The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Happy, Happy, Happy

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Happy, Happy, Happy

Bish has been kind enough to mention me for the Happy Award. This seems like a great thing to do right now considering they are predicting record level cold tonight and into the weekend. I can tell you that a forecast like that does NOT make me happy so this is a wonderful distraction right now. Here's the countdown for the happiometer:

1. Writing - which surprised me when I thought of this since I would have guessed my kids as first. But writing has been with me longer than they have, and it will be with me when I am just someone to visit at Christmas, so that had to come first. I actually get into bad moods when I don't write for a couple of days, and the kids will say to me, "Sheeesh, why don't you go on the computer for a little while and stop being such a psycho mom." I hate when they say that because they are so right.

2. My kids - even though they make me grit my teeth at least once a day, nothing and no one makes me happier than they do. I have always liked being around them and I think I always will.

3. Chocolate - my personal Xanax and a gift from the Aztec gods.

4. Animals - I'll just say it's a very good thing that we all like rescued, highly eccentric animals around here because we have a half dozen (and Emma is lobbying that we have room for one more kitten...)

5. Junk shops - for some reason I haven't fully figured out, I like to prowl junk shops and look at old dishes and furniture. My kids are suspicious of any item that comes home and ask me, "Are those new red glasses in the cabinet glasses from the dead?" I am sensitive to this and usually respond, "Better than being from the undead." I've gotten lots of great picture frames, flowerpots and Halloween costumes from these stores.

6. The Beach - We went to Bermuda for our honeymoon because I couldn't imagine not connecting the happiness of getting married to the beach. I spent most of my time snorkeling and finding out about coral reefs. Luckily, now we live near Long Beach Island which has a great ocean beach. I never feel as at home anywhere as I do at the beach.

7. Reading - kind of an anti-social habit, but with blogs and all, you can share more now than ever. I have to stop rereading books and move on to newer books.
(But seriously, Twilight as opposed to Jane Eyre?)

8. Libraries - Word nerd that I am, I love everything about libraries. It's kind of a combination of junk shop for books and a social area. They're always having sales with titles like "3 books for a dollar" and they host all sorts of talks and films. Plus, they have all the new books, and they are like room service - you just check off what you want to read or watch, and they will get it from another library. They are amazing places.

9. Friends - being around friends is good for the soul. I almost never have time to socialize, but in the small amount that I do socialize, it is always really fun.

10. Cooking/Gardening/Recipes - not the Tuesday night turkey burgers and broccoli, but growing the herbs, making a soup, reading old cookbooks (which I bought at the library sale or the junk shop) that kind of cooking. When I can't sleep, for some bizarre-o reason, I read old cookbooks, the kind that don't mention microwaves or husbands in the kitchen.

And that's about it. Right now, I am going to go get a whole bunch of stuff to cook the cold away. And I'm going to get some writing done. That should make me happy.

Happiometer? Did I say that?

Whoops - forgot to pass this award on. I will pass it on to Jemi and Elizabeth ,Lisa and K.C. if they would like to play along.

10 comments:

Elizabeth Bradley said...: Everything you said makes me happy too. Except for your kids. If I knew them I'm sure they would make me happy though.

Congrats, fun reading about what floats your boat.; Thursday, 28 January, 2010
Jemi Fraser said...: Congrats! Love your list & I agree with you on everything except maybe the beach. I get sunstroke sooo easily, it kind of takes the fun out of it.; Thursday, 28 January, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Elizabeth, just substitute your own kids - hopefully, they make you happy. I like reading other people's lists, too. Blogs are a little voyeuristic that way.

Jemi, I have skin the color of paper so I know what you mean. I just use sunblock and keep my fingers crossed. Sunstroke would definitely take the fun out of it, big time.
But yeah, the chocolate and all the rest -; Thursday, 28 January, 2010
Bish Denham said...: Thanks for coming out to play Anne. And (except for the kids cause I don't have any) those things that make you happy, make me happy as well. I too enjoy perusing cookbooks and junk stores.; Friday, 29 January, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: I know, Bish. Junk shops and cookbooks - it's how I waste time, but I justify it because I don't really watch tv.; Friday, 29 January, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: Everything you've listed here makes me happy too. The only things I could add here would be spicy food, coffee, and traveling.

My kids going shopping in junk shops now, though they're reluctant to admit it. Slowly but surely -- it will happen.; Friday, 29 January, 2010
Jemi Fraser said...: Thanks for passing along the award - it's such a great pic isn't it!; Saturday, 30 January, 2010
Elizabeth Bradley said...: Oh, did I miss my name here? Thanks Sweetie!; Saturday, 30 January, 2010
K.C. Shaw said...: Those are happy happinesses! I love reading old cookbooks too--and they usually have the best recipes (or just the weirdest). Thanks for passing the award along to me! You've made me happy. :); Saturday, 30 January, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: Eek, I've just revisited my comment here and: 1)had forgotten I'd written it and 2)have just spotted a typo in it: I left out the word 'like'.

Bugger.; Tuesday, 09 February, 2010

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***