Setting Boundaries Can Make You a Better Writer and a Better Person

My friend Jim C. Hines wrote a good blog post about personal boundaries using a brownie-pushing coworker as a stepping off point. The post and its comments are very interesting reading, and explore a lot of the complicated motivations behind the brownie-pushing phenomenon. As complicated as the problem is, the solution is simple. You set your own boundaries and enforce them. If other people are hurt because you don’t want their brownies, that is their problem, not yours.

Boundaries are something I’ve been working on in the past couple of years. Being an author, even a very obscure one as I am, involves attracting a certain amount of attention. If you are the kind of person who hates to say no and tries to please everyone, this can become a huge source of stress and unhappiness, and will sabotage and possibly kill your writing career. Working on boundary-setting is something I’ve had to do out of self-defense. No choice. Otherwise my time and energy disappear into a vortex.

How am I doing that? Well, a couple of ways.

1. Time. I am in charge of my own time. No one else is. No one is going to make sure that I have time to exercise, to eat right, to pay my bills, to spend time with my family. No one is looking out for that except for me. That means if I myself am not doing the job, it doesn’t get done. Several years ago, I struggled to schedule time for those things, even though I was a freelancer setting my own hours. What happened was that I would make a schedule for myself, but if a client or a business associate wanted the time I set aside for myself, I would give it up very easily. I would rationalize that I could do that yoga class later, or work on that novel another time.

Well, guess what? That other time never came. But I was too afraid that those contacts would disappear if I didn’t accommodate them COMPLETELY. I was afraid of losing jobs and losing friends. I even remember getting up at 5 AM to do a phone interview to Asia once. Crazy!

After a while, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I started small by protecting my yoga time. I decided if someone wanted to set up an appointment during my yoga time, I would do something simple, but very hard. I would say no.

Oh, how hard it was! How many times I caught myself saying yes, then kicked myself. How many times I got off track and forgot what I was doing, and fell into old habits. It took me months to learn how to say no to conflicts with yoga and really stick with it. Maybe even a year.

But once I finally committed to it, I got my yoga time. I really got it. And that opened the door for me to control my own schedule (imagine that!) in other ways. Today my freelance career is very different. I compartmentalize time for my work and time for myself, and it all works because if one conflicts with another, I say no. Sorry. Period.

2. Relationships. Historically, a certain degree of insecurity, social anxiety, and naivete has led me to accept any and all friendship “offers” I receive, and then to work hard to please those friends, at times accepting levels of intimacy I wasn’t really comfortable with. I was like one of those hoarders who thinks she’s an antique collector, but has actually filled her house with stacks of old National Geographics and carefully cleaned out styrofoam meat trays. I made no distinction between relationships that are good for me and feed me, and those that are unhealthy and drain me.

As a writer, this became even more complicated, because our professional networks overlap heavily with our friendship networks. Other writers and editors are not just people we work with. They are people who understand “the life” and who share my values and aspirations.

But spreading myself thin over so many “friends” makes it impossible to build and maintain all of those relationships. The solution? I’m sorry, but not everyone can be my close personal friend or family member. It’s just a matter of physics.

One thing I’ve done is change my facebook friending policy. My facebook is now for real life friends only. I’m sorry if that excludes some people who would like to be included. I have over 200 facebook friends, even under this newly restricted policy. It’s enough.

Another strategy I’ve implemented is saying no to real-world invitations and social commitments. It feels harsh. Oh, so harsh. But once you start saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not available,” it gets easier.

Results. Some good things have come about from the changes I’ve made. One is that I’ve learned how unpersonal and unmalicious some of these denials and exclusions are. There is no ill will behind it, only conservation of limited resources. This makes me more understanding when I encounter those limits in others.

In the past, I have probably not accepted these kinds of limits from others very gracefully, because I had not matured enough myself to understand that you can like and appreciate a person very much, and still not have time for them.

It makes sense. If you think of an extreme case (not myself), a young person who has not been able to develop and enforce self-boundaries because of abuse by the adults in her life, she is not going to understand what is going on when she encounters someone with healthy boundaries who enforces them. She is going to assume that other person will do whatever others ask of her, as long as they are important enough, and so a denial must be a sign of unimportance and uncaring.

Conversely, if a person develops healthy boundaries, and is ok with saying no, and not afraid of being socially abandoned or punished, then she can be ok with denials and refusals from others. She doesn’t need to seek acceptance and approval from others by pushing or pleading with them. She can shrug and say, “Ok, maybe we’ll have a clown limbo contest another day,” and not feel hurt and wonder why someone who is supposedly her best friend would not want to do clown limbo.

These days I find myself much more willing to take statements at face value, and I also am not as bothered if I think people don’t like me, because I do have more than enough friends. I have so many that I have to say no to them sometimes. If a few drift away because they can’t deal with that, then so be it.

