Poetry As Food, Food As Poetry

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

Today seems like a good day for a poem I wrote last year after I wandered a grocery store trying to find ingredients. I submitted this to a virus poetry contest. You can read the winning entries here. Public Poetry is also producing a virus poem anthology which looks amazing.

Hungry For Thought

The over-proofed dough falls with my IQ
While I make bad art with pasta and glue

My brain resembles last night’s lasagna
Cold as a scope the doctor puts on ya

Maybe a chicken too dry to enjoy
A letdown, some say, like coffee with soy

I wish that I knew how I used to think
My julienned thoughts are all in the sink

Pureed with peas to a mushy green mire
A soup, if you will, with one rubber tire

Covid I curse, it’s this virus’s fault
For 19 plus pounds of junk in my vault

I long to create a thing that’s quite smart
Clove mixed with peaches, a tasty pie chart

One thought every day is all that I wish
With luck by next year I’ll finish a dish

In honor of my cooking poem, tonight I made fried chicken. Messy but delicious!

Take care. Mask up. Be safe.  

Poetry As Food, Food As Poetry

Pitties and Peaches

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , 2 Comments
Love Lies Bleeding/Zuroski

I’ve been trying to write an update but recently the words haven’t formed properly. Today, no matter what, I’m sending this out into the world with a wave and a last hug. Time to move on.

Remember the DIY faucet project I was working on? Well, I didn’t finish the install, which I am really sad about. My daughter’s friend — hey, Noah, thanks again! — did the job for us. I had every intention of working with my youngest to complete the installation but I broke my foot all to pieces and can’t bend it to crouch, can’t sit on it … you know the deal. Noah happened to be in town visiting family and stopped by to help out. The faucet is great, by the way. It’s a hands-free Kohler kitchen faucet (a Costco find) which is way more convenient than I expected.

Booted/Zuroski

You might think that, since I am a writer, having a broken foot would be no big deal. After all, I sit all day long and write. But that’s not actually true. I move around every couple hours. I often sit on my feet while I’m writing. Etcetera. Etcetera. Although I’m very disciplined, discomfort makes me lose my focus. And I’m going to whine about it until I can walk without this stupid boot. 

In brief, my sweet pittie ran into me with all 50 pounds of her enthusiasm while she had a bad case of the zoomies. My foot did things feet aren’t supposed to do and then swelled to football size. I was on crutches briefly but the orthopedic surgeon gave me a boot instead. He says I probably have a torn plantar plate and some broken bones that aren’t showing on the x-rays yet. I guess purple is a non-standard foot color. Who knew? 

The unrepentant pittie/Zuroski

I’ll see the doc again in two weeks and we’ll go from there. My children say I’m a terrible patient. They yell at me a lot for doing things when I should be sitting. I’m annoyed because I’m not allowed to do yoga at all. I’m also not supposed to walk much or go up and down stairs much or really anything. I’m lucky it’s not worse and I’m trying to be good so I don’t have any complications. But argh. I hate sitting still with my foot elevated on a pillow. 

One of the things I got yelled at for recently is cooking. It’s difficult for me to cook without standing and moving around and all the things I’m not supposed to be doing. Anyway, I made ribs with a salt and pepper dry rub, grilled corn on the cob, grilled marinated zucchini, and a delicious peach bar cookie with peaches from our local farmers market. (Yes, I walked around the farmers market to get the peaches. Don’t tell my kids about that part.)

Our peaches aren’t quite ready and I’m getting nervous because the local squirrel is staking out the tree. It’s going to be a battle to see who gets the peaches first. She’s got a few advantages over us since she can parkour to the upper branches. She can pick peaches as easily as we do. She can reach any peach she wants. And she doesn’t care if they aren’t quite ripe. I’m hoping she’ll let us have a few. There are so many peaches on that darn tree and they’re starting to get that rosy pink color. Watch; in two weeks I’ll be complaining about how she ate all of them. 

Moving on … A few months ago, I submitted a picture book to an agent who was doing a special query. I just happened to have something on the topic she was looking for but as happens sometimes, I didn’t hear anything back on my query and I assumed that it didn’t meet her needs. Today, out of the blue, I got an email from her. 

Sadly, it was a rejection but the cool part is that she didn’t contact me all these months because she was seriously considering it. Isn’t that fun? She wrote me a really nice email, too. I’m going to put that one right beside the “banal banter” email. Hehe.

