Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Waning Moon till Feb 22

   In this part of the world we had a Full Moon on Tuesday. That ended the most recent waxing phase of the moon and set us gently into February’s waning phase, which will last until the New Moon on February 21st. So for the next thirteen days (I am writing this a bit late) we are poised for a list of gardening chores that should really give us a good head start on the growing season! Interested? Cool beans.
   To review, the waning phase is when the moon is receding in fullness. This is when she is figuratively dormant or barren, lending energy to underground tasks, decay-related work, and bulbs and roots.
   In Oklahoma, we have a forecast of big winter weather this weekend, possibly a blizzard. So the confluence of a waning moon and the soon-coming need to hunker down clearly outlines my work for today and tomorrow. It’s funny how nature cooperates with herself, eh? This is what I need to be doing instead of reading and writing:
  • Clean water troughs and chicken pond. Refill all before freeze hits.
  • Clean chicken coop and replace shred, etc.
  • Scoop manure from fields for bagging and composting.*
  • Remove weeds and remaining dead tomato plants from flower beds.
  • Plant last minute daffodil bulbs.
  • Continue filling raised beds, lasagna-style.
  • Groom horses and make sure they’re warm.
  • Refill wild bird feeders.
  • If you’re brave enough, you might plant perennials & potatoes now, but it’s a bit too frosty here still.
   
   Once the waning work is done, this is one of the best times of the month to daydream and plan. Visualize your dream garden and put pen to paper. Order your seeds while they’re cheap and then turn back to the housework, because pretty soon it’s gonna be all about the garden again. Basically, I think for the waning moon you just focus on the words “dormant” and “underground.” Soil amendment, weed removal, animal nurturing, preventative maintenance… All those things which speak to you of closeness, quietness, and protectiveness, this is what to do until February 21st. Then, with the New Moon, we get to focus again on construction and creativity and above ground beauty! 
   
   Working in patterns and cycles like this is right up my alley. I feel so optimistic about the growing season this year! Are you a lunar experimenter too? I would so love to hear your ideas and advice. 
Trust Nature. 
Work Hard. 
Enjoy Your Days.
xoxoxo
*Incidentally, if anyone who is more or less local wants some excellent composting material, we have it! Organic, locally sourced, well rotted manure from chickens, horses, and buffalo ready to either spread or decompose at will. It’s especially great if you making your own soil.

Sweet Blog, Really? Aww.

   Well, well, well. I twice received this yummy looking “get to know ya” blog award this week from two very different and equally fascinating women. First Kat the dairy farmer’s loving wife and then Periphery, the eloquent and thought provoking monkey wrangler sent the following strawberry shortcake button. I suspect this was in order to test my bikini-preparation resolve. The whole thing was shrouded in ceremonious blog hospitality of course, but I have my doubts. We’re having company later today, and guess what I want to serve? Strawberry Shortcake. Thanks, ladies. Thanks a lot. xo

Part One: Seven Random Facts About Me. 

1.  I have broken out my two top front teeth a total of eight times between the ages of nine and thirty seven, but surprisingly I do not play hockey. All of those events were solo traumas, meaning that no other person was ever involved in any of the accidents. Meaning that I alone claim ownership of the klutziness. Meaning that when it happens and I get really super crazy mad about it, I have no idea where to direct my fury. Front tooth trauma hurts, you guys, and fixing it is mucho-dinero expensivo. Protect your mouths.

2.  I have a goose (actually a gander, but he has a goose’s name, Mia) who is more protective, jealous and territorial over me than any man has ever been over any woman. It is endearing and embarrassing all at the same time.

3.  I can more or less do a back bend but cannot stand back up from it. So I don’t do them very often. Because that’s awkward.

4.  I can whip up a pretty fierce Alfredo sauce but rarely know the exact balance of my checking account. Thank the sweet heavens above that I am married to a financial gangstah who also happens to thrive on Alfredo sauce. That worked out nicely.