As a writer, too, this emotional self-sufficiency can have benefits. As much as we love our tribe, we can’t be best friends with everyone, and inevitably there will be folks we don’t get along with. So what? You make the connections you can, enjoy them, and focus your energy where it will do the most good, which is on the work itself.

Go ahead and start saying no. When nothing bad happens, you will feel awesomely free.

Here are a couple of other meditations on writers saying no by Amy Sundberg and Laurel Amberdine.

 

Do Not Mess With Entropy It Will Cut You

Entropy is generally one of the less organized forces in the physical world, for obvious reasons. It doesn’t have to mount a concerted attack. It just sort of sits on you and waits. Not so this weekend, however. We fell victim to so many entropy attacks that we think entropy and gravity may have switched gigs temporarily just for fun.

Act I, the Washing Machine

Things started out not-too-upsetting with a washing machine breakdown. We were early adopters when Frigidaire/Gibson came out with their front-loading, stacking washer/dryer units in the late-nineties, and we’re still using them. Every couple years, though, there’s a belt that wears out or a switch that fries or something, and we have to replace it. That’s what happened Friday, when the washing machine failed to finish its cycle.

It wouldn’t have normally been a huge problem, except that we were just about to travel for the weekend, and I had a washing machine full of soggy-but-not-clean laundry, plus a pile of Defcon 5 sweaty workout clothes that I couldn’t just leave sitting around for 48 hours.

Frustrated, but not yet beaten, I carried the soggy-but-not-clean load and the Defcon 5 sweaty workout clothes up to our porch (the same one that soon won’t exist) and laid it all out flat on the floor to dry as it was, or at least to mildew evenly, and we left for our weekend trip to Grandma’s farm on the west side of Michigan.

Flashback, the Chainsaws

At this point, actually, we’d already been puzzled by the odd behavior of our chainsaws. We own two Makita chainsaws, a small one and a big one. Earlier this week, Brent found that neither one would start, which is odd. The small one had been used, but the large one was brand new. He is trying to remove some brush and small trees in advance of our home renovation, so it was really frustrating that instead of doing the actual job, he was spending a lot of time repairing his tools so he could do the job. That turned into a theme for the weekend.

There seemed to be some progress when Brent bought some fancy, super clean mixed 2 cycle gas and small chainsaw started up. But then big chainsaw gave it a stern look and both of them clammed up and refused to start at all. That situation, too, was unresolved when we left for our weekend trip.

Act II, the Lawn Mower

Grandma’s five-acre lawn was in need of mowing when we arrived. My son had reached the age of thirteen, traditional age of lawn mowing among my people, so I asked if he would like to use Grandma’s riding mower to mow the lawn. Our nephew, who was there helping Grandma with some other stuff, warned us that the battery was dead and we’d have to jump start it to get it go.

There ensued more than an hour of lawn mower repair activities before we finally got it going. The lawnmower battery was completely dead. Brent ended up pulling a battery of the same size and type from a chipper that was broken in a different way, but had a usable batter. This other battery was not completely dead, but it was also not charged, so the lawnmower still needed a jump start, provided by our car, but the theory was that the battery would charge up and the mower could now start on its own.

This was where we first suspected entropy was out to get us. The barn is full of power tools and old vehicles. But Grandpa stopped doing much in the way of farm work or tool maintenance a couple years before he died in 2011, and since then obviously even less has been done. Every time we thought of a tool or piece of equipment that could solve our current problem, THAT tool or piece of equipment then manifested a malfunction of its own. It was like being in a tragically backwards Rube Goldberg machine, where before we can mow the lawn, we have to do a list of other time consuming chores starting with unclogging a drain fifteen miles away.

We did get the mower started, however, and Glen mowed most of the lawn before the mower stalled and would not start again.

Act III, Watering the Corn

My nephew, the same one who warned us about the lawn mower, planted about half an acre of corn at Grandma’s house, and he was very excited to see it had sprouted. The weather has been very dry, so I offered to water it for him the next morning, before it got too hot. I thought that would be pretty simple and hands off. I was so wrong.

After four hours of moving the sprinkler around the cornfield, but ending up with alternating dry patches and swampy patches, I stood near the sprinkler while it was running to figure out what the problem was. It turned out it wasn’t resetting itself. If I poked the mechanism with my finger, it would swing back to the beginning of its arc. Otherwise, it would just sit there and throw water onto the same spot forever.

We didn’t want poor Grandma to have to struggle with this sprinkler later when we weren’t there, so we decided to lay out the soaker hoses they had in their barn. This ended up taking hours. I had to use ALL of my college calculus to figure out a way to cover all of the corn with the hoses we had. Then there was the process of running back to the barn to turn the water on to test the hoses, finding a problem, turning it off, and starting over. We had to switch out three of the hoses for leaks and bad connections. We finally got it working and turned it on. All told, it took from about 8 in the morning Sunday until 2 PM to get the corn watered.