I’m doing a bunch of research for a new book. No details, of course, but it’s got a bit of a time-travel theme, at least in my head. We’ll see how it actually works out. I’m having fun with the planning phase but I need to finish up this horror novel first. It’s coming along pretty well, but I am not looking forward to the first read-through. I have a feeling that it’s going to need some tidying up. But I won’t have to start that until mid-September. 

Haley has some VERY EXCITING NEWS that I can’t share yet but hoo boy, I hope to be sharing it by the end of the month. It’s hard not to shout from the rooftops but patience is an important skill to learn in this business. 

Since I know some of you will ask, here are the recipe links: 

Salt and pepper ribs

Peach bar cookies

Also, if you like music, check out Noah’s latest single. Nowhere Else 

Pitties and Peaches

Sunflower Summer

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Schwirian Farm’s Sunflower Festival 2021/Zuroski
Sunflower baby 2021/Zuroski

In today’s installment of “The Many Ways Deb Attempts to ‘Do-It-Herself’ or Why Her Children Want to Kill Her Today”: Deb begins replacing the kitchen faucet, which has finally, irrevocably, given up the ghost. (Fun/dark fact — “giving up the ghost” can be found as early as 1600s versions of the King James bible in reference to Jesus’ death.) 

Anyway, back to the faucet — what’s the first thing you should do when replacing a kitchen faucet? Turn off the water. That’s easy enough. There are shut-off valves under the sink. Ta da. Nailed it. Except that the shut off valves don’t work. 

Behind the sunflowers 2021/Zuroski

No worries. Thanks, Google and YouTube, for the advice about locating the basement shut-off valves. Those were great videos of housing built in the 90’s — the 1990s, that is, only 100 years after our house was built. That’s right. There’s no easily identifiable valve to turn off the water in this wonderful, old house.

Sunflowers 2021/Zuroski
Sunflower 2021/Zuroski

So, of course, the very first task stumped us. We pressed on — yes, we actually did — by trying to fix the shut-off valves under the sink. We managed to get the water off (YAY) until we started pulling out the old faucet. Then … yes, I’m about to say it … our shut-off valve “fix” unfixed itself and water came gushing out of the hoses. Wow. We have never worked so fast to find buckets and re-attach hoses mid-gush. With hindsight, it was pretty funny but at the time, with water spraying everywhere, my son and I agreed that it was a good time for swearing. And we did some. More than some. We did a lot of swearing. 

Rolling sunflower fields 2021/Zuroski

We’re not done yet — swearing or fixing the faucet. Tuesday afternoon, we’re following all the visible water pipes to their conclusion. There has to be a water shut-off valve somewhere in the vicinity of our house … right? Of course, right.

All of this blog entry’s pictures are from an adventure last Friday when I tagged along with my daughter and a friend on their trip to Schwirian Farm’s Sunflower Festival. Although hotter than Satan’s birthday party, it was as delightful as you could imagine. My only regret is that we didn’t have time to pick-our-own sunflowers because *some* of us had “hot girl summer” plans. (Another fun fact: we can thank Megan Thee Stallion for that body-positive term, hot girl summer. Thank you, Queen.) 

Hot Girl Sunflowers 2021/Zuroski

This (literally) hot girl spent the evening cooling off on the porch and working on her novel while the other hot girls in the group did whatever vaccinated twenty-somethings do in the 2020s. All I know is that it involved cute sundresses and sandals and meeting up with other vaccinated hot girls. 

It might be time for a yoga pose — sun salutation feels particularly right today.

Much love.

Sunflower Summer

A Berry Good July

Deb Zuroski, , , 4 Comments

I was shopping at Costco recently when I bumped, quite literally, into a man who was pushing a flatbed and I laughed a little to myself about how hard they are to steer. The secret is that you should always pull a flatbed, not push it. Anyway, as we apologized to each other, I looked, really looked, at him for a moment and was struck by how like Ken he was, a little taller perhaps but slender, with a graying beard and thinning hair, very professorial in the inexplicable way that Ken was.  

By the third near-miss, I had noticed that his walk and mannerisms were also very similar to Ken, even his clothing. I started wondering how his wife would respond if I went up to her and said, “Hey, this is weird but your husband reminds me of my husband. Would it be okay … I really do know how this sounds but … would it be okay if I ask your husband for a hug? I’d just like to pretend, for a second, that my husband is still here.” 

