Adrienne Rambles About Animals

I’m contractually obligated not to have any pets. No really. It’s in my lease in big, bold typeface. No Freakin’ Animals! or we kick your butt out. And they mean it.

This a sign posted at the entrance of our complex, so don’t even think about sneaking me in a kitty. Violators will be prosecuted, mind you. 

Not that I mind. I’m not a real animal lover. I’ve had pets that I’ve loved, and they were great, but the truth is that most animals make me a little nervous. Especially wild animals (ok, I know this is supposed to be about pets, but it turns out that’s about all I’ve got in me about the domesticated critters).

Of course, there are the ones that I’m downright afraid of. The usual cast of characters 

snakes

eels

face eating spiders (probably an urban legend, but whoever let facts get in the way of good irrational fear)

geese

Ok, I’m aware the geese don’t make anybody else’s scary animal list, but let me tell you those beaky little devils are terrifying. 

So with this general distrust of the animal kingdom in mind, I went to animalinyou.com to find out what my animal personality was. Why them, you ask. Well, everyone knows that on top of being “the most accurate personality test on the web” and having been featured on both CNN and Dr. Phil, they are also the first result to pop up on Google. And, hell, that’s good enough for me.

After answering a few rather personal questions, their super computers went to work and came up with...Walrus.

Great...I’m a walrus.

I have no idea how they came up with that.

Black Cat Fever

By Juliet

I've always been a dog person. I love their loyalty, their generosity of spirit. Cats, on the other hand, seemed aloof and demanding...and I really don't do aloof and demanding.

But once my dog passed away, the neighbor's black cat set about seducing me with his feline wiles. Coincidentally, this all happened around the time I was starting to write my witchcraft mystery series, so it seemed rather appropriate to have a decidedly un-aloof, but demanding, black cat named Oscar hanging out with me while I wrote.

So this got me thinking...what's with the black cat and witches stereotype?

In Europe, witches were believed to have animal familiars, who functioned not only as companion animals but also as magical helpers. Cats were the most commonly mentioned witch's familiar, but not the only one. Witches were also associated with dogs, rats, snakes and toads...even pigs.

Who ever heard of a piggy familiar?
Three witches riding a pig (The Witches of Northamptonshire 1612)

In Greek mythology, the witch-like Circe lived on the island of Aeaea and was known for her knowledge of botanical potions. She was fond of transforming her enemies, or those who had offended her, into animals. Notably, she turned Odysseus’ men into swine.

In the New World, witches and curanderas, or folk healers, are often associated with naguales. The nagual is like an alter ego, an animal familiar that lives a parallel life to your own. In Rodolfo Anaya’s beautiful novel Bless Me, Ultima, the elderly curandera (a folk-healer) has an owl as her guardian spirit. It was born at the same time as Ultima, and will die when she herself passes over.

As in Europe, the nagual is often a creature of the night: an owl, a toad, a coyote. Some believe that when one dreams, it means one’s nagual is traipsing about on adventures.

Nagualism is linked with ancient pre-Columbian shamanistic practices through depictions of humans with animal features, found in the surviving art and books of the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec peoples.

At left: Emergencia del Nagual (the nagual coming out). Códice Nutall

So am I saying that Oscar-the-black-cat is my spiritual counterpart, some sort of shape-shifting totem?

Nah. But it sure is fun to think about what trouble my familiar might get into, traipsing about at night while I dream.

WE ARE OUTNUMBERED

Pets. I never meant to have this many. Really.

Three dogs, four cats. Anyone will tell you (and they're right): that's too damn many. Not that I want to lose any, because I don't. But holy helen, it's a lot. I know that.

It happened like this:

I had Digit, the cat of my heart. He was born a jackass, and remains a jackass. No one likes him but me, and he returns the favor. He is NOT a nice cat. To temper him, I got him a girl cat, back in 1998 or so. Adah. She's completely neurotic, and is a slave to anything or anyone touching her head. She sits and drools and will self-pet, if given a sleeping hand to rub against. She's exhausting, and she and Digit never made friends.

Along came Lala. She had a dog (Harriet, the dog of her heart, the best dog I ever knew) and an almost-dog, Miss Idaho (a chihuahua who meows).

Happy family. Two dogs, two cats. Couldn't ask for anything more, right? Right.

I wanted my OWN dog. Along comes Clara, the border collie. Then Digit disappeared, and we all mourned his death. In the throes of grief, three months after his disappearance, I went to the animal shelter to adopt a boy cat in his memory, and accidentally came home with two boy kittens I couldn't bear separating. Waylon and Willie made three cats, for those keeping score.

