid internship at the time (I don’t know if it is still), so I supplemented the money my parents gave me with a job at the Copley Square Brookstone. I made a lot of sales and wrapped a lot of presents, and in general, discovered an affinity for sales and marketing and retail. The wrapping at Brookstone, by the way, involves thick, coated, luxurious, totally un-recyclable paper. We used extra of it, too, folding the ends over so that no raw edges showed. Yum. And never again.

2. In 2007 and 8, I worked for a children’s bookstore just down the street from us, in Chicago. I loved it there. People walked in, we made smart suggestions about what they should buy, they walked out happy. I’ll never forget one early morning, jingling the keys in my hand, relishing the cool spring weather, unlocking the bookstore door, turning the sign over to read “Open,” flipping the lights, thinking to myself, “I could do this forever.” Of course, I couldn’t. Some day, I might own my own bookstore. Some day. But it won’t be the only thing I do. Anyway, we wrapped a lot of presents there, too.

I suspect this is part of the reason I like to wrap when I’m stressed. Also, it’s nice to think about someone else.

Anyway, here’s this morning’s finished product, a gift for tonight’s gift exchange with some girlfriends.

Bonus: The purple present above the red one is for my sister-in-law, a belated birthday present. The purple wrapping is Mylar, from a grocery-store plant. So is the accompanying bow. But the navy ribbon is from a wedding gift a friend of ours gave us.

God, what a lame post. Sorry. What is the point of this? I don’t know. Anyway. It’s too late. *Presses “post.”*

Part of the problem: I’ve been writing so much for classes that it feels like there’s very little to say here. Of course that’s not true…I’m a firm prescriber to the belief that life is in the details. But while I do appreciate them everyday, I’m no longer of the opinion that every detail is worth a blog post. (This is something everyone who’s ever read this blog should be thankful for.) But there is a happy medium, somewhere. I just haven’t found it yet.

In other news, we’ve added more stamps to our passports. We’ve recently returned from Jim’s first visit ever to Taiwan, my home country. Jim is my first friend EVER to see my home. In the days and weeks leading up to the trip, I wasn’t so much anxious that he’d like the place–after all, it’s where I’m from; part of what forms me, and I can’t change that–but I was really freaked out that everything would go smoothly.

My dad is the eldest son of his family, an honorable position, and my mother is the youngest daughter in hers–a coveted position in terms of sheer spoiling. It’s my mother’s family whom we visit the most when we’re in Taiwan, and this trip was no different. So yes, my brother and I still get spoiled when we go home, and yes, I expected some pampering, but I did not expect to have my cousins do everything for me.

—-

MARKERS YOU WILL ALWAYS BE EIGHT IN SOME PLACES IN THE WORLD EVEN WHEN YOU ARE 37 AND YOUR HUSBAND IS 40.

1. One entire branch of your family calls you and refers to you by the nickname they gave you when you were two. (In my case, “Gee Gee,” pronounced with hard “Gs.” It means “little screamer.” Shut up.)

2. When you have a problem, like, oh, I dunno, say your husband leaves your iPad in the seat pocket of a train, your entire family gets on it. Also, everyone knows about it in about three seconds.

3. Your entire family asks if you have enough money to spend. EVERY DAY.

4. No one lets you pay for anything. You have to resort to things like “going to the bathroom” and then stopping by the hostess’ booth to hijack the check. This leads to a bizarrely joyful sensation when you do get the check, or the chance to pay for anything. You feel like fistpumping: “YES! I GET TO PAY FOR SOMETHING! OWN IT!!”

5. You get patted on the head. Your hair gets ruffled. People say things like, “Good GeeGee. She comes home every once in awhile. What a nice girl.”

6. Your older cousin accompanies you to a business meeting and sits on the other end of the couch. For an hour.

—-

So. The anxiety. There were parts of  Taiwan that I hadn’t explored in ages. My progress through Taiwan is hampered by my incapability to read or comprehend Mandarin. Taiwan is weird that way, and Taiwanese, too–it’s rooted in Mandarin, which I never learned, but it’s a language entirely on its own. My cousin Jill helped me with EVERYTHING. She booked train tickets and hotels, arranged for permits, and in general was a gracious and lovely and fun host. The absolute care with which she handled everything made me feel a little flustered. I mean, how do tourists who don’t even have my basic knowledge of a working language do it?