And then, before I could give into the impulse and get myself banned from Costco, I turned away from them, my tears soaking the edges of my mask. 

They seemed to be everywhere I was after that (even parked next to me in the lot). I got used to it, even rather enjoyed bumping into them and lightly eavesdropping on their conversations. Poor man was married to a mouthy woman (a lot like me!) and like Ken, he never quite figured out how to operate that flatbed. 

Last month’s storm gave us roof damage in addition to all that ruined food (and a remarkable case of food poisoning). When you live in a three-story Victorian house, finding shingles on the ground is even more than normally disconcerting because you can’t see your roof. Finally, an opportunity to use my homeowners insurance! The inspector came out last week with his 36-foot ladder (not big enough), remarked on the steepness of the 12-foot gables, and confirmed the damage. 

Yay! Insurance is going to buy me a new roof! 

Haha. Hahahahaha. 

No, it isn’t. In fact, the damage is below my deductible. But the roof inspector said I need a new roof pretty much as soon as I can swing it. Yeah. I figured that out when I picked up the shingle and felt how crackly it was. As my kids would say: OWNED. 

Now, let’s circle back to the food poisoning story:  I won’t actually share the really gory details. I’ll just tell you that, when I threw out all the food, I missed something important — the condiments. Specifically, I missed the mayonnaise. Thankfully, I am the only person who puts mayo on her cheeseburger so I am the only one who spent six hours vomiting. It was bad — we won’t discuss how bad — but I would have felt much, much worse if I’d poisoned my kids. So, if you ever have a power outage, learn from me and don’t forget to throw out the mayonnaise!

And now, without further ado, let’s talk about the gift of summer fruit. Our blueberries are beginning to ripen. Our peaches are still growing. This year, we’ll attempt to save some of the peaches from the squirrels. Yes. I know it’s fruitless (hehe)…sorry, couldn’t help myself.

We’ve been cooking lots of fresh fruit recipes for our post-pandemic summer picnics. My personal favorite will always be strawberry pie but the blackberry lattice pie was outstanding. Sadly, the raspberry crumble pie failed completely. It looked great straight out of the oven but became so watery that we had to throw the whole thing out. Heartbreaking, to be honest. 

Our final berry creation — for now — was a triple berry — blueberry, blackberry, raspberry — compote that we developed to drizzle over my mom’s lemonade cake. So tangy, so aromatic, so good. My mom would be proud. 

A Berry Good July

Happy Father’s Day

Deb Zuroski, , , , 3 Comments
Alyssum 2021

There are voluntary tomato plants growing in both containers of sweet alyssum. We rescued the alyssum from the $1 clearance rack at our local big box DIY store. There were six little, near-dead, plants in the container but we thought it was worth risking a dollar and offering some loving attention. We were right; their tiny white blossoms are gorgeous. I’m not sure how we also got blessed with three enthusiastic tomato plants but we’ll welcome them, too.

Early this spring, my daughter said she wanted to turn our front yard into a free-share garden. She says that gardening brings communities together. I’m not entirely sure where she discovered that since she’s not previously been an enthusiastic outdoor gardener (though she has an abundant plant collection in her room) but I learn from her daily so I agreed to give it a try. 

First, in May, we removed the grass from a 36-foot section of yard next to our sidewalk. We seeded a mix of perennial and annual wildflowers, just to see what would happen. It looked a little messy for a few weeks but then the flowers started to come in. And they are amazing.

After that, we began removing grass from the sloping part of our lawn next to the public sidewalk. That wasn’t so hard but the weather has been difficult so we’ve mostly worked at dusk. We planted tomatoes, basil, catnip (because OF COURSE), and heirloom amaranth, which is also called love-lies-bleeding. We’ve been joking that we’re like the elves from The Elves and the Shoemaker. Only, instead of shoes, every morning our neighbors wake up to new plants in our front yard.

Chickweed 2021

We have more work to do. Our mail carrier walks to each house, often through the yards but he hasn’t quite decided whether the wildflowers are plants or weeds. We added a stepping stone to guide him around the wildflowers but we still regularly see his footprints mashing down the flowers. Decorative fencing is our next strategy, which, I’m hoping, will also discourage the neighborhood dogs from running through. 