5.  I love to read and usually have three or more books going at once, which drives my husband to the brink of insanity. Fortunately he likes to watch every possible incarnation of pawn broker television known to man, so I often catch up on reading during these time slots. And we cuddle. I groove this.

6.  If I suddenly, with no strings attached, had to choose to live anywhere else on this planet, it would be in New Orleans, Louisiana. While there I would touch the blooming azaleas, drink French roast chicory coffee, and watch the street performers between stops inside book stores and art galleries. I would soak up the jazz. I would occasionally dine with Anne Rice and make dandelion bracelets at cemeteries, but only in the daytime.

7.  I have discovered that separation from my nearly grown children is as brimming with lessons, comforts, and understanding as it is steeped in pain and regret. I see that as long as they are thriving, I can live with anything.

Part Two: My Nominations for This Award
I am tagging five people today.
 
New House New Home New Life: Heather captured my attention initially because we share one very particular, very unusual heartbreak. But she has kept my attention by being a passionate homemaker and gardener, two things to which I aspire in the thirstiest way. Plus she comments here frequently, which pretty much makes my day. xo

Carin my Swedish friend: Carin is a Swedish visual artist living in the U.K., and I love to soak up her ideas and read through her book lists and reviews, even if I’m not a scrap-booker and am unlikely to post crafts. Hers are inspirational! Also, when I read her comments as well as her blog, I assign her a lovely tea-and-crumpets accent. But I have no clue as to its accuracy or authenticity.


Lou Lou Sucre: This Southern belle has the most beautiful, most cleanly designed home and garden, and her blog is overflowing with eye candy for the real world. I have pinned more than a few of her photos to my Pinterest boards and am currently on the lookout for green wall platters like hers. It doesn’t hurt that she is a Louisiana neighbor. I love to hear gardening stories from people in similar zones.

My artistic philosophy friend from South Africa: Nadya. I would so miss her thoughtful contributions if they ever stopped. Her perspective (specifically, her willingness to gently challenge my perspective) is pretty much the reason I want to approach most topics in the first place. She first caught my gaze while I was browsing poetry and mandala art, then she led me through some yoga circles before I ever really tried it, and I see that we have a lot of the same reading haunts now. We are working out the details of a piece of commissioned artwork right now. I cannot wait to share that!

Fabulous, Healthy, and Loving It:  This young woman named Amy is a relatively new blogger who is driven to transform her health and her body, another something to which I aspire. Check her out, she is beautiful and has a great attitude!

Part Three: Share the Rules. 
We all know the rules.

Okay well I hope you have time to visit these five blogs. And I also hope you’re not bored to tears by my seven personal facts. I think after this everyone is yawning and in search of caffeine.

Happy Wednesday!
xoxoxo

Early February Senses Tour

   What a wide net of beauty and love we have around us right now. I haven’t participated in Monica’s 5 Senses Tour in a while, probably because the Small Stones project kept that thirst for observation pretty well quenched throughout January. But here we are a fourth of our way through the new month and my senses are overwhelmed again. Once more in need of lancing.
What I See: Patches of green clover and weeds interspersed with the dormant grasses. Small craters scratched into the earth by our chickens, revealing nearly black soil, crumbly and soft. Gorgeous new round bale of hay in the barn. New-to-us tablecloth we found at a garage sale this past weekend, a piece of round floral print cotton that I predict will become my favorite. At least for a while. Gray clouds covering the sun, dimming the early springtime, softening my gaze. New photos of my two beautiful daughters, faces that take my breath away. And possibility. I see possibility all around us.
What I Hear: Roosters crowing with serious joy every time they find new forage material. Geese screaming objections to every breeze. Horses exhaling and snuffling the afternoon into a soft, easy pace. Pacino preening himself before a full-belly nap. And I hear God whispering to me that He hasn’t let go, that He never will.
What I Smell: Fresh coffee in the kitchen. Vanilla candle next to me while I write. Tomato babies upstairs in the sunniest window. Buffalo manure in the front field, so strong today that is reminds me of the elephant house at the zoo. Skunk spray in the barn, which kind of smells good. And big, important changes.
What I Taste: Perfectly dark, fresh, hot, sweet, creamy coffee. And thankfully much less bitterness than I have tasted in months.
What I Feel: The grit of dirt under my fingernails from potting up tomato babies then playing with the cats. Thin cotton shirt on my arms. Crinkled paper pages and spiral spine of my planner. Romance in the air. And hope.
Feel Your World and Enjoy It.
xoxoxo
5 senses tour
   

Glimpsing Adrienne Sharp: Ballerina, Novelist, Inspiration.