—–

A STORY ABOUT A FREELANCE WRITER AND AN ENDANGERED BIRD

Once upon a time, there was an endangered bird called the Black-faced Spoonbill. A fledgling writer in New York heard about its endangered status and went on a mission to spread the word about a salt refinery going into place that would decimate one of the birds last remaining overwinter sanctuaries.

The girl made arrangements to fly to a small tropical island to visit the birds and the fishermen who were fighting to save it. She booked plane tickets and set up interviews and eventually wrote an on-spec story that never ran.

Legend goes, the girl’s family still marvels over her initiative and bravery at such organizational skills. Alas, the girl herself has no recollection of how she did all these things. Further study is, perhaps, warranted.

—–

Eventually, it all went to plan: We spent a full day in Taipei and then went to dinner and then took off the next morning for the Taroko Gorge–yet another place we want our friends to see–and then it was off to Kaohsiung for dinner with our uncle and hanging out with family I already knew Jim would love–and then I took him home, to TouLiu, and to my hometown, and to the house that robs me of any other standard of living.

Once, we owned rice paddies from our front doorstep to the foot of the mountains to the east. Once, water buffaloes and peasants worked the fields. Once, peeping frogs and squeaking bats and the plop-plop of rain were the only ways you could tell where things were in the deep dark of a night in the Taiwanese country; once,  I could walk down the alley and go to the corner store for breakfast and they would say, “Your mother went to America, didn’t she? And you came back? Welcome home.”

—–

ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURAL STUDY, AN IMAGINED LECTURE BY A PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT YUNLIN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

“In this example of late Chin-dynasty architecture, we see clearly many markers of status: The horned roofing structure, the hand-painted rafters, the elaborate carvings in the area above the family shrine.

“Likewise, the person who designed this house clearly loved nature–note this inscription above the doorway to the kitchen, which evokes the memory of birds floating gracefully within flowering plants as they sing their songs.

“Finally, we note the pillars of the great hall itself, the way the short set of stairs sweeps up into the entrance to the grand hall. Visitors were made to feel as if they were not only being honored, but also as if they were in the presence of something honorable.

“In that vein, we take a trip down the road of local lore. It’s rumored that, on these very steps, the designer and first owner of this house, a scholar and elected official in the Chin dynasty, a man we’ll call Mr. Wu, received a notorious chief of Japanese warrior thieves. Our Mr. Wu had been asked by the emperor at the time to ‘do something’ about the warrior thief problem, and so, feigning illness, he sat in a wheelchair with a wicked saber hidden beneath a blanket on his lap. He summoned the warrior thief for a visit. One did not ignore an invitation from Mr. Wu.

“Our Mr. Wu beckoned the warrior thief closer. As he stepped within striking distance, Mr. Wu stood.

“The blade went neatly through the warrior thief’s neck. It is rumored that Mr. Wu sent the head to China, as proof of having followed the emperor’s request to a T, and then went in search of the Taiwanese wife that the warrior-thief had taken from her home. He took her under his wing, made her a concubine, and took care of her children for the rest of his life.

“But I digress. We have here in front of us two of the columns that came down during the earthquake of September, 1999. Let us study them now. Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about the internal workings of the house, the large center courtyard, and we’ll have in an expert on family living in that era.”

—–

The rest of the trip was awesome. I sincerely hope that the occasion arises for more Western friends to see both my homeland and my home, the structural body itself, before one of these things falls to progress and concrete rot.

As evidenced by the three national parks we visited the other of these things seems to be well on its way to preservation, not progress–it’s a good thing.

1. I am scheduled to do a half-marathon on trail October 2. That’s this weekend, and I have been looking forward to it for a long time now.