We also need to finish caging the tomatoes so they don’t escape (Attack of the killer tomatoes!).  Up next: transplanting some peppers this week. No hot ones, just sweet green and red. I would not want a kid to pick and eat a hot pepper accidentally. 

Already the community aspect has started. I was outside, doing a little weeding, when two neighbors stopped by to talk about the garden. My girl was right again — gardening brings communities together. One neighbor asked for details about the wildflowers which gave us the idea to add some labels with the plants’ familiar names. 

To all of you grey clouds getting ready to rain on our garden (see what I did there?!), we don’t care if the birds, deer, chipmunks, squirrels, and rabbits enjoy some (or even all) of the harvest. The point of the garden is to feed the community, in body and spirit, and that includes the four-legged community (and good bugs, not harmful ones).

Most of our plants are from our local farmers market, which helps our small farmers. They are so enthusiastic about the plants that it’s a great way to work on that community building my daughter told me about. We make our own compost but we buy worm castings ($5 for a 10 pound bag) from the farmers, too. And this year, we’ve committed (to ourselves) that we’ll grow from seed over the winter too. 

Ultimately, we want to eliminate the grass from the front yard entirely. It serves no useful purpose. A clover/fescue mix would encourage bees and feed the many rabbits in the neighborhood. But we’re a two woman team here so we’ll do it a square at a time.

Mustard 2021

I’ve been learning a lot from growers on social media who are as determined as we are not to use pesticides. We’re going to hang some ladybug bags as soon as they arrive. The ladybugs will help reduce aphid populations that are already nibbling away at our plants. Supposedly, they’ll help to reduce black flies too. I haven’t seen that in action but if we can substitute ladybugs for black flies, sign me up!

You might be asking in what way this is a Father’s Day post. A fair question. My husband, father of my kids, did not like to garden at all. In fact, one time, he bought a bunch of fast-growing trees to add privacy to our property line. Guess who he signed up to plant all of those trees while she was 7 months pregnant? And yes, I did it and they grew really tall, within a few years.

My father, on the other hand, was an enthusiastic, very traditional gardener. He planted the same flowers and vegetables year after year. I still have an irrational hatred of petunias and their sticky residue. UGH. My daughter likes them though so I’m trying to learn. 

As I’ve said before, I did not have the kind of father that so many of you talk about on social media. I had the kind of father that all of you are glad you didn’t have. So, while I don’t wish to honor him on Father’s Day, I will acknowledge that he taught me how not to garden. 

My daughter and I are teaching each other how to do it well. 

Happy Father’s Day to all the great fathers spending time with their families today. And to Ken, who really wanted to be here.

Asteroideae 2021
Happy Father’s Day

The Great Defrosting

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What a start to the week we’ve had here. A massive storm stalled over Pittsburgh Sunday and dropped upwards of 3 inches of rain in about 15 minutes. For the first time in my life, I got to see big chunks of golf-ball-sized hail fall. You’ve probably all experienced the sound of hail falling. It never occurred to me — though I acknowledge that it makes perfect sense — the bigger the hail, the higher your heart rate gets as the hail hits your 125-year-old windows. 

Our street became the Colorado River rushing between canyon walls. I have no idea how fast it was going but I wouldn’t want to get knocked off my feet in that deluge as it raced down the hill toward the big open sewers at the bottom of our street. 

Everyone in my little community lost power at about 6:30 Sunday evening, right in the middle of the storm. Losing power is a rare event in the city. We have a great — deeply underappreciated IMO — electrical grid that is almost never out. Unfortunately, the storm was actually enormous, with high windows and torrential rains that got the best of the grid — bringing down trees, blowing transformers and ultimately knocking out power for tens of thousands. We were literally powerless for a little over 21 hours. 

As soon as we realized that the power was not going to blink right back on, I began to think ruefully of that box of no-longer-charged external batteries that my husband used to keep charged in case of emergencies. I was also reminded of them by my loving children several times throughout those long dark hours that “Dad always kept those batteries charged.” Yeah, I know. I miss him, too. I also know that, when next I see Ken, I’m going to get an earful about those damn batteries.

Sadly, warm weather and equipment age/inefficiency combined at our house to cause The Great Defrosting, an event that will be retold and elaborated for future generations. We opened the fridge and freezers after the power returned, you know, to evaluate the situation: Melona bars (a treat for the ages) liquid. An entire half gallon of vanilla ice cream (good-bye dreamed of sundaes and banana splits) poured down the drain. I could go on but tears are obscuring my view of the screen.