Act IV, Lawn Mower Again and Always

It still seemed like the lawnmower might just need a better battery, so we tried charging up the new-old battery we put in it. First we had to push the lawnmower back into the barn, which was not easy since it apparently has no neutral gear. We got it into the barn, and Brent hooked it up to the battery charger, which may or may not have been working properly. The battery appeared to charge. It made little buzzy charging sounds. But when we tried to start up the mower, nothing happened. It wouldn’t turn over. It wouldn’t even try.

Although Glen was standing by with his ear muffs ready, we were not able to get the mower started so he could finish the lawn.

Act V, the Washing Machine Again No I am Not Kidding

I went through all of my spare clothes watering the corn. It was a sweaty, messy job and I had to change after my confrontation with the broken sprinkler. After being out in the sun a couple hours, I fantasized about spraying myself with the hose, but then decided to hold out for a shower, which would be much better.

When we were done with the hoses and the mower, Brent and his mother made a quick trip to the store, and I started a load of laundry. Brent was out of clean clothes, too. I grabbed all of the clothes we weren’t wearing and put them in Grandma’s washing machine while they were out, intending to shower as soon as I had some clean clothes to change into.

When Grandma got home, she said, “Oh, you fixed my washing machine?”

I said, “Um, it’s broken?” Around that time, the washer quit working, and could not be started up again. I was left with a small load of laundry floating in very dirty, ice-cold water. By that time, Brent was already in the shower, not knowing that laundry apocalypse had struck twice.

Very lucky for him, I had left him a not-very-dirty outfit that he had worn to a party the night before, so he was able to put on something less dirty than he was wearing before. In fact, I’d even picked up that last outfit, figuring it might be a good idea to wash everything, since we were going home to a broken washer. Fortunately, I decided it was too much trouble and I would just wash what we needed, so the new washing machine breakdown left us mostly where we started.

At that point, we gave up and headed for home, with our wet clothes in a plastic bag.

Brent managed to fix our washer here at home (knock wood), so I think Gravity and Entropy have gone back to their regular jobs, and Entropy is only just sitting on us, not smashing us under its boot heel.

A SciFi Legacy

The passing of Ray Bradbury has not touched me in a particularly personal way. Since enduring so much personal loss in the past couple of years, I am wary of claiming the losses of others as my own. Compared to the megaton nuclear impact of losing a loved one, any little electric shocks of grief I may feel over the loss of an acquaintance or celebrity are merely pale echos, and the energy I spend attracting attention to myself by eulogizing someone who is already excessively eulogized could be channeled to writing a sympathy note or giving support to someone close to me who needs it.

Okay, what can I say, I’m a little neurotic about death these days.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I do not have a eulogy of Ray Bradbury, or a testimonial of how his writing changed my life. I do, however, have a cute anecdote that illustrates his legacy.

Yesterday, I was chatting over the fence with my neighbor. He said, “I thought of you today, because that scifi writer died.” “Ray Bradbury?” I said. “Yes,” he answered. “Do you still write scifi?”

I told him yes I do, and fetched a copy of the June issue of Analog for him, with my story, “Titanium Soul.” I’d meant to give it to him anyway, because Smitty the cat from Titanium Soul is, in fact, his much-beloved cat, who died five or six years ago. (The neighbor in the story, however, is not modeled on the real life neighbor.)

So while I understand that Bradbury has not been able to write for more than a decade, his passing is reminding many people of what they love, or once loved, about SF. In addition to many copies of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury’s passing may also inspire a few people to check out the newer science fiction, and discover new authors to love. Maybe they’ll even stop by the magazine rack at their bookstore and pick up a copy of Analog.

Challenge: Have a Sugar-Free Fourth of July This Year

choicefruiterzurum
Independence Day is approaching, and I want to lay down a bad-ass eating challenge for everyone: plan your Fourth of July gathering with No Sweets, No Added Sugars, and No Artificial Sweeteners. If it’s sounds hard, it’s because it is. It will take careful planning, tough conversations with loved ones, and, possibly, some large cajones to carry off, but if you can pull it off, it can be the pivot point for important health changes for yourself and your family. If you can say no to sweets on a major sweet-eating holiday, you can say no to them any time you want.

Why am I fired up about this? Because this is exactly what we did for our family Memorial Day barbecue.

We had a fantastic Memorial Day Weekend. It will probably be our last true “weekend off” between travel and home improvement for many months. The highlight was a wonderful, professionally prepared meal made in my own kitchen by my brother-in-law who is a restaurant cook and student chef. Because we have a family member who is fighting Type II Diabetes, and is working through The 30 Day Diabetes Cure, by Stefan Ripich, we planned a menu that was mostly on her diet. That diet is very restrictive, so there were a couple of dishes that she couldn’t have. But we did our best to make the entire feast as accessible to her as possible, and that included not slapping down a grasshopper pie or a tub of ice cream for her to stoically watch the rest of us enjoy.