Then, four months after his disappearance, Digit returned from the dead. (Really. He'd probably jumped into a truck or car and been transported away, and per the vet, he'd been walking for FOUR MONTHS to get home. The pads and claws of his feet were worn to nothing. Most of his rear end was lost to a feral bite and resulting infection. The vet couldn't find a heartbeat and said I had a zombie-cat. He was hours from death when he showed up at our back porch, swaying, almost unable to cry. *I* was not so hampered and can still well up just thinking about it.)

Total: 3 dogs, 4 cats. SO MANY. Then Harriet died (really died, sadly), and we were very, very sad. Months later, Lala needed a dog to hug and found Clementine, the most ridiculous pit bull/beagle mix anyone's ever met. She wants ONLY to hug, to lean, to spoon, to cuddle. She doesn't care about food, air, or water, as long as a human is loving her.

Total: Still 3 dogs, 4 cats. We are completely outnumbered, and today, when Lala was sick and I took a nap in the bed with her, we were covered with animals. I can hear Martha wheezing from here when I say that we woke up and looked around (the animals don't usually sleep with us) to find we were infested with animals. There was one on each limb and some left over. It was crazy.

But it was joyful, too. It's utterly impossible to ever be lonely in the Hehu House. We are loved, as are they, and we all of us know it.

Just Not the Baby Talk, Please...

by Sophie
PETS

The photo to the left is proof of my great hypocrisy.

Lisa occasionally teases me for my animal-hating ways, and it's true that I'm contemptuous of animal mollycoddlers - people who dress their pets in costumes, or talk to them as if they understand, or - most dreadfully and horribly - speak in baby talk to their pets. People who, in the wake of terrible catastrophes, spend enormous amounts of time and money and energy on animals when there are people - human beings, children of God - who are suffering.

Yes, I have strong feelings on the subject, which are no doubt a result of being the granddaughter of homesteaders who raised animals to eat, and of having grown up among pragmatic and largely broke people who could neither afford nor countenance thousand-dollar vet bills when there were human mouths to feed and, besides, all around the countryside, a new litter of pups or kittens were generally a stone's throw away.

Ahem. All of that said....I do love my dog.

I've loved all my dogs: McDuff, Spot, Freddy, Stella, and now - gloriously - Bridget. McDuff was my childhood confessor and comfort, and I whispered all manner of secrets into his malodorous matted collie fur. Spot - oh, Spot, dog of my heart, best companion during the painful aftermath of my parents' divorce. Freddy, the sweet little ugly mutt who was the first pet I owned as a couple, followed by darling Stella - our first beagle, after I admired one in a movie and Bob surprised me with her for Valentine's day. Stella lived exactly fifteen years and died on Valentine's day two years ago.

After Stella died, we neither wanted nor needed another dog. Life was and remains complicated, far too complicated to fit a pet into the picture. But...well, then this happened:



and before long that damn dog grew up and things looked about like this:



...and as much as I'm loath to admit it, she's part of the family now.

I am still very uncomfortable with the amount of money and emotional investment Americans pour into their pets - I think we'd all be well served to spend a little more effort connecting with our neighbors, families, the downtrodden - and a LOT less money on pet accessories and toys and, God help us all, doggie day care and monogrammed water bowls and such.

But I have as much trouble resisting this as the next person:



So, here's a conflicted and ambivalent coffee-cheers to all the pets out there. In my heart of hearts, I do know how much they mean to so many of us, and today I honor that bond. I'll take Bridget on a walk, feed her an extra ration of frozen vegetables, let her jump up on the bed. It's the least I can do, given all the joy she's brought my dear ones. And, perhaps, me as well.

Oh, and P.S.? Just to make sure that my confession is complete...one year when my daughter was little, I made her an angel costume and I may have made Stella a little red satin doggie devil suit. And when my daughter was a bride for Halloween, I not only sewed Stella a bridesmaid costume but had their picture taken. With a parasol. And flowers.

Vision of the Future

The pens are happy to welcome Kristin Miller to the blog today. Kristin's debut romantic suspense novel, Dark Tide Rising, is available now.

Thank you to the Pens for inviting me to post today!  I’m proud to call you ladies writing peers and fast-growing friends.

I was an “old” child.  The one who never wanted to climb trees, choosing instead to sit in cool grass and pick petals off dandelions.  The one who secretly read John Saul’s Darkness instead of Judy Blume.  The one who crushed on Marty McFly instead of Prince Charming.  I had a few solid friends I could count on one hand.  We giggled playing Barbies, argued during four square, and whipped tetherballs like champions. 