In truth, we lost a lot of food and hours of work time, but we’re very lucky. We were safe and dry. We don’t rely on electricity to power oxygen pumps or dialysis equipment or a baby monitor. We can afford to replace the food we lost. We work for ourselves so we didn’t have wages docked or lose our jobs because the power was out. Not everyone was so fortunate.

On the humorous side of the whole experience, I was the guinea pig for food spoilage. “Mom, can you taste this for me?” was the common refrain once the power was back on. You’ve really never experienced the extraordinary power of your taste buds until you have been given a generously sized block of spoiled feta cheese, which you put — in its entirety — in your mouth because you are so confident that “it’s fine.” Wow. It’s … well, it’s hard to describe the taste, kind of bitter and vinegary and just really awful. It was decidedly not “fine.”

But we are. 

Today is, thankfully, garbage day. We’ll be cleaning out the spoilage and taking the opportunity to assess and reconsider before we stock up again. It’s sad work to throw away food that could, in a different story, have been a community banquet. Maybe, in fact, we don’t need a chest freezer stocked with food. Maybe it’s time to develop some new habits.

Be well. Be safe. Be kind. 

Oh, and unclench that jaw.

Much love.

The Great Defrosting

Instructions For Dancing

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Took a break from work, work, work to read a YA book yesterday. Yes, I know; that’s work too but it’s also an opportunity to consume rather than create. The story is Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon, of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also A Star fame. I’ll confess upfront that I haven’t read her other novels. When Everything, Everything came out, we were just starting to “go through some things.” When I’m “going through some things,” I don’t look for opportunities to …er, “go through more things.”

Anyway, back to Instructions for Dancing: I happen to be a big fan of the song she based her title on, which is one of the reasons I chose to read this. Frankly, a second reason I chose this book is the absolutely irresistible tweet she sent on her book birthday. It’s a picture of her, holding this book, and … well, I can’t really do it justice but her hair is the color of the book cover and her smile is wider than the universe. Somehow, all that joyful celebration just spoke to me and here we are!

Briefly, here’s my spoiler-free synopsis: Evie, previously a lover of romance, has hardened her heart since her parents’ unexpected and devastating divorce. In a twist on MG novel The Wish by Gail Carson Levine (and the movies Freaky Friday and Big), an unknown individual curses/gifts Evie with the ability to see how/when romances end. This leads our high school senior protagonist to a ballroom dance studio where she meets her soon-to-be dance partner, X. His philosophy, a result of his own deep grieving, is “say yes to everything (unless it’s illegal or unethical).” Can his lack of reserve help to break down the walls she’s built around herself? Can Evie, through her curse-gift, regain the ability to trust the power of love? 

Some reviewers are saying that this isn’t a romance but I have to disagree. This story is about love in all its forms: love for family, love for self, love for friends, and love for Another. You may think you know how it ends. If you do, you are both right and wrong about that. The story ends as all stories end, long after the last words on the page.

What I like most about the book is that Ms Yoon allows Evie to be afraid and to make mistakes, to hurt others and then to acknowledge and learn from her actions. The author also gives Evie the benefit of being part of a loving family. I’ll willingly confess that I’m tired of YA novels with invisible parents and siblings who hate each other. You won’t see any of that here. They miscommunicate and hurt each other but they also support and love each other unconditionally.

Ms Yoon says in an afterword that she was “going through some things” herself when she wrote, re-wrote, discarded, and finally created this final version. Her grief comes through clearly in her characters’ stories, which makes the book richer and also more frustrating. 

I wish that she had allowed Evie to discover — for herself — what she needed to learn about the risk and reward of loving other people in all its messy wonder. I also think the ending is somewhat problematic because — again, without spoiling it for you — she suggests that what happens at the end of Instructions for Dancing is somehow not the norm. You’ll have to read it to find out what happens but let me assure you that what happens is, in fact, completely normal and emotional and okay.

Regardless of my dissatisfaction with the way she sets up the ending, I recommend that you immediately order this book from your favorite indie bookstore (Books and Crannies, Riverstone Books, or White Whale Bookstore, for example). And, maybe, give that song a listen. You won’t be sorry that you did.

Instructions For Dancing

Sky Blue Eyes

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of agency. One of the things I’ve struggled with the most since I lost Ken is my own agency. At first, after he died, I lived within the construct that was already established, long established, during and by our relationship. 