2. I have been plagued by injury.

3. Now we are less than a week before the race, and although I know I won’t have a problem completing the race, I’m now in a position where I don’t feel like I can log in anymore miles because I’m terrified of hurting myself before the race. (This is because the last injury was two weeks ago, when I pulled a heretofore-unknown muscle in my pelvis during a routine speed workout.)

4. Therefore, although I’ve been undertaking normal activities, and some not so normal, like tottering around in 3.5-inch heels to and from dinner and a Baptism and walking around Manhattan in a pair of not-smart sandals that obviously hve lost their cushioning, I have not been working out, and my body is PISSED.

5. Therefore, I am pissed. But still cautious about hurting myself before the race.

This is a ridiculous, self-fulfilling prophecy. So I am ignoring it, and trying to alleviate The Cranky.

Today I want to talk to you about art. This past weekend we had some friends in town from Chicago, and we visited both the Neue Galerie and The Met, and the following day we walked over the Hudson River on the Walkway and then went to the FDR Presidential Home and Library. Then we had dinner at the Culinary Institute of America, from which Jim’s father graduated.  If that seems like a lot of culture, it was, but it was also full of art in all its aspects: natural, historical, visual, and culinary.

I did not have my camera with me, and my Blackberry has decided it Does Not Want to Take Photos anymore, so I had to rely on others for those. (This, incidentally, is another reason for The Cranky.) But this is a good opportunity for me to share with you my latest endeavor, which is to be a better recorder of life through not only words and type, but also visual arts.

Some of you may remember that I took some art lessons awhile back. This is me and my art instructor, Jan Cianflone:

We are on her porch, the last day of my art lesson, just before I went to Whidbey. Towards the end our lessons took place en plein air.

Jan ran me through several different media. We started with pencil and charcoal and spherical objects. Here’s a photo of some eggs:

And here’s the chiaroscuro charcoal I did of those same eggs:

We also did some gesture drawings, which I really enjoyed, from magazine pages. Fashion magazines are good for these, since the models tend to be lanky and long and the shoots tend to be of exaggerated poses. I wish I still had the actual page this came from. This is a 3-minute gesture drawing.

From there we moved into pencil washes. I really enjoyed working with the more suggestive lines of these, as opposed to the more definitive lines of plain pencil.

and then we moved into pen-and-ink, which I really loved, but only in this one case, because, as it turns out, you can’t mix color as well in these big markers as you can in something like watercolor. Although, I did love the broad stroke of the pens…

We did some drawing from life of my favorite hairy subject. (I call this the Grandma-Moses Sprocket.)

And from there, I was on my own. It was a remarkable six weeks, and although I’m still experimenting and learning, here are some of the results:

The Whidbey dock. I’m not happy with this drawing. I love the loose evocation of the trees at the top of the drawing, but I’ve really done a hack job on the dock, which looks cartoony and stiff. I know a lot of this is me learning my own style, but it’s definitely frustrating to see something like this.

I drew it from life, but, for comparison, at an obviously different time of day, here’s a photo.

Later on in the week, I did this drawing, which is of a house that sits on the lagoon near where we had our afternoon classes. I got really lost in the grasses near the bottom of the drawing and just didn’t have the energies or the know-how or the artistic balls to try and complete the suggestion of river that ran along the lawn of the house.

On my way home from Whidbey, I tried to do a marker-and-ink drawing of an airplane at its gate. When I looked up again, the airplane had disappeared. Sigh.

Here’s my most recent drawing:

Personally, it’s my favorite. For comparison, here’s the photo:

I want to get to a point where I can suggest things better and allow the viewer to make their own interpretations. But i guess a girl has to start someplace.

There are many more drawings I want to do. I still haven’t covered my beloved city, or the lovely impressionistic photos of Seattle I took at night, when the iPad camera will only suggest light and glimmer. I think those will be next.

Ultimately, I hope the drawing will inform my writing. It’s only just now occurred to me, actually, that the protagonist in the novel I’m writing for my thesis is an artist. Lately, she and I haven’t been communicating very well, and my adviser has suggested that I spend the day in her shoes, so I’m doubly glad that I took lessons with Jan.

It’s always nice to have another way of seeing things.