The menu was beef brisket with an amazing no-sugar dry rub that my brother-in-law devised, macaroni and cheese, twice-baked potatoes, tuscan bean salad, grilled butternut squash, and for dessert fresh watermelon and pineapple. Everyone enjoyed the meal, and I didn’t even think about the lack of sweet baked goods until hours later. No one missed them, especially not the kids. We had three kids between 4 and 13 and they were all much more focused on doing stuff than on eating stuff.

After the meal, I realized I’d had no trouble staying on my calorie plan even though it was a holiday, and that I didn’t have the stuffed full feeling, or digestion-specific sluggishness that tends to happen when I pig out on a big summer barbecue meal. What’s more, it was actually a relief to get the issue of junk food out in the open, and as a family, decide we weren’t going to have it.

It always feels like an obligation to serve a sweet dessert, and certain types of unhealthy side dishes like baked beans, chips and dip, etc. I enjoy those things, sure. But when I host a party, I mostly buy that stuff because I worry that other people will be disappointed if they’re not present. And then, when I am a guest, and presented with those things, it feels like it would be rude or ungrateful not to eat them, and, after all, it’s a “special occasion.” So, for at least some fraction of hosts and guests, there is a cycle of obligation where people are preparing and eating food they don’t really want.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having special foods on special occasions. But our American lifestyle is becoming one special occasion after another. Not only do you have traditional holidays and family get togethers in summer, you have new holidays like Paczki Day, Mother’s Day, and Sweetest Day that each demand their own menu of sugary treats. Wouldn’t it be sad not to have a Paczki on Paczki Day? Wouldn’t you feel deprived? Wouldn’t it be untraditional? (Never mind you never heard of a Paczki until you were 30 and that they’re actually not really that good.)

In addition, every family member’s birthday is a special occasion. At work, every coworker’s birthday is a special occasion. Also special are the free donuts and candies that appear in the break room. For your kids, every class mate’s birthday is a special occasion requiring observation via cupcake.

And in some parts of the country, you can’t take your kid to a grocery store or a bank without “celebrating” via a free cookie or lollipop.

So I guess what I’m saying here is that as much as I appreciate quality baked goods, and believe in celebrating special occasions with loved ones, let’s dare to take the sweet treats out of just one holiday, and see if everyone plummets into suicidal depression or not. My recent experience suggests not.

In case you’re still on the fence, here are some more reasons to go sugar-free on the Fourth of July:

Support elders with diabetes. I’ll bet one or more of your older family members has a diagnosis of Type II diabetes (not to be confused with Type I diabetes, which is a completely different and unrelated disease). People with Type II diabetes are not supposed to have sugary desserts. Ever. They may not have told you that. They don’t want to burden you with their sadness and bad news from the doctor. Or they may be in denial. But the truth is that every time a Type II diabetic goes off their diet and has something with a lot of sugar, they are shaving a little bit of time off the end of their life. And the end is really grisly, too. We have recently watched the endgame of Type II diabetes in a dear loved one, after many many years of decline, and this is not what you want for your family member, trust me. It. Is. Awful.

Do it for yourself. You know that older person with diabetes in your family? They used to be like you, eating the pie at the family picnic and generally not having to worry that their food is slowly killing them. Then, at some point, it caught up with them. Making a change for just one special day could set you on a different path. Try it!

Do it for the kids. How much junk food can a kid cram down at one of those gatherings? How much pop can they drink? According to a study by the CDC, published in the journal Pediatrics, 21 percent of American teenagers is either developing Type II diabetes or already has the disease. That’s shocking, and it was unheard of back in the 80′s when I was a teen. We shrug off massive sugar consumption in kids because we think their young bodies can burn it off, and when I was a kid, we did. I think the reasons for this epidemic are far from clear, but one thing is certain: pumping kids full of sugar on a regular basis is not helping. I don’t know if your kids will be like our kids. Maybe when they get to the picnic, they will throw a hissy fit over the lack of pop and ice cream. But, honestly, I’m guessing if you entice them with things to throw and chase and blow up, they won’t even notice. If they do complain, put them off with a promise of a trip to Dairy Queen another day. The goal is to make it through one party without the junk, not to change a whole life in one fell swoop. They may even relish the challenge if you give them a chance.

Planning a sugar-free Fourth of July IS a challenge. I wouldn’t have put this out there if it weren’t. I could challenge you to have a sugar free Thursday, June 28, but who would care? Part of the point is to have a conversation with your loved ones, and to tackle this problem as a community. All of us at one time or another have gone on healthy eating kicks, and perhaps found ourselves ordering salad while those around us chowed on burgers. Later, at a different time, maybe we are the ones chowing burgers while a friend is gamely munching salad. Sugar-Free Fourth is about getting everyone on the same page for one day.