Over time, though, that construct started to crumble. I’ve mentioned before that a few months after Ken died, a doorknob fell off a door. (Apparently, Ken tightened doorknobs regularly and I just didn’t know or didn’t notice.) Instead of reacting as things happened to me, I needed to start acting — making choices and decisions about where to spend time, where to spend money. 

Maybe that’s a big DUH moment for all of you but for me it was both endlessly freeing and terrifying. Children in abusive households choose their survival strategies … stay with me here. I’m saying that, as a child, I had to decide whether to capitulate or fight. That wasn’t a conscious choice obviously and it wasn’t a single event. I usually chose to fight, which is probably not a surprise at all to people who know me well. And it’s not some bullshit humble brag either. Choosing violence in a violent household is a survival strategy, not a Tiktok video made to gain followers.

Anyway, the point is that AGENCY, the ability to act independently and to choose freely, is not something emphasized in abusive households. Since my husband was also raised in an abusive household, I think we probably unconsciously just leaned into each other’s survival strategies. Therefore, I didn’t have to learn to think and act independently until my husband died. GULP.

So, here I am, older than sliced bread, learning to make decisions for myself. I am living proof that old bitches (I will not call myself a dog and I will own the use of bitch as applied to myself and it’s amusing that it’s a bit of wordplay — HA!) …  can learn new tricks.

I’ve been sitting on the porch steps, listening to the baby birds in the nest above our back door. The parents were so discreet that we didn’t even realize we had bird neighbors until we heard the babies yelling at dad — more food please! — yesterday morning. Now, there’s a cardinal calling. I can’t see it — it’s perched in our enormous honeysuckle — but its call is loud and clear, standing out from the cacophony of early morning tweets and chirrups and cackles. 

The gift of our little backyard — watching a bird slip into its nest in the neighbor’s eaves, listening to the squirrel scolding the dog barking next door, sitting in the silent peace of a sunny afternoon — is a pleasure that makes me hope fall never comes. 

Yesterday, the sky was so intensely blue that looking up was like looking directly into my mother’s eyes (I looked up into my mother’s eyes the depth of the morning sky). My daughter was snoozing in the shade. My neighbors sat under their umbrella listening to pop music in another language. I could tell that it wasn’t English but I don’t hear well enough to know what language it was. They’re Scottish and Syrian so it really could be anything, including Donna Summer, Five For Fighting (yes, even THAT song which is a little surreal), classical, opera, folk music (mostly middle eastern). 

A couple weeks ago, they were listening to French pop music, deliberately loud in order to drown out my other-side neighbor who is also HOH but does not use headphones for her Zoom calls. Until Isla and Dan put on the French pop, we were all listening to a very explicit discussion of treatment options for a high-risk pregnancy. 

I wouldn’t say that I like listening to French pop but I like it a lot better than listening to analyses of transvaginal ultrasounds. Nothing against transvaginal ultrasounds other than that they’re extremely uncomfortable to receive (speaking from experience) but it does seem intrusive to listen to doctors talking about someone else’s. You know?

In other news, this week, we’ve been exploring lavender — lavender sugar, lavender lemon cake, lavender cream (in coffee). I don’t drink coffee so I can’t comment on that but the lavender lemon cake was delicious. And there’s an added bonus that the whole house smells great.

My saucy protagonists found something disturbing on their walk yesterday. They’re still processing it (and so am I) but it seems likely that they’re going to need to be very clever to get out of this situation. I left them in the middle of the woods, panicking, so I think I should get back to terrifying those teenagers now ….

Be kind today. 

Unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Take a deep, SLOW breath. Find something to laugh about … if nothing else, here’s a mental image for you of my 10 year old Maine Coon learning to wear a collar with two very loud bells. He hates it but the birds and I are very happy that he jingles with every step he takes. 

Much love.

Sky Blue Eyes

Contractor Blues

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m going back to bed. If you need me, I’ll be in my blanket burrito. 

The very, very, very worst part about adulting? Hiring contractors. I’ve had discussions with a gazillion (a flexible mathematical term that currently means six). Four of them said some version of “Yeah, I can’t help you. I only do this one thing and it’s not the thing you need. Why don’t you try X contractor? They definitely do that thing you definitely need.” 

