The Ubiqitous Green Frog

The green frog is everywhere. Tiny green frogs. They congregate around any outdoor light source to eat moths and bugs, and this adds to my discomfort. Not only do I have to do battle with moths, but the also the frogs who hunt them.

Frog or tree toad? I can never remember. The differences are so slight. Turtle or tortoise? Gay people or Straight? The distinctions are so small and so hard to recall that it is better to focus on the factors that are shared.

The tiny green frogs are annoying, and that sets them apart in my mind.

Fish guts flung and smeared on our mailbox is a distinguishing factor in determining the perpetrator.

The person or persons unknown should figure out that the gay ladies who live here go fishing all the time, and are not squeamish at all about fish guts.

Fish innards are annoying, but not horrifying or sickening. I really doubt that the mail delivery person appreciated them.

The ubiquitous green frog is a necessity, because they eat bugs, which are even more annoying than the constant croaking of the frogs, whose sound far exceeds their thumbnail size. I like to listen to the birds with my morning coffee, and to the faint mooing of the cows. The tiny toads (or frogs) sometimes drown out the much pleasanter bobwhites and mockingbirds, the peacocks and mourning doves.

My cat stalks the swallows who have nested in the rafters of the shop. It’s nature. I would love to see the swallows return each year and hatch their babies in peace, but what can one do about nature and instinct? Gay people and straight people. What can one do, really, to intercede with nature? Let live, as I do the annoying and ubiquitous frogs. They do serve a purpose.

Lilies of the Field

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:” Mathew 6:28

So this week: we drove to St Pete, dug up a bunch of plants from our rental house (is this tacky? To take all the best plants before the new tenant moves in?) drove home, and replanted them. I bought a dump cart from Home Depot and put it together. Went to Walmart about a dozen times to get a prescription transferred; worked some on writing: so why is my back sore, why am I so tired? Last evening I fell into bed about 5 pm, slept until 11 pm, woke up, went back to bed at 12, and slept till 5 am this morning. So this peace lily you see here is a huge one, because it was originally three. One I got from the service when my stepdad died in 2000, one when my brother passed away in 2004, and one when my mother died in 2008. I hope it continues to thrive here at our new home.

We have these tiny green frogs that hang around the outside light to catch and eat moths. At first I thought they were cute. Yesterday when I stopped for gas, I opened up the cover to the gas thingy, and there were two of them, parched and almost dead. Jeez. Now they get into the house. No bigger than a thumbnail, easy to step on, even the cats are tired of them.

Yes, the remedy is at hand. We bought a huge outdoor light to put on a utility pole to draw the moths and thus the frogs away from us, but so far, we haven’t got it installed.

The lilies of the field may toil not, but we do. Digging holes, setting out plants and grass, watering. We toil, but it is fun. And when I say “we” I mean, of course, that Sandy toils while I watch.

The question remains, why does my back hurt so much? I have toiled not. I am staring at one of the green frogs on my window screen right now.

 

 

 

 

I’m Seeing Red

Today and tomorrow, 2/26 and 3/37 the Supreme Court will hear arguments for and against marraige equality. Everyone is wearing red to show support. HRC changed their famous equality sign from blue to red.

Here’s a great page to give live updates and an overview of the history of the cases:

http://www.hrc.org/standformarriage

So somewhere, a bunch of mostly older, mostly conservative, mostly male, mostly white judges are deciding whether when I go into the hospital, my partner can see me and make decisions for me without a bunch of papers in her hands. They will decide whether she can get widow’s benefits from Social Security when I die. They will choose whethe she has the right to bury me according to my wishes. whether she can inherit from me without paying huges taxes.

They decide. I see red.

Are you seeing red?

Guns and Roses

It is rainy, cloudy, drippy here this morning. Perfect writing weather. This is Thursday, two days after the State of the Union, and I am stil thinking about Ted Nugent.

I have imaginary confrontations with him. I feel so bad for Luke Russert, who tried to interview Nugent after the speech.

http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-in-case-you-missed-it-here-is.html

Since Newtown, I have been thinking a lot about guns. I live in the country now, where it would be practical to have one for wild creatures that might attack us or the cats. There are all kinds of animals in these Florida forests, including coyotes, cute but destructive raccoons, armadillos, alligators, even panthers (rare) and bears, so they tell me.

We sit in the back yard and watch wild turkeys and many other kinds of birds, the giant woodpeckers, robins, cardinals, hawks, owls, others I can’t identify. We listen to them. There are chickens and roosters, feral cats who howl, there are deer, rabbits, possums, and of course, snakes. There was a dead snake tangled in one of the bushes in the front yard when we moved in. His skin and head are still there.

Lately, my partner and I have taken up fishing. The search for the perfect fishing hole is as much fun as actually fishing. We have caught perch, catfish, snakeheads, and some we can’t identify. The fishing isa re-enactment from both our childhoods, when I fished for catfish in the Tombigbee and Sandy fished for bass with her daddy in Texas.