But the ideas swimming in my head about what I wanted to do with my life differed from even my best of friends.  When a nine year old squeals in delight at the prospect of being a veterinarian, a doctor, a potter and an astronaut all at once, you say “Yes! That’s great!” But when a corkscrew-haired girl smiles and says, “I want to be a seventh grade English teacher” the response is usually “Really? Well that takes a certain type of person, honey…” 

People were right to dismiss my practical dreams at such a naïve, fruitful age.  It does take a certain type of person to want to teach middle school.  A person who’s wanted to teach seventh grade English since before they were in seventh grade.  A person who dreams of rows of Old Englished desks, the curt, woodsy smell of sharpened pencils and well-structured lessons spiraling around analysis, reflection and research.  An old child like me who always admired the teachers with pencils in their hair and glasses hanging off the tips of their noses.

Looking back, I’m not sure what made me decide to teach seventh grade, specifically.  Seven must’ve been my lucky number. The number of my favorite Madonna track on her True Blue album, perhaps.  Or the number of times I ogled over Jack “T. for Trustworthy” Colton in Romancing the Stone in a given week. 

Through the years, I never veered from my goal.  I went to a party college, yet seldom partied.  I kept my sights on those desks and lessons and those oh-so-trendy black-rimmed glasses.

And then I did it.  I reached my goal.  It was great, yet nothing like I envisioned it would be.  My students, pre-adolescent and wild-eyed, didn’t care about fluency or grammar or the very important difference between who and whom.  They didn’t care about standards or long-term goals.  They were nothing like I was at their age. They were kids.  How kids should be.  So full of wonderful, lofty ideas about the life ahead of them.  Too young to care about finals or SAT’s or Presidential hopefuls in the coming election.

It took a few years of teaching to realize how much reality veered from my childhood notions of adulthood.  I never needed nose-pinching glasses, even after the long nights spent skimming over expository essays.  Pencils never stayed in my hair, no matter how I tried to shove them in place.  Lessons revolving around standards changed more than fluorescent clothes trends.  Living my childhood to be a mature, wise adult didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped it would.

In some ways, it turned out better.  Quitting teaching to stay home and raise my own children has given me a richer lens with which to view life.  Being an old child kept my spirit focused and driven.  I reached my goals quickly.  But now, having lived thirty years with my nose to the grindstone, I can look up and enjoy the brightness of life—right alongside my own children.

I spin circles in snowfall with them, arms extended, tongue lolling down to catch fat, wet flakes.  I push them up trees, swing from low-hanging limbs, kicking my feet up as they climb to the highest, thinnest branch.  I’ve officially transitioned from old child to young adult; the kind that giggles louder and plays longer into the day.  The kind of young adult who drives a fast car and lets my hair do whatever the hell it wants to do, no matter who’s judging.  The kind that strolls in the pouring rain without an umbrella because, after all, it’s just water.  

I’ve learned that, often times, change is inevitable.  You can’t plan everything.  Hell, you can’t even dream everything.  While some long-standing dreams wither and die, other magnificently unthinkable ones bloom in their place.  I never dreamt of being a writer—my realist brain couldn’t comprehend something so far-fetched.  Yet here I am; fueling a passion I didn’t know existed.  Beyond my own happiness though, I’ve come to realize that inflaming passion in others—whether it’s by way of teaching, writing, or parenting—is truly what makes a soul vibrant and young.

Through all life’s curveballs, I’ve also realized there are some things in this world that remain constant…Marty McFly is still the hottest thing to hit Hollywood since one-point-twenty-one-gigawatts blasted his DeLorean back to 1955.

Kristin Miller is a former English teacher turned romance writer from northern California.  Her dark and sexy paranormal series, featuring a blood-war between vampires and shape-shifters in Crimson Bay California, will be available this summer from Avon Impulse.  Her debut romantic suspense novel, Dark Tide Rising, was released in February.  You can find out more about Kristin and her work at www.pararomance.blogspot.com or www.twitter.com/km_miller

Revenge of the Baby Blogs

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

by Gigi

Since Sophie posted such a lovely non-standard head shot of herself last week, the least I can do is post this St. Patrick's Day photo since it's St. Patty's day today. Did everyone remember to wear green?

I'm at an age where lots of my friends are having babies. And along with the babies, the vast majority have started baby blogs.

I love being able to keep up with my good friends who are spread out across the country -- seeing how their babies are growing and walking and saying the funniest things.

But I'm also curious about what the babies themselves will think a few years from now.

They say that kids growing up today are much more open to having everything in their lives public, thinking nothing of posting their most personal or outrageous details on Facebook or YouTube. But I wonder how far that extends. Will they really want their friends watching videos of diaper-clad tantrums? They're super-cute tantrums, it's true. But still.