The job itself is hardly unique. Our front steps are pulling away from the house. Mudjacking — I find it hilarious that I know what that term means — won’t work because the concrete is deteriorating. But no one, it seems, wants to demolish and rebuild our front stoop. 

One contractor said he’d come out but then didn’t. He did, however, email me a quote, possibly based on a picture from Google maps, that clearly showed he didn’t listen to anything I said to him on the phone. He actually quoted wrought iron railings to replace my brick handrails. 

First, I don’t hate myself enough to sign up for years of nearly annual railing painting. Second, if I change the railings, as I told him, I’ll have to file with the historic society for permission. I’ve never hated anyone enough for the double-whammy of wrought iron railings AND filing for approval from the mysterious and super secret historical society. I mean, what if I have to make some sort of animal sacrifice in exchange for iron railings? 

That contractor’s bid is also the physical proof of the “get three bids” advice. It’s so far above the other bids that it’s clear he thought “I don’t really want this job unless she’s stupid enough to accept this quote.” A second contractor came out last Friday and was great — helpful, enthusiastic about the existing design, and interested in improving things. He even pointed out an error in the original design that I never noticed and now will never be able to unsee (so thanks for that). Unfortunately, even the lowest bid was higher than I expected by a solid $3,000. Should I be surprised that things cost more than I want them to?!

I like to do a lot of the work myself, as you may know from past posts, but I’m not pouring concrete or trimming trees, which is the next project on the list. All but one of the trees are upwards of three stories tall and I dislike agonizing pain too much to dangle from a large tree while I saw off a limb — that we don’t know right now whether that limb would be human or tree just underscores what a bad idea it is. 

The tree trimming is essential. I personally saw squirrels carrying their suitcases across the tree limb bridge to the attic and I am not living with any more squirrels. They are the worst tenants I’ve ever had: playing some weird middle of the night hopscotch, chewing the loudest kettle crunch SOMETHING at 5AM, inviting more squirrels to move in even though their rental agreement limits residency to two squirrels, forever trying to pay their rent in acorns. They’re just the worst. 

On top of that, my next door neighbor, who, as I’ve mentioned before, is in his 90s, climbed out onto his roof to clean off the leaves left behind by MY tree. I spent a solid 15 minutes trying not to panic-watch him, as though somehow watching him will prevent a tumble from the porch roof. He did not fall, but I managed to make myself an anxious mess.

Someone will read this and ask why I don’t volunteer to clean the leaves off his roof. You could only ask me that if you’ve never had an independent 90-something neighbor. I made the mistake once of shoveling his sidewalk because I was outside already. He came out and scolded me like it was this past February in Texas and he was melting the snow to flush his toilets. So, instead of offering to clean his roof, I’m going to the source of the problem. HA 

Moving on …. There was a man painting a house — not painting a house (“miners, not minors”) — on our street during one of the nice weather spells recently and he wants to paint ours. He doesn’t need permission, of course, but I suspect that it’s less weird to talk with owners before setting up your easel in front of their houses. I imagine that can get kind of awkward. 

Anyway, the artist was painting the castle house the day he and I talked. It’s three doors up the street from us and has a round room with a turret. Yes, a turret. It’s a big stone house with a wrap-around stone porch and a three-story turret. The owners are really nice, genuine people who occasionally throw very loud parties to which the neighborhood is NEVER invited. (Isn’t that a violation of the neighborhood rules?) 

Apparently, they don’t know how much I want to see the inside of that turret! (I suspect that if I asked, they’d take me on a tour but I will not, in this lifetime, be that nosy. My sister’s lovely, long-suffering husband would disagree but I actually do have boundaries.) I did ask to see the finished oil painting and it’s just lovely. 

In other news, a lot is happening with my YA story. I usually write linearly but this time I wrote scenes in no order at all. Now, I’m sewing these individual events together, kind of like a quilt. It’s a lot of work without the very satisfying endorphin boost from a significant increase in word count but I can really see the story forming, which is fun and, honestly, a big relief. What if, after all this writing, I couldn’t figure out how to pull the story together?! Yikes. 

Thankfully, that’s not the case. Of course, there’s a lot more work to do before draft one is finished and after that, I’ll need to do a full read-through to see how well the story holds together, where I need to fix, enhance, delete, etc. I already have a bunch of notes about correcting things I changed. For example, I added a dog to the story a solid 10 chapters in which means those first 10 chapters have to change.