Would I love for this to catch on like wildfire and become a huge national phenomenon? Of course. But the reality is that my megaphone is small, and Sugar-Free Fourth is just not going to work for some people and some families. If it’s not right for you, take a pass, but give it some thought. Maybe a different day? Maybe a different challenge (meat free? alcohol free?).

The fine print:

In addition to no sweets, this challenge asks you to root out hidden sources of added sugar in your meal such as barbecue sauce, salad dressings, store-bought potato and pasta salads, cured meats, “sweet tea,” and more. If you take up the challenge, read all of your labels and get the added sugars out. Although opinions vary on artificial sweeteners, for the purposes of this particular challenge, replacing sugar with artificial sweetener is missing the point. The point of the challenge is not to show you that you can make it through a holiday gathering while only eating pie that tastes like chemicals, it’s to show you that you don’t need the pie at all. Foods flavored with artificial sweeteners tend to be processed crap that at the end of the day is really not that good for you anyway. If you are hosting a pot luck, you will need to inform all of your guests of the rules and you may also need to write yourself a script in advance for diverting rule-breaking foods to a purgatory where they can be taken home untouched later by their respective rule-breakers.

You have more than a month before the holiday. I don’t know exactly what we’re doing, but I’m gong to take a stab at this, and I hope you will, too. Good luck!

 

 

Dog Crate Not So Much

DSC_0006
While photographing the crowdedness of the master bedroom, I also happened upon this photo op showing the abject failure of the dog crate. The dog crate is, in fact, very popular with every mammal in the house except the one it was purchased for. Courage still refuses to sleep all night in it. Soon, I will take it down and put it away. For now, you can see that Simba J. Cat and Athena Kitten are enjoying it while Miss Diamond Starina Kittais (she’s French) lounges in the foreground.

(Diamond is also not that smart. She doesn’t like to be around the other cats, but she doesn’t know they are right behind her so she’s fine.)

A Pre-Renovation Gallery

Here are some pics of the house before renovation.

 
DSC_0020
Here’s the house from the front. You can see the tiny driveway with our Toyota in it, and the tiny garage. The new garage/addition will be about four feet wider than the existing structure. As you can see, grading and retaining walls are going to be a big part of the project, and a big expense. There are also some trees – overgrown shrubberies actually – that will have to go. I’ll be a little sad about that since we enjoy the privacy, shade, and visiting birds. But c’est la vie. We really should be discouraging birds from visiting our place, anyway.

We also need to replace the old roof, and the addition will continue the existing roofline, so we will need a full tear-off of the old roof, and original cedar shakes underneath, and then a new roof all the way across. I don’t know yet if we’ll go with another Sheriff Goslin or something else. A metal roof mimicking the original cedar shake would be sweet, but is probably not in the budget. (Actual cedar shake can be had, but is hideously flammable and therefore not really a good idea.)

By the way, you can see one of our major frustrations with the arrangement. With a car in the driveway, we can’t wheel our bins to the street. Garbage day at our house always involves auto-musical chairs at 7 AM.

DSC_0013

Here’s the inside of the enclosed porch, progressing towards emptiness. The window you can see is the front window. There’s a lot of pristine original redwood siding inside that has never been touched by weather that we’ll be salvaging for the new exterior. Our options for matching siding to the existing exterior siding are limited. We’ll probably have no choice but to pay the high price of new cedar siding, since there doesn’t seem to be a non-wood product that matches what we already have.

DSC_0009

Here’s the porch from the back. The addition will extend about six feet further back, and will wrap around somewhat to the left to accommodate a new bathroom. Since the new ridgeline will be continuous to the old one, the extension in back will have its own little dormer at the second story level. There will be a double sliding door on the ground level, where the large window is currently. We’re also hoping to be able to splurge on some floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the second floor in back for plants and a little bit of solar gain in the summer.

DSC_0005

This just shows how crowded our existing master bedroom is, particularly with the huge dog crate. The window thing behind the dog crate is actually a door leading to the balcony. We’ll be blocking off that door, and putting a new interior door in the adjoining guest bedroom/office. That room will be an annex off the master bedroom that I’ll be using as an office, but could also be a cute nursery or sitting room.

The old master bedroom will either be a guest room or new teen cave, depending on the preferences of the teen.

DSC_0010

And here is a random photo op of the treehouse with Chewie in it. Due to budget restrictions, we won’t be able to add the jacuzzi tub, motorcycle lift, and electric water canons to it this year.

