A Little of This, a Little of That

Old Dog, New Trick

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: I know how to make sound panels for a recording studio. 

Not that it was ever on my bucket list, but when Jed asked our church tech team for volunteers to help stretch fabric over wooden frames and stuff them with Rockwool insulation, I thought “why not?” I watched the how-to video Jed sent and it didn’t look like rocket science. 

Turns out I’m good at it. Or at least fast. I cranked out five of those puppies in the time it took the group of us to finish a dozen. (If my five are the first to fall apart, we’ll never know, since they’re all identical.) They now hang in a room at PAC which will be used to create videos to use on the church website or for Sunday services.

So if the writing gig doesn’t work out, I have another option up my sleeve: professional sound panel builder. Now that I’m of an age where the world is no longer my oyster, it’s a comfort to possess skills which I’m sure are in high demand around here.

An Update on the Book

Since I announced that my novel finally found a publisher, some of you have asked about the process.

Okay, maybe one of you asked. 

I’m happy to say the first half of my advance has been deposited and partly spent. I’ve survived  a conference call with my acquisitions editor, Erin, in New York City and my developmental editor, Shari, in Oregon. Erin oversees the whole project while Shari is currently working with the manuscript and must return it to me by June 6 with suggested improvements regarding plot, character, and overall story. Right now I’ve no idea how intense those revisions might be, but I suspect there’ll be no time for making sound panels, attending concerts, cutting grass, or any other such frivolity for the three weeks they give me to rewrite and return it. 

After that, we do one more quick back-and-forth before it goes on to a copy editor and a line editor who go over it with fine tooth combs. Then the marketing people do their thing with cover design and promotions, gearing up to release it in January. It’s quite the process and I’m finding it fascinating, exciting, and still pretty unbelievable.

Thanks for asking!

A Word for Teachers

I attended an excellent spring concert at WestparkSchool last week—my, but Portage is home to a lot of talented young people! I’ll never know where a music teacher begins to teach students a song when it’s strictly percussion—I think I counted over 25 drums, trash cans, and other things that can be beat upon—but it was thrilling to hear and see. Well done, Tyson Anderson! 

Teachers of all stripes, you amaze me. With June here, you are no doubt counting the days. If I can give you a word of encouragement to help you through your last month, it’s this: please don’t simply hang in there during this crazy time. Sometimes it takes only one comment from a respected teacher to change the course of a student’s life forever. Even if you have only 15 days left with your students, ask yourself how many life-giving comments can be uttered in the span of 15 days. Make them count. One day you will see the impact you made, and you’ll be glad you resisted the temptation to check out early. 

And whatever they pay you, it’s not enough. If I ruled the world, rock stars and teachers would trade salaries. God bless you!

The Other Man's Grass is Always Shorter

Call me mean, but at our house, the one-armed guy does the grass mowing.

Not that I haven’t done my share. When our kids were too little to push our old walk-behind and we had acres of country property to cut, I got the workout most of the time. As the children grew, they each graduated into the job and we eventually upgraded to a ride-on. After the kids moved out, I stubbornly refused to get behind a mower even though we had downsized to a tiny lawn. I figured if I gave in once, the job would be mine forever.

The problem is, my idea of when grass needs cutting differs from that of the one-armed guy. In order to maintain my position, I’ve been forced to swallow my pride several times when, in my humble opinion, our lawn did not live up to neighbourhood standards.

But farm work must come first, I’m told. So with hubby off doing the farm thing, I decided to be nice and cut the grass. All right. I admit I was less motivated by being nice than by the prospect of company coming. Our son’s family, along with his wife’s parents and my mom were all coming over. Our son’s father-in-law is all thumbs—green thumbs, that is. He’s a plant-whisperer. His yard looks like the Butchart Gardens and it’s a real exercise in humility to let him see ours, even at its best. Which it definitely wasn’t.

How hard can this be? I thought, pulling the mower out of the shed. I fiddled with the electric starter until it roared to life, then began to push.

Wow, I thought. I know I’m getting older, but I don’t remember this being such hard work.

But I bravely soldiered on, grunting at every turn, sweat running down my back and shoulders aching. I gained a new appreciation for the one-armed guy. I was nearly finished the front yard when a thought occurred to me:

Wait a minute. Isn’t this thing self-propelled?

Three more thoughts followed, in rapid succession:

What does this lever do?

Whoa!                       

and,

Wait for me!

With this new discovery, I made better time in the back yard. Then I nearly stepped in some dog poop. We don’t have a dog. It looked dry and I wore gloves, so I picked it up and tossed it into the barrel with the weeds I’d been pulling earlier. Dumb move. The poop wasn’t dry. Thankfully, a new pair of gloves waited in the shed.

Later, I set that barrel with the dog poop into the box that holds our trash cans. The one with the closed lid. The one the hot sun beats on. The one I would open the next day and nearly faint from the assault to my nose. Yeah, that one.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

With the mowing done, I looked around at my work. It seemed odd that I’d filled the grass bag only once and our dandelions still showed off their chipper yellow faces. In fact, I could hardly tell I had mowed.

Later, I learned the mower blade sat too high to do a proper job.

Still, I’d made an improvement. Not that it mattered. By the time the plant-whispering company arrived two days later, the lawn was covered with snow. Gotta love Manitoba.

That was a week ago. As I write this, the one-armed man is mowing our lawn. Music to my ears.

Haven't you always wanted to read someone else's diary?

If, like me, you find other people’s diaries hard to resist, you’ll be happy to hear a brand new book released this week called Hutterite Diaries: Wisdom from My Prairie Community.

