Dog Days of Podcasting: The Swimming Lesson

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Dog Days of Podcasting

It’s almost midnight, and I had no plans for anything specific to post today, but then I wrote this right before friends came for dinner.

Here’s an excerpt of The Swimming Lesson:

“Don’t let go, Dad!” The boy shrieks as his father tugs him further away from the steps.

“I’ve got you,” the man assures. “Kick your feet. I promise I won’t let go.”

The boy kicks furiously, sending frothy water in every direction, while his father holds his hands, and walks backwards in circles, providing momentum and balance for his child.

You can hear me read it at SoundCloud, or play it via the applet below:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/104905604″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Dog Days of Podcasting: Thursdays with Caroline

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Dog Days of Podcasting

I’m late to the Dog Days of Podcasting party, but I’ve been following it as a listener since it started.

At first, I was intimidated, because while I’ve been involved in lots of other people’s podcasts and audio dramas, I’ve never really done one of my own.

SoundCloud, though, allows me to record stuff right from my iPad – and I’m enough of a technology geek that the notion appealed to me.

So, here’s my first entry. Please be kind.

At SoundCloud: Thursdays with Caroline

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/104751974″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Because It’s Tradition

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Coral Toes

I’m not sure when it started.

Possibly it began with my mother photographing her feet in the sand every time she went on a beach vacation, or possibly not.

Maybe my friend Deb and I started it together, or maybe it came from just one of us.

But now, it’s tradition. We get a pedicure, we snap a picture of our toes. (It might have started, actually, the year I began letting the pedicurists do nail art on my toes, something I no longer do.)

Today was the first pedicure I’ve had since June.

As always it was bliss.

And I took a picture.

It’s August

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As befits a bathtub (and swimming pool, and ocean whenever I can) mermaid, I was born in August, in high summer.

My mother says she was on the beach nearly to the moment I was born. I’m not entirely certain that’s true, but I do know that the smells of sea, sand, and sunscreen mean “home” to me as much as Fuzzy’s shampoo, and the wiggly-waggly tails of my dogs.

As I write this, at a fraction of a moment before midnight, the outside temperature is hovering around 90 degrees and the only reason I’m not taking a midnight dip in my pool is that I have to be up at six to take Teddy to be neutered.

I’ve been on a sort of virtual vacation – staycation? – since coming home from Mexico in June.

But now it’s my month. My personal year is starting.

In the words of my favorite fictional president, words I use every year about this time:

Break’s Over.

Meet Morgan

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Adoptable Dog Morgan

Morgan is about a year old, and has been spayed. She’s available for adoption through Shelter 2 Rescue. (Click image to embiggen).

Meet Morgan.

She’s about a year old, and has already been spayed. She’s an affectionate, intelligent pointer (or mix) and she’s small for her breed – just under 40 pounds – though she needs go gain a few to be truly healthy.

She loves to play in water, and will splash in the water bowl, or drink from the pool if we don’t catch her. She’s happy to play with other dogs – my two gentle giants didn’t phase her – and she’s good with smaller animals as well.

While pointers are high-energy animals, they also make great companion pets, and they can be taught to be couch potatoes between bouts of exercise.

Morgan is available for adoption through Shelter2Rescue, or you can visit her at the South Arlington (Texas) PetCo betweeen 1 & 5 PM on Saturday.

She would love a home and family of her own.

Sunday Brunch: Cello Hands

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My latest Sunday Brunch piece, “Cello Hands” is up at All Things Girl. music6_by_KarpatiGabor_via_MorgueFileAn excerpt is below, but you can read the whole thing here: Sunday Brunch: Cello Hands.

I knew what a cello was, of course, because when I was much younger (five or six) I’d been gifted with a copy of Captain Kangaroo’s album of “Peter and the Wolf,” where he introduces all the orchestral instruments and tells you what characters they represent. (To this day the bassoon reminds me of a happy, sloppy, drunk man, but that’s another story.) “Okay,” I said. “Why not?”

Now, while nine may seem incredibly young and innocent to the average adult, it’s actually a pretty advanced age at which to start learning music, especially for stringed instruments. I’d always been a singer, and I could pick things up pretty quickly, and knew that a quarter note was short and a whole note was long, but this was different. This wasn’t me picking out melodies on my grandmother’s ancient, out-of-tune-except-in-summer-when-the-humidity-made-the-cracked-soundboard-sound-intact piano. This was learning how to think in a whole new language, and literally see the music and then be able to make it.

Cruel Summer?

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Nearly a month ago, I sat at my computer looking for a clip of “June is Bustin’ Out All Over,” from Carousel, to post in my blog.

sunflower_by_ajjoelle_via_morguefile

Sunflower | Click to embiggen

I never found it, as real life and other distractions caused me to give up the search (though I vaguely remember enjoying the process), but it doesn’t matter because June is nearly over – just over a week, and we’ll be into July.

It’s hard to believe that the year is nearly half over, but here we are, a few minutes from the solstice (which, I’m told, happens at 1:04 AM EDT on Friday the 21st (I’m writing this just before midnight CDT on Thursday the 20th. (Don’t you just LOVE nested parentheses?))), and in the morning Summer will be completely here.