Friday Stream of Consciousness Update

I’ve been feeling great lately. Very positive, content, loving towards all my friends and family, full of energy, sleeping well and waking up refreshed, etc., etc. I thought it was possibly because life had suddenly become fantastic, but I think it’s actually endorphin overdose from all of the extra exercise I’ve been getting. Glen has been very keen on the biking, so we’ve been doing a weekly long bike ride and intermittent short ones. This Monday, we went on a 12 mile bike ride that starts in our neighborhood. We were pleasantly surprised to see that our neighbors J. and W. were the ride captains, so we got the opportunity to get reacquainted while we pedalled along. I was the straggler. This may be because I am, greatly to my surprise, the smallest and weakest member of the family. It may also be because I am the only one riding a poorly maintained twenty-year old bicycle. In any case, it was a great ride, and left me exhausted and sore in the “you’ve had a great workout” way that I became addicted to as a high school athlete.

I felt like I barely survived the ride, but the captains said we did well. Our family was the only group that joined the ride, probably because it was raining slightly, but they said because it is an entry-level ride, many people are starting from absolute zero and have more trouble with it than we did.

In addition, I’ve kept up with twice weekly bikram yoga, and we finally massaged the schedule in such a way that we can walk the dogs every day. On non-yoga days, they get a very long walk, nearly two miles. This causes them to keel over and sleep the whole rest of the day. It’s awesome, and it’s a non-trivial workout for me, too. Also makes for good conversation with the spouse.

In summary, I have endorphin poisoning and am probably insufferable and unfit for the company of normal writers with all of my cheerfulness.

I’m still on my diet/exercise plan, and have been on a plateau for about six weeks, now. You can’t believe this phenomenon until you’ve lived it. It defies the laws of physics. When I added the extra exercise in, I actually gained two pounds and then re-plateau’d at that level.

Yes, I know “muscle weighs more than fat” and blah blah blah. I have indeed lost some inches. But at some point in the slimming down process, the scale really *must” register a lower weight. The weight I am at now would be too high even for a very muscular man of my same height. There is no scenario where I can get back into a size 6 without losing some actual mass. Hence my confusion and impatience and daily yelling at my Tanita, “Oh come on!”

(This is not a request for diet advice. There are 5407 weight reducing diets out there, and everyone has a favorite. My switching to your favorite will not solve this problem. Time and patience will solve it.)

So, a big thing is happening at our house. I’ve been meaning to take some photos and do a big introduction post, but it’s not happening, so I’ll include the short version for now and hopefully the photos will come.

We are doing a major home renovation. Yaaaaaay! *Kermit flail*

This thing has been in the works for over a year. In fact, for record keeping purposes, I looked back at the first payment we made to the designer/builder, and it was over a year ago.

Our home is a 3 br/1 bath colonial built in 1924. It’s a wonderful house, with all of the charm you would expect of a house of that vintage. It’s built into the side of a steep hill, so it has a subterranean garage on one side, and a porch that’s been converted to a three-season-room above the garage.

We’ve found the house awkward to live in because of the driveway/garage/porch situation. The driveway is a narrow chute with rock retaining walls on both sides, probably built with a Model A in mind, and the garage is also very narrow. We were able to park our minivan in it at one point, but you can barely open the doors. All of our cars have scratches and chips in the paint from the rock retaining walls.

It goes without saying that the tiny garage does not have any space for storage, power tools, bikes, etc.

The porch is a nice idea. French doors lead from the living room to the porch. However, the flat roof leaks, in spite of the fact that we’ve repaired it once already, and it’s drafty as hell. When we moved in, there was in fact no actual lock preventing someone from walking into the house through the porch. I’m not kidding! We moved into the house in 2001. The porch had a flimsy storm door only, and the french doors leading into the living room were theoretically lockable with skeleton keys. You know, the universal kind you can buy in any antique store? One of the first things we did was install a proper exterior door on the porch so that we could lock it.

However, the whole porch thing has driven me crazy ever since. It’s a tantalizing space that seems like it could be wonderful living/storage space. In reality, it’s a junk magnet that is unpleasantly drafty in the cold season, and overly hot in the summer season. I could go on and on about the porch.

So, in our remodel, we are tearing out the garage and porch completely. (Aiyee!) We will be putting in a new, wider driveway, and a larger garage. On the main floor of the house, where the old porch was, we’ll have a family room that matches the garage footprint, with (oh god yes) a MAIN FLOOR BATHROOM. *more Kermit flailing*

I’m really excited about that bathroom. As our son just turned into a teenager, with all of the increased grooming that implies, Brent and I are slowly losing access to the house’s single bathroom. Many peepee dances ensue The first floor bathroom will have a large shower stall instead of a tub. This will give us a way to wash dogs without dragging them upstairs. It will also be handicapper accessable, so the whole area can be turned into a convalescent suite if one of us should become bedridden or if we need to provide care for an older family member. We’ve been through elder care already, with the world’s least accessible house, so we’re very conscious of how difficult that can be. (My mother fell down our stairs not once but twice when she was living with us. I have huge regrets over not choosing a ranch-style house back in 2001. So many problems we had in her care would have been solved by living in a one story home.)