Author Linda Maendel lives on the Elm River Colony west of Oakville where she is an educational assistant at the colony’s school and spends her free time writing. Her articles have appeared in The Daily Graphic, The Central Plains Herald Leader, The Manitoba Cooperator, the Winnipeg Free Press, and Our Canada. This is not Linda’s first book, but it is the first I am able to read since the others are in German or Hutterisch—the language Linda speaks at home but which had never been used in written form until she tackled it for one of her children’s books.

Linda wrote Hutterite Diaries in English, and it’s so engaging, I finished it in two sittings. If you enjoy my blog posts, you will love Linda’s book. Her stories are more interesting than mine and she includes more photos! Linda knows how to combine ordinary slice-of-life events with bits of Hutterite history in a fascinating way. I found myself laughing in parts, crying in others, and definitely learning things I never knew. I could almost hear the beautiful harmonies of their German hymn-singing, smell the fresh bread baking, and see the colorful gardens Linda describes.

“I’m journaling about living on a Hutterite colony; each story or article is a glimpse of my communal life. Creating word pictures is like collecting treasures; it makes me take a closer look at things,” Linda said when given the opportunity to publish this book. The poignant story she tells in Chapter 4, A Circle Not Broken, is worth the price of the book all by itself for those who love incredible, goosebump-inducing “coincidences.”

Published by Herald Press, the book is part of the “Plainspoken” series, which gives voice to Anabaptist writers in a world where novels, tourist sites, and TV shows offer second-hand accounts of Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterite life—some of which are flat-out wrong.

You may also want to check out Linda’s blog at www.hutt-writevoice.blogspot.ca. Really? A Hutterite woman who blogs? As Linda says, “While other Hutterite women love to sew, I would rather write. It’s not something I have in common with many of my fellow Hutterites, but I’m fine with that. We have so many things in common that it’s okay to differ in some areas.”

Linda’s engaging style and skillful telling of these heartwarming stories will help you enter into life on a modern Hutterite colony while giving you glimpses into their rich and tumultuous history and their unwavering faith. Reading it gave me a deeper appreciation for and understanding of my Hutterite neighbours, and any time you can accomplish that, you assist in the work of God himself.

“We aren’t perfect,” Linda says, “but we have figured out a few things about how to live together in community and about what works and what doesn’t. Many experiments in Christian community have not lasted, and we are humbly grateful that our communities, with all their ongoing struggles, have remained strong and viable through all these centuries.”

The best way to own an autographed copy of this lovely book? Come to Linda’s book launch at the Portage Regional Library on Saturday, May 23, between 2:00 and 3:30 p.m. If you miss that event, “Hutterite Diaries” is available from Amazon.com or you can ask for it in bookstores.

3 Time Saving Tips (for those with better things to do...)

My mother thinks I’m too busy.

“You’re not 35 anymore,” she tells me. This from the woman who will never see 80 again, yet charges around like she’s forever on a mission—probably because she is. 

“If I don’t do stuff, I’ll have to give up my column,” I tell her. “I won’t have anything to write about.”

It’s true. If I had the courage, I’d take up skydiving or bungee jumping just to get a column out of it. If I had the money, I’d fly around the world and deliver my adventures to readers 500 words at a time. If I had the energy, I’d volunteer for every opportunity that presents itself and tell you how it goes. If I had the talent, I’d star in a blockbuster movie and regale you with the ups and downs of fame. If I had a willing partner, I’d learn ballroom dancing and let you vicariously trip the lights fantastic as you read all about it.

But there’s only so much I can say about preparing council agendas at City Hall or cooking vegan meals or performing yardwork or taking afternoon naps or pressing buttons on a computer in my church’s tech room. Readers are tired of my old car and my new couch and my weird health issues. You’ve heard enough about my kids and grandkids, at least until one of them wins an Olympic medal or pulls off a bank heist or walks on Mars—all of which I consider highly unlikely.

So I have to keep doing stuff and then writing about it.

Mom’s right when she says I’m not 35. I also require ridiculous amounts of sleep, which bugs me. Life’s too short to spend sleeping. When I see people capable of staying up until midnight, I feel jealous. Especially if they waste those golden moments watching TV or playing video games. Oh, the books I could read. The books I could write!

As someone who once held down three part-time jobs plus college courses with three children still at home, I’ve learned a thing or two about juggling time. So I’m offering three tips for those with a household to run but better things to do.

                                         

#1.  Make your Calendar and your To-Do List the same thing.

I’m a compulsive list-maker. But making a list on random slips of paper or the back of your hand can be counterproductive. I’m old-school enough to use a spiral bound daily planner. It goes everywhere I go and I write everything in it: appointments, meetings, due dates for bills, tasks for the day, when to put the recycling out, what’s for supper and what books I’ve read. These planners have settled arguments and answered unsolved riddles as well.

#2.  Do housework on a schedule, not for company.

I spent twelve years cleaning other people’s homes and quickly learned how demoralizing it can be to clean hard all day only to return to your own dirty house. So once a day, I walk through my home and put away anything out of place. I wash sheets and towels simply because it’s Monday. If it’s Thursday, it means the clothes are getting washed. I clean floors and bathrooms on a regular schedule, with some flexibility. After a while, it becomes a routine and you don’t get unbearably behind.

#3.  Cook in marathons.

To be fair, every day felt like a cooking marathon when the kids lived with us. But now that we’re back to two, I don’t cook every day. I make a large pot of soup on the weekend that provides lunch all week. I double-up on most meals so we have extra for the next day or for the freezer. Sometimes I make two or three dishes simultaneously, not bothering to wash the food processor, measuring cups, or spatulas between recipes. Hasn’t killed us yet. The kitchen might look like a disaster zone afterwards, but it only needs cleaning once.

If you already follow these tips, I apologize for taking still more of your precious time. If you don’t, I hope you find it helpful.