   Connected again by Ms. Julia Callahan, I have spent the last couple of weeks corresponding with a lovely woman named Adrienne Sharp, authoress of The True Memoirs of Little K.

   Ms. Sharp’s laid back openness was like a warm blanket on my jangled nerves. I had so much I wanted to learn from her and had trouble reining in my eagerness, yet she was perfectly calm and easy going about the exchange. If you’re interested in my full review of the book, well here ya go.

   Okay. 
Following is our emailed interview. 
I am still crossing my fingers 
to someday visit Los Angeles and buy her lunch.
Or instead, maybe she’ll visit the farm
and teach me how to write fictive action!
Adrienne, I’ll make shortbread and hot tea. 
C’mon… We have plenty of room. xoxoxo
How did you arrive at the original idea for this book, and then how did you choose from which character’s perspective to tell the story?
   Because I was a ballet girl and I read ballet history voraciously, I knew about the famous Kschessinska and I knew vaguely that she was the mistress of Nicholas II. But it wasn’t until I wrote about the choreographer George Balanchine as a little boy in imperial Russia in my last novel that I drew close to the material for Little K. She was a perfect product of her place and time—a social climbing ballerina who used the stage as her platform to socialize with the balletomanes of Nicholas II’s court—and as almost all the counts, grand dukes, and tsars were big balletomanes, her access was limitless. As apparently, were her charms and her ambition.


If your book is translated to a film, what actors and actresses do you like for which roles? May I please suggest Robin Wright for Alix? Perfection…

   Robin Wright—perfect as Alix.  Kschessinska? Catherine Zeta-Jones? She’s a dancer, she’s small, and she can be gritty.
You said it took you a few years of research to write this (incredible) book…during the research and writing, did you ever want to change perspective or direction? Do you have any drafts laying around that were sketched out from, say, Niki’s perspective? (What a read that would be too!)

   K was my girl right from the start. But what I did think about doing was an overlay of marginalia from her son Vova’s point of view. She was writing this memoir for him, and I thought it would be fun for him to comment on what she wrote and to reveal what it was like to be her son, to provide his perspective of those scenes she recalls. (I suspect he was homosexual, though no one ever mentions this in my research.) But my editor overruled me—she thought the marginalia thing had become a bit too much of a trendy thing to do. But I still like the idea.

I thought the touch of placing young revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in K’s ransacked palace was brilliant and terrifying, especially that he sat at the tsarevich’s little school desk and wrote in his notebook! Is there any history behind that, or is it a wonderful piece of fiction from your mind?
   The nascent Bolsheviks did take over her palace and Lenin did in fact take Mathilde’s son’s bedroom for his study. I invented the part about Lenin writing in Vova’s school notebooks–or rather, appropriated the idea of using a child’s notebook for political work. Nicholas’s brother Michael’s abdication as tsar in 1917 was written in a child’s notebook, grabbed from the desk of the palace of friends, where he happened to be staying as a guest.

Did you know what your stopping point would be before you started? I personally did not predict where we ended up and was delighted and satisfied completely. But surprised above all. Did you decide that early on?
   I always planned to end with K preparing for death, sorting through the items she wanted in the coffin with her. But when I got there, this seemed too gloomy an ending. So I gave it some juice, bringing back some of her old defiance, her belief that the old order would be restored, that her son would find his rightful place. Otherwise, she couldn’t die. She was too worried about what would happen to her son without her. In reality, he ended up on public assistance and in public housing. So she was right to be worried.