Did you recognize the “miners, not minors” reference? If you did, you probably read it in the incomparable Alan Rickman’s voice. The movie is Galaxy Quest, a wonderful homage to Star Trek and the entirety of the cosplay world. It’s funny, sweet, tender, and hilarious. 

Are you vaccinated yet? If not, please talk to your healthcare provider. For someone in your life, the world is a better place with you in it and the vaccine will increase the likelihood of you staying around a bit longer. Get vaccinated for them, if not for you.. 

Please remember that some people will keep wearing a mask. And you know what? That’s okay. Be safe. Be kind. 

Back to my blanket burrito ….

Contractor Blues

Shadow and Bone?

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Have you watched Shadow and Bone on Netflix? When the book series was purchased, there was a lot of talk about how white the books were. This is a common conversation. Writers are generally encouraged to “write what we know,” which adds to authenticity of voice, place, etc. Unfortunately, that absolutely leads white authors to write books that are predominantly white. 

When white writers want to include non-white characters, we are cautioned by BIPOC to GET HELP with the character development and writing. (There are literally sensitivity BETA readers who will read your book draft for bias, problematic representation, etc.) White people know much less about BIPOC than we think we do. How many times have you read a book written by a white author who describes their Black character as a type of food — chocolate eyes, caramel skin? Can you imagine reading a book with white characters described similarly — “skin the color of strawberry frosting”? 

Okay, that made me laugh so much that I have to describe myself in food terms. Here goes:  Her deep-set blue raspberry kool-aid eyes were the only color in a cream cheese face dotted with raisins. NAILED IT. Get the point? It’s hurtful and wrong to write about people and cultures without doing the work to make that inclusion authentic. 

So, Shadow and Bone needed to become less white. How did the development team do that? Did they put in the necessary work to add cultures authentically? No. No, they did not. Instead, they added racism to the story, Asian racism, with deeply troubling racist tropes that I’m not going to repeat here. 

That’s more than disappointing. It’s anti-anti-racism. Nothing says white privilege like adding a big heaping spoonful of racism to make a story less white. It’s ridiculously tone deaf in the current environment; and Netflix, in their sprint to Oscar relevancy (as awards continue their slide to obscurity), should have considered that there are many obvious and effective ways to make the series less white without racism. 

Early in my writing journey, I started writing a fictionalization of a sweet story a teacher told me about a Black child who took a tomato home to share with his family. I got a solid 15,000 words into it before I had traveled far enough on MY journey to realize that it was not my story to tell. 

It is essential that white writers make space at the table — build a new table if the one you’re at isn’t big enough — for BIPOC writers. That’s one reason why, for those of you who are uninitiated in the publishing controversies of the moment, there has been much criticism of Simon & Schuster for agreeing to publish books written by famous people who are racist. There is no need to amplify racist views and doing so tells BIPOC that there isn’t really a place at the table for them.

Since publishers are, frankly, in it for the money, an excellent way for us to support and promote inclusion is to amplify books by non-white authors. Check them out. Literally. Go to your local library and check them out. Or buy them. Or listen to the audio books. Add them to your Goodreads “want to read” list. Show publishers that you are interested in stories told by people who don’t look like you. Here are three (of many) kidlit books by BIPOC authors coming out this month: 

  • Counting Down With You by Tashie Bhuiyan
  • Last Gate of the Emperor by Kwame Mbalia & Prince Joel Makonnen
  • The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Not interested in these? Try something by Angeline Boulley or Cherie Dimaline. 

In additional writing news, my story has taken a turn. I can’t discuss it because that would give away important plot details but even I was surprised. It seems likely that there are more twists coming. I can say that my protagonist’s best friend, who is chaotic neutral, is going to play a much more significant role than I initially thought and, honestly, I’m here for that.

My virus poem did not get into the anthology. As promised, I’ll share it in a separate post soon. Actually, given the very large number of entries, I’m surprised that the Public Poetry team chose a small number of poems for their collection. I think I would have published a longer chapbook (even without my entry!) because pandemic art and literature will be a piece of our history, like our vaccine cards and our masks.

LeVar Burton coined a term that I hope will catch on: community immunity. He suggests, and I agree, that language matters in the effort to get people vaccinated. We’re not cows; we’re people. Working together, we can give community immunity to those who cannot be vaccinated.

Get your shot or shots. Wear your mask. Help get us to community immunity.

Much love. 

Shadow and Bone?