It took me a long time to venture into social media, so I know I'm overly cautious. I joined this blog because a certain person strong-armed me into it -- for which I'm forever grateful :). And thanks to my 2011 New Year's resolutions, I've also got a photography blog and a Twitter account. (I'm still not on Facebook. I share an office with my office's social media strategist, who finds it amusing beyond believe that I'm one of the last remaining Facebook holdouts in the country.)

The first week I was on Twitter, I obsessively wondered how much was oversharing. I got over it once I got the hang of it, and now I'm having a blast (and I think I found a happy medium). But what about posting on behalf of your kids? I know I'm probably overthinking the whole thing -- but remember, anything posted online is potentially out there forever.

Not to end on that scary note, I'll wrap up by sharing the happy news that one of my friends is due to give birth any day now! This friend lives nearby, so her daughter will be one baby whose blog I won't need to read to see her grow up :)

Martha Writes For Children

"What's your book about?"

The dreaded cocktail party question.

I have a pitch at the ready: "A teen spy infiltrating a graffiti artist ring finds her loyalties torn between the mission and the artists who inspire her to redefine herself."

Sometimes I get wide-eyed excitement.
But sometimes I get, "Oh. You write for children."

Yeah. I write for people. Age thirteen and up. What's it to you?

I don't understand why black turtleneck-wearing literary types* have it in for children's literature.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for children.
Mark Twain wrote for children.
JM Barrie, Lewis Carroll, and even hoity-toity William Blake targeted children.

That dog-eared Salinger whine-fest hipsters lug around their college years? Originally published for adults. But today? That would be considered a book for children.

Children's literature has the best of all worlds.

The immediacy of action thrillers.
The poignancy of romantic tearjerkers.
The thematic impact of literary juggernauts.
Books, you know, being bought and read.

The inevitable follow-up question comes: "When will you write an adult book?"

But why would I write an adult book?

I already have the best audience in the world.

* Nothing against literary types who wear black turtlenecks. I even have friends who wear black turtlenecks.

The Childbirth Conspiracy

by Lisa Hughey

The other Pens have admirably covered the angst of teen years, motivational tools for recalcitrant elementary schoolers, the heart-warming auntie love, the onus to make the most of our lives so that we set a good example.

I’m going to cover a topic no one ever talks about. I’m breaking a major female taboo, but I just think that every woman deserves to know about the Childbirth Conspiracy.

If you’re young and still deciding about motherhood, I’ve got one word for you: BEWARE.

Sign courtesy of www.warningsigngenerator.com


At first, right after you pee in the cup, or on the strip, or whatever, you are THRILLED. All out crazy happy. Your heart pounds with excitement, every little hiccup in your day can be attributed to that tiny zygote growing inside you. You will be entering the hallowed halls of motherhood. You smile, you glow, you gloat!

And then you throw up.

Sometimes it’s just a little nausea, so you shrug and smile serenely, secure in the knowledge that it’s all for the good of that miracle growing inside of you. Two weeks later, you’re lying on the bathroom floor, clinging to the bowl, vowing never to eat again, and half-heartedly noting that you really need to clean the base of the toilet. Weak from dehydration and lack of sustenance, the floor seems like a pretty nice place to hang out.

But eventually the urge to blow chow seventy times a day fades along with your memories of cold tile and dirty commodes. It’s a miracle. You’re blessed. Give thanks!

And you toddle along, with a waist that expands faster than you can purchase new clothes. Nothing ever fits correctly, too wide in the legs, pinched in the waist, too tight in the chest, because Holy Mother of God, you’ve got giant boobs. (Which will sag the moment you’re done breastfeeding)

Then that baby rolls around in your stomach like an astronaut in zero gravity.

Image courtesy of Getty Images


The little cuss bounces off your ribs, your stomach and your bladder like a bowling ball against bumpers until you are peeing twenty times a day or attempting to relieve the constant heartburn brought on by eating the blandest food on the planet. The BLANDEST food on the planet. If you’re really lucky, constipation is your constant companion and you start mainlining Metamucil (after you steal it from your grandma) to try and relieve the symptoms.

And then it happens. One day as you tug on clothes that you’re sure must have shrunk in the wash because an elephant could wear this top and have room leftover for a few friends, and you look down to see...a great big belly.

You can’t see your feet. Not only can you not see them but chances are they are (with your cankles) swollen to forty times their normal size, forcing you to give up the one food you crave above all others.