How did you do your research: history books, internet, interviews? Did you compose your story as you went along, alternately with doing the research, or did you amass all of your background knowledge first then devote yourself to the fiction? What was your daily life like during those years?

   I used books, articles, and the internet—and I researched all along the way—to the bitter end. In fact, when I was working on my galleys I couldn’t stop adding details I was culling from my nonstop reading. When I started researching, I couldn’t keep any of the Romanovs straight—they all have the same names! By the end of it, I could spot misidentified photo captions.
Have you visited any cities in Russia? Or Paris?
   I’ve been to Paris, but I’ve visited Russia only in my research.

As a ballerina, have you danced any of the ballets described in your book? Or are these even still alive?

   Since I was only a ballet girl, essentially a talented scholarship girl in training to be a dancer, I never danced in any of the ballets described in my book. But because I was a ballet girl, I’ve seen almost all of those ballets performed. And those ballets Petipa created for the Imperial Ballet have become the foundation of almost every classical ballet company, except for those  created especially for the tsar’s private viewing pleasure at those hermitage performances, like the Four Seasons.
I would love some solid advice on the mechanics and mindset of keeping so many complex characters organized and effective! What a feat… so many personalities and passions kept alive over so many decades. I am having trouble writing a story about a dozen Sea Monkeys. Help me?
   Honestly, I don’t know how I did it—except by many rewrites.
Fascinating to me that a contemporary author is taking the time to reread a classic, War and Peace, especially such a long work, and not for the first time.  I’m going to take that as good advice for all of us. What else are you reading lately? Who are your favorite authors?

   You know something? War and Peace is short on specific, concrete details to create setting, and I really miss that. I can’t see the rooms or streets or clothing. And I’m noting that Tolstoy had some trouble creating Russia’s war with Napoleon into something more than a dutiful summary of the action of the battles. It’s very hard even for the master to bend history into dramatic fictive action. As for reading—I’m reading a lot of history of Los Angeles circa 1939. And I love Jennifer Egan’s work.
Care to give us a glimpse of what other epics are brewing in your imagination? It’s okay if you’d rather keep that close to your chest. But I will be reading it, whatever you come up with.

   I’m working on a novel tentatively titled “Hollywood Land,” that looks at how the Russian Jewish immigrants who came to Los Angeles too ambitious to peddle rags or scrap metal became movie moguls or gangsters, like Louis B. Mayer or Mickey Cohen. They created a parallel universe in the city—since they weren’t welcome in the institutions already there. So they built their own racetrack, country club, cotillion, hospital, talent agencies and law firms. 
   My main character is an eight year old boy who watches his mother dancing as a Busby Berkeley girl in some of the MGM movie musical extravaganzas of that time and helping his father as a bookie who falls in with Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel. So I’m reading about MGM back lots, Louis B. Mayer, and the Jewish gangsters who controlled the unions, Nazi Bund meetings in the Santa Monica mountains and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese rooted out of Boyle Heights and sent to Santa Anita racetrack to await deportation to camps in Arizona, Navy boys waiting for their call ups beating up zoot suiters downtown—another big canvas, I guess. Woe is me.

Did you read my quick, amateurish thoughts comparing your heroine to Chiyo in Memoirs of a Geisha? I am fascinated by this role women play in such different parts of the world. What do you think? Who do you think had a better life, the ballerina or the geisha?

   The dancer in one of the tsar’s companies in imperial Russia retired after twenty years with a lifetime pension—so by age thirty-eight she had some financial independence. Many of the girls married well and raised happy theater families, the kind of family Mathilde came from. Her sister married a baron at her retirement. And if a dancer were a woman like Mathilde, willing to sacrifice respectability for a very wealthy protector or two, she could accrue some other worldly goods, as well. But she could never really leave her class—she belonged to the demimonde, not the aristocracy, however she might play with them. And Mathilde could never have married either of her grand ducal lovers if there had not been a revolution and the court had not moved to Paris to live in exile. Even there, she was tolerated, side-lined, and most painful for her, so was her son—and the two of them were abandoned completely when her husband, Grand Duke Andrei, died.