On the second floor of the house, above the family room, we’re putting in a master suite. There will be yet another bathroom. (Three bathrooms, OMG!) The room will also be big enough for a queen-sized bed AND reasonable furniture and closet space for storing clothes. (I don’t know where these 1924 people put their dresser and chest of drawers. Half of my clothes live in the guest bedroom/office.)

So, that’s how our summer is shaping up. The past couple of months have involved many design meetings with the builder (in process), figuring out financing (done), applying for permits (done), cleaning out the garage and porch (in process), storing or divesting excess items (in process), and pre-shopping for materials and finishes (a never ending task). Brent is only working part time, and he will be GC on the project, and will be working as part of the crew for the demolition and framing.

We already have major challenges in the initial phase with our hilltop site–where to put the dumpster? How to get materials in and out? The sequence of tasks needs to be carefully planned because of access limitations. Brent and the builder are working on those problems together. We also have some potential surprises waiting for us when we get stuff torn up and dug out. We don’t actually know where some of the utilities come in and connect to the house, because the city’s records for 1924 are sketchy. Apparently, it’s also not clear at this point how the plumbing for the new house will connect to the old house. The plumber will have to figure it out later, when things have been exposed and the framing is in.

However, the plans are approved, and we are braced for “known unknowns” and budget overruns, so we are going to cross our fingers and take the plunge. We’ll probably be breaking ground in about two weeks.

It’s very exciting, but will probably also keep us busy and stressed for the whole summer. That’s where endorphin poisoning can be very helpful. Yay, endorphin poisoning! Pass the checkbook. Whee!

“The North Revena Ladies Literary Society” out now in July/Aug Analog

I have another new story in Analog, for the July/Aug 2012 issue, “The North Revena Ladies Literary Society.” It’s about a book club made of spies who save the world with books. This one, too, was liked by Locus:

A whole lot of action thriller and SFnal conspiracy packed surprisingly into a short piece. Nicely sketched characterization, with a slyly humorous tone.

 

It’s a double issue and I share the TOC with pal and fellow MAFIA member Rick Lovett.

[MAFIA = "making appearances frequently in Analog"]

Is Cilantro Good with Crow?

After getting some feedback from folks on Friday’s post about cilantro haters, I am no longer so certain that there is nothing innate or genetic going on. It’s almost as if calling people assholes is not a very good rhetorical strategy.

I still don’t think any of the scientific studies that I’ve seen, including the survey of the ethnic distribution of cilantro-hating or the twin study, provide a shred of proof that it’s genetic. In addition, although I do hear people who are saying that their loathing of cilantro is something other and different from loathing of an ordinary food, I remain unconvinced that the strength of food loathing is evidence that anything other than food loathing is going on. The reason for that is that human beings eat some pretty strongly flavored stuff the world over, and there are many foods I could think of that would inspire a strong response of revulsion, either by their flavor alone, or by the idea of them. I still remember my first taste of lemon grass. I was in college, and I felt like I’d been served a soup of furniture polish. It tasted like chemicals to me, not food, and I couldn’t imagine how anyone could eat it. My husband was with me at the time, and he also had not had lemon grass before, but he enjoyed the soup.

However, I have had a couple of folks send me a link to an anecdote that is kind of convincing.

For background, in email, I wrote:

It would be very easy to prove this scientifically. All you would have to do is isolate and characterize all of the flavor compounds in the cilantro (there’s a good chance it’s been done and is in the literature already), and then feed it to haters and non-haters to see if there’s something the haters can taste that the non-haters can’t taste. I could do this experiment in my basement if I had a basic organic chemistry lab and a gas chromatograph.

 

The thing about all of this is that I couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t already done the obvious gas chromatograph thing. There’s one in every organic chem/biochem laboratory, and plenty of curious/drunk/bored/argumentative scientists out there who would have the same debates going about cilantro, so why not get some real answers, rather than going around asking twins if they like cilantro, which gives you pretty much nothing.

Well, it turns out someone has tried this. Reporter Josh Kurz wanted to learn more about why the herb was so offensive to him, he ended up doing a “supersmeller” test with a gas chromatograph. Since the flavor that bothered him so much in cilantro was something he could also smell, he theorized that there was an aroma that he was picking up that cilantro-lovers were not.

I put my supersmelling nose to the test and at 20 minutes, I identify the evil smell.

“They’re all unsaturated aldahydes,” Dr. George Preti explains. There we have it, the compound that ruins every dish and makes me think of soap.