Potato chips. Which immediately sends you into a crying jag that lasts for a good hour. Maybe longer, because, honestly besides the fact that their gestational period is months longer, you and Dumbo’s mother could be twins.

It’s too much. No one told you about all this!! When every woman you know was waxing poetic about the joy, the beauty, the miracle of freaking childbirth, they always neglect to mention the trials and challenges of actually being pregnant.

The truth is that every woman out there who has ever given birth signs a confidentiality contract, agreeing never to disclose the true facts about pregnancy. Then as if we are characters in some bizarre mind wipe sci-fi plot, women forget the horrible, awful, no-good days of being pregnant when the doctor places that tiny infant in their arms. But I feel it’s my duty as a woman to let you know that the conspiracy is real. It exists. Beware.

Even being able to combat the effects of the Motherhood Mind Wipe, I ended up with three of my own conspiracy babies.

Lisa

Counting Blessings

L.G.C. Smith

I'm short on words today, though long on thoughts about all the families who have lost children in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the children who have lost loved ones. In recognition that all we can ever be sure of is the present, here are some of the lovely moments the children in my life have given me in the last year or so.

#1 Niece: Christmas at Grandma's & Grandpa's

#2 Niece at the playground

#3 Niece in the wading pool last summer

My only nephew was born last summer.
I got to take his sisters for their first look at him.

Sixteen? How did that happen?

My cousin's smart, beautiful oldest daughter at fifteen.

My favorite non-blood-relation boys with the Leezlet.

Some of the other FHF kids and G bellying up to the bar for cake.

Only Nephew at 8 1/2 months.

My three favorite girls in the world last month at Grandma's.

This One's For The Moms

--Adrienne Miller

I’m not a big advice giver, especially when it comes to writing tips. We all know the biggies by heart anyways. Butt in chair. Hands on keyboard. Do it every day. There are great books if you need deeper help. On Writing by Stephen King is a favorite. Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird is pretty good too. I can’t pretend to do better than those two. 

But there might be one area that I can shed a little light on. You see, about three years ago, I almost quit writing. I hadn’t been at it for very long, not seriously at least, when my older son was diagnosed with autism. My life was full, too full, I figured for me to engage in dream chasing. I was already juggling a toddler, a preschooler and a full-time job, and now life was tossing a complex disability into the mix. I could have given up an no one would have faulted me. No one but me, that is.

Of course, I didn’t give up, and in the last three years I’ve learned a handful of things that have kept me going. 

1. Give up on perfect

And I’m not talking about perfectly folded towels and immaculate kitchens, though if that is your hang-up then it might be a good idea to take a step back from that too. 

No, I’m talking about something far more insidious -- the idea of perfect. The fiction that we create in our minds about the perfect tomorrow. The perfect writing conditions, the ones that, if only we had them, we could pump out six or seven bestsellers a year.

You know the story. It always starts off with One Day. One day when the kids are in school. One day when I have six solid hours of quiet to write. One day when I have my own office filled with comfy couches and potted plants.

One Day kills Today.  And there’s no guarantee that it’s coming. All of those problems that are clogging up your life right now, yeah, in five years they all may be resolved, but guess what? New ones are going to rush right in and take their place. Problems you can’t imagine yet. Problems just as complex and annoying as the ones you already have. 

One Day doesn’t exist. There is only wonderful, chaotic, annoyance-filled today with all of its lovely potential. 

2. You are tougher than you think

You’ve dealt with everything that parenthood has flung your way. The nausea,  lack of sleep, the panic you felt when the nurses first wheeled you out of the hospital with that helpless little bundle in your arms--you got through all that. You’ve coped with major and minor doctor visits, temper tantrums, and all out fights. Every time life chucked a curveball at your head, and you muttered to yourself that you couldn’t handle it, you did. 

Motherhood is a crucible. You go into it one person, and the stress, the worry, the pain and the joy changes you. Just remember, you are as strong as the fires you are forged in.

The hard work of writing and rewriting, the wear of rejection and the stress of deadlines, I’m not going to lie and say that they’re easy in comparison. I’m just guessing that if you can get through back to back sleepless nights with a squalling baby throwing up all over you, you probably have what it takes to handle a few faceless rejection letters .

3. What you’re doing is actually good for your kids

I know sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when good ol’ guilt starts creeping its way into your head late at night, but I promise you its true.

Sure, kids need homemade cookies and somebody to snuggle them when they fall down and scrape their knee, and I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess that you do that. But they need more than that. 

Everyday your kids are watching you and they are learning what it means to live a life, lessons that our society at large does not teach them. If their momma is a writer, they learn that passions are worth following, that dreams take hard work and dedication to come true, and that failure is just a part of the road to success.