Again, thank you. As a daydreaming writer I appreciate your insights. As a blogger I appreciate your time and openness. As a reader I am just a fan!!
   Thank you—your questions were fabulous and fun to ponder. Let me know if I can ever help you in any way.
   Wasn’t that fun, you guys? Isn’t she interesting? Every one of her answers triggered at least three new questions in my head, but alas… Life goes on. This just underscores the value and importance of conversation, of exchange and searching in life. I hope you’re inspired to read this book if you haven’t yet. And I also hope you’re inspired to buckle down and write something if that is in your heart. 
   Happy springtime, Adrienne! So very nice to “meet” you, and best wishes on your exciting new novel!
Scratch Below the Surface!
xoxoxo
   

Bedlam Basketball Saturday

   Our good friends Bob and Tina are long time season ticket holders for Oklahoma University women’s basketball, and they are very generous to share their tickets with friends when they have to miss a game. Today Handsome and I were the lucky recipients of their good will. And as luck would have it, although we didn’t realize it until we arrived in Norman, it was the season’s bedlam game!  OU versus OSU, you guys. We are lucky ducks.
   We were bouncing excitedly toward our aisle seats just as the court was flooding with coaches, players, and cheerleaders. The stadium was packed, by the way. Packed to its collegiate gills. And the music was blaring and the lights were flashing, and it all got my heart pounding within seconds of being inside Lloyd Noble Center. I suppose lots of games start that way, but today the adrenaline lasted until the very last moment.

    A line of half a dozen young men carrying OU flags ran full speed around the room, through the crowd, as the band played our state song, Ooooooooklahoma! The wind was sweeping down the plains for sure. I love that dang song. Apparently lots of people do, because I could hear the words being shouted here and there around the big room.

   The crowd, mostly crimson but evenly dotted with orange, was in a perfect frenzy by the time a group of OU students unfurled an American flag the size of the basketball court. I have never seen a flag that expansive except at the top of a flag pole. They stretched it out, and both teams including their coaches and cheerleaders and mascots, referees, Honor Guard, everybody, dozens of people, held it respectfully along all four edges. The lights lowered, and chills washed over me.
   A young woman in military uniform began singing an angelic version of our national anthem, and about halfway through the anthem something really special happened. The crowd joined her. As she gained momentum at the best parts, everyone sang behind her, tentatively, warmly, almost just humming. And it sort of seemed to propel the singer, which frenzied everybody all over again. 
    It was wonderful.
   Between the two emotional songs, the crowd’s tangible love for OU and head coach Sherri Coale, and the unexpected fireworks behind each basket, I was crying big fat tears before tip-off. We cheered hard and soaked up the fun. I mean, really, at a bedlam game in your home state, no matter who usually has your loyalty, it’s hard to be disappointed when either team does well. And that was especially good today, because both teams played very well. It was a drum tight, energetic, nail-biting contest. I don’t think the margin was more than six points until the very last few minutes of the game, when OU finally won with 80 points to Oklahoma State’s 71 points.

   Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that the halftime entertainment was none other than Judson Laipply, the guy who does the Evolution of Dance. You know, the internet sensation who dances for a few seconds each to a long string of popular dance songs, spanning several decades? We were laughing so hard. I may or may not have been worried about wetting my pants. Even the most serious suit-wearing pages and security guards were sporting big, goofy grins. Old people shoulders were bouncing in laughter, too. Little kids were dancing along with him. It was awesome.

   So for two hours we enjoyed the game and entertainment. The college athletes ran, dribbled, fouled, scored, and cheered each other on. During the second half I got to high-five one of the mascots and shake hands (hooves?) with the other. Boomer and Sooner.

   These OU women’s basketball games are always fun, but today was extra special. It was kind of a charmed event, and I am so glad we were there for it all.

Thanks a bunch Bob & Tina!!!
xoxoxoxo