I also meant to write a Thursday Thirteen today, but the day slipped away from me, and there are too many negative things that are circling my brain right now:
– the main company I write for has no work for me for at least a month
– a client that I initially wanted to decline disappeared without paying me
– my arm still hurts (though two massages in Mexico have shown me that the pain in my elbow is really radiating from my shoulder)
– the a/c in the car is not working
– I’m cranky and kinda hormonal.

Despite all this, I’m trying to find the positive. Like, not having a ton of contract work (actually none, at the moment) means I can rest my shoulder and elbow, and work on my own writing instead of giving my best hours over to other people’s tasks.

And then, of course, there’s Max and Perry and Teddy, who are the three best dogs ever, and who need me to help them figure out their new pack order.

There’s the sparkling pool in my backyard, and the sunny weather, and the luxury of not having a day job outside the house, so I can swim whenever I want.

So maybe the first couple hours of this summer are tainted by cosmic cruelty, but this all only reinforces what I said in yesterday’s post, and things are aligning the way I need them to be.

Lazy Leo Gets Wake-Up Call

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Leo I’m not a hard-core believer in horoscopes, because, just as with most forms of prophecy and divination, we use our imaginations to make the predictions self-fulfilling. Mostly, I read them for entertainment.

Once in a while, though, a horoscope will be more than just a neat read. It will be a nudge from the universe, an echo of the smaller, less insistent voice of my own sub-conscious mind.

Today’s LEO advice from one of my favorite syndicated astrologers, Rob Brezny, is one of those cosmic nudges. For the week beginning tomorrow, he writes:

Renowned 20th-century theologian Karl Barth worked on his book Church Dogmatics for 36 years. It was more than 9,000 pages long and contained over six million words. And yet it was incomplete. He had more to say, and wanted to keep going. What’s your biggest undone project, Leo? The coming months will be a good time to concentrate on bringing it to a climax. Ideally, you will do so with a flourish, embracing the challenge of creating an artful ending with the same liveliness you had at the beginning of the process. But even if you have to culminate your work in a plodding, prosaic way, do it! Your next big project will be revealed within weeks after you’ve tied up the last loose end.

I spent a lovely ten days in Mexico, and have been pretty much avoiding the computer since I came home. But my brain and Brezsny’s can’t BOTH be wrong.

In the words of my favorite fictional American president, Jed Bartlet, “Break’s over.”

Time to get to work.

The Curviest Music in History

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La Paz Music Statue

John Philip Sousa once said, “Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.”

I’m not sure if it was jazz or some other beat that inspired the creation of these three curvaceous musicians, found in a plaza a block or so off the Malecon in La Paz, and since the descriptive tablets have either been removed or never existed, I may never know.

What I am certain of, is that the music that inspired this public art had to be the kind you hear, not just with your feet, but with every part of your body.

I imagine the sculptor hearing a street musician play a tune, while another joins in. I imagine a balmy breeze spreading the salt air from the bay throughout the city, and people out and about in the evening, listening to the combined voices of singers, instruments, sea birds, rustling palms, and ocean waves.

My friend Carmi says that this week’s Thematic Photographic theme is “curvaceous.” I’m pretty certain these sculpted musicians played the curviest music in history.

The Mess of Humanity

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MessyCoffee

My friend Carmi hosts a photography meme on his blog, and recently (though I think it changed last night, or will change later today) his theme had to do with messiness.

What better mess is there than the one made of cookie crumbs, drips of coffee spilled over the edge of mugs, and crumpled napkins? This mess isn’t the result of a tantrum or a break-in, but is, instead, the natural by-product of good conversation.

It’s evidence of my trip to Mexico to spend time with my mother, who is one of the most generous people ever to populate Planet Earth.

Our adventures, this trip, weren’t terribly grand. We soaked in the sun and sipped lots of espresso, bobbed in her pool, floated in the ocean, and ate several excellent meals in restaurants and at her table.

If I didn’t get a lot of writing done, I came home feeling like my soul was well-rested, and my mind is brim-full of stories I’m getting ready to share.

There’s another kind of messiness, though, the kind that wells up from the place of our deepest emotions. While I was relaxing south of the border, my husband was here, and a skirmish among our dogs ended with the messy reality of putting Miss Cleo to sleep.

This was a decision that would have been made within the year, anyway, but a part of me feels like I failed her for not being here, and failed my husband for making him do it without me.

Human death, too, tainted my trip: My great-aunt Peg died last week. She was nearly 97, and died in familiar surroundings, wrapped in the arms of people who loved her, and comforted by her strong faith in God.

Oddly, that knowledge means that while I feel her loss, I’m less emotional about it than I am about my dog.

But all those tangled emotions, joy and sadness, grief and solace, pleasure and pain, are part of the Mess of simply Being Human. And, just as in improv, where there are no wrong answers, just high and low percentage choices, in life, there are no wrong feelings, just wrong actions people sometimes take in reaction to them.

My own mind is messier than usual right now – too much time, and too little being required of me, I think. I’ll be working, these next few weeks, to reorganize mentally as well as physically.

But not completely, because sometimes I think it’s the messes we make that keep us interesting.