Ten minutes later, Wysocki and Preti identify the unmistakable smell of cilantro that they love. I, however, smell nothing.

This, it turns out, is the real problem. My whole life I’ve been unable to pick up on the scent that is so overwhelmingly good for cilantro lovers that it trumps any possible bad. I come to a disappointing realization: I am not an X-Man with superkeen sensory abilities. I am a sensory dud who’s missing the true nature of cilantro.

 

I’m not sure if this new theory is sufficient to quell the cilantro wars, or only to heat them up further. Earlier in the article, Kurz cops to the attitude that bugs me so much about internet cilantro warriors:

My quest for answers began with the Internet. It was there that I learned (from questionable sources) that our hatred arises from the fact that we are supertasters. Gifted (or burdened) with a “supersensitive palate,” we are some of the rare beings who are tuned into the true nature of this nasty green beast.

 

It’s the idea that people who hate cilantro have some kind of genetic gift that gives them insight into a food while the rest of us mindless sheep happily chow it down that grates on my nerves. When Kurz learns he is not a supertaster, by sampling a strip of paper soaked with propylthiouracil, he posits that perhaps he is a supersmeller, and finally learns the disappointing truth that he may in fact have a cilantro-related disability.

I have to give him props for his humorous treatment of this bizarrely inflammatory subject.

By the way, I’ve been pretty confused by the supertaster concept. At one point, I tried to determine if I was a supertaster by counting the fungiform papillae on my tongue. Maybe I’m specially challenged, but I’m not sure counting one’s own fungiform papillae is a doable activity for most people. However, if it is defined as people who strongly sense the taste of PTU, I am so there. I’m like an ultrasupertaster. We did that experiment in high school, and, yep, it’s nasty.

Let me tell you, being a supertaster is a really disappointing superpower to have. How often in a fight with a supervillain do you think he gets close enough to let you taste him? I’d trade it any day for flying or invisibility.

 

The Exceptionalism of Cilantro Haters

Here’s one of my pet peeves. This survey was linked from BoingBoing with the explanation that cilantro-haters have a genetic mutation that causes them to perceive the taste differently. The linked article claims, without a reference, that there is a study in identical twins showing that cilantro-hate is genetic. But the study being reported proved no such thing. It only showed that preference for or against cilantro varied by culture, which is no surprise as cilantro is an herb that has been used heavily in some cultural cuisines and not in others.

The study authors called cilantro “the most polarizing” food. I disagree that it’s polarizing. Actually, I think online cilantro-haters are a bunch of whiny assholes. Lots of people have foods they hate, and they can and do hate them passionately. Some people can’t bear the taste of onion. Some people hate the flavor of all vegetables. Some people hate coffee. Etc. Etc.

People who hate cilantro, however, are the only group that seems to think it is somehow special.

Now, it is remotely possible that there’s some chemical in cilantro that can be perceived by some people and not others, but I doubt it’s the case. People who hate cilantro say it tastes like soap or dirt, and I agree. Cilantro does taste like soap – enchantingly delicious soap. There’s is also an earthy, “dirty” taste to it. I like that, as well.

Nothing in the strength of people’s dislike for cilantro, or in the nature of their descriptions, suggests this is any different from not liking onions or garlic or coffee. Different strokes for different folks.

When we are babies, we come programmed for one basic taste: mother’s milk. As our parents introduce new foods to us, we mostly don’t like them at first. Check out a baby trying a new food for the first time. It invariably comes right back out with a highly amusing “ick” face. (Yes, I know that some babies like trying new foods.) Over time, as we’re exposed to foods again and again, the taste is gradually less off-putting until our brains finally figure out it is food and has nutrition in it. Then it crosses over from being something yucky to something delicious.

A lot of people don’t understand the process of developing a taste for a new food, and think if they hate it the first time they try it, they will always hate it. It’s just not true. This is why it’s best not to push vegetables onto little kids. It truly will make them gag and throw up if they go from zero to broccoli in one meal. But if they see it, see their parents eating it, and try it a time or two or fifteen, their brain will eventually stop objecting to the flavor.

I think most of this cilantro hate is just unfamiliarity. I can’t comment on the twin study, but I will note that separating identical twins in adoption went out of style in the 1950′s, so it’s unlikely that the twins in the study grew up in different homes, unless they are about 70. Twins probably tend to share preferences about cilantro, because, duh, same house same family.

None of this is to say that cilantro-haters, or haters of any other particular food, need to get over it. Far from it. We all have a right to our preferences. I don’t like capers! I never understood why those icky little sour things so frequently show up to spoil a perfectly nice sauce or whatever.

I just think people need to get over thinking they’re special if they don’t like cilantro. In fact, since cilantro comes from cuisines of Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and is gaining popularity rapidly in the U.S., the exceedingly vocal resistance to it strikes me as a little bit racist.