The thing about fishing is when you find a good spot, you keep it secret. So we have this place we go to fish that is very far into the woods. I always think we should have some protection other than fishhooks and a knife. And a cell phone that probably has zero bars. What if we stumble upon a snake?

Guns sales spiked after the Newtown tragedy, as they do after every incident like it. People rush to buy guns before the bad federal government takes them away, because they are scared, because they believe they need to arm themselves for a civil war or some other equally ridiculous idea.

Even as the president was delivering his speech Tuesday night, a week-long rapage against the police was coming to a violebt end in Big Bear, where Christopher Dorner holed up in a cabin and engaged in a gun battle until the cabin caught on fire and burned to the ground, as the president spoke about the need to try to curb some gun violence by voting, please, on universal background checks for all gun purchases, for the ban on large capacity clips and magazines. Gabby Giffords was there for the speech. So was Ted Nugent. He sat beside some gay rights activists. He did not look happy about it. I wonder if he thought there would be a reserved section for the gun nuts like himself so they could all sit together?

The dogwoods are beginning to bloom. The grass is turning green. Spring is near, at least here in Florida it is. The azaleas have opened up. Trees are beginning to grow new leaves. The fish are jumping, birds are congregating, and the spring wet season is starting.

In all this new awakening after winter, I am getting the itch to play in the yard, go rambling, to dig in the dirt, and to write. What lingers though, is Newtown, and thoughts of guns.

The Race is On

So the publicist, publisher, and all around guru of Bywater Books Michele Karlsberg had this idea that we should drum up people to post reviews of our books on amazon and goodreads to see who can reach 30 reviews. She’s smart. I’m afraid of her, really. I mean, she’s from New York, right?

So I checked it out. Miss McGhee has 15 reviews. What’s Best for Jane has 4 reviews.

I don’t know what we win, exactly, if we reach 30 reviews. It’s more like I am scared of what might happen if we don’t. She’s from New York.

So, if you like my books, because really, who wants to chum up bad reviews, and you haven’t yet posted a review on amazon, please help me out.

http://www.amazon.com/Miss-McGhee-Bett-Norris/dp/1932859330/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310304321&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Best-Jane-Bett-Norris/dp/193285956X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310304291&sr=1-1

Michele is a fast talker. Maybe I am the only Bywater author who fell for this. Maybe the others are not scared of her. Some of them are also from New York. They may not be intimidated.

 

In any case, I like to win, so help me out. Post a review. Just a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph raving about Miss McGhee or What’s Best for Jane.

 

By the way, the equally intimidating (but in an awesome way) Jill Malone, one of my favorite writers, has agreed to step up to the plate for The Next Big Thing. You can catch this on her web site http://www.jillmalone.com/. Really, you shuld check out her blog regularly. She is a fascinating writer.

The Next Big Thing: Writers Discuss New Work

I’ve been tagged by my friend and fellow writer, the inimitable Joan Opyr, (Shaken and Stirred) to be #30 in a series of blog posts designed to get writers to talk about their newest book (What’s Best for Jane) or their work-in-progress (Brown Eyes).  The idea is to encourage us to promote our work and to gin up interest in upcoming books. Who knew writers needed to be encouraged to talk about themselves? Here goes.

What is the working title of your book?

Brown Eyes. Let me state up front that I never choose titles for my novels. I name the file, of course, usually with the main character’s name. But I wrote a little piece in the first draft of this story, set in the late 19th century, early 20th, that I really liked, and from that came this working title.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Ancestry.com. Seriously, I got into researching my own family background, and learned a few interesting tidbits that stuck with me. In trying to trace my own genealogy, I found a little mystery. I spent a lot of time in family cemeteries and online, just trying to answer a simple question about my family roots. It is really hard to describe the feeling you get when you find that elusive piece of paper that tells you something for sure that had always existed only in family lore, in hints and hushed phrases, whispered stories, half-remembered tales from front porches on late evenings. When you hold a document in your hand that says, I guess that story about my heritage might be, must be true, it feels like you are transported back to that time and place.

What genre does your book fall under?

I suppose you can call it historical fiction, or fictional memoir, or a generational saga. I don’t think about that when I am writing, following an idea about a character. No one really sits down and says, I am going to write a romance novel, a science fiction novel, a murder mystery. Writers sit down and say, I am going to write the most astounding novel so great that it can never be categorized or duplicated, the great novel of the Western world, etc.  At least, that’s what I tell myself. It is going to be the best, most poignant, funniest, blah, blah, so on. In fact, we all tell ourselves when we sit down to write, all aflame with our brilliant ideas, that this book is really going to be the next big thing.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Let’s talk about What’s Best for Jane, if we are casting a movie. I like Ellen Page. She can play all the characters, young Jane, teen-aged Jane, old Miss McGhee, she can even play Jane’s parents. It would be great.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Things, and people, aren’t always what they seem.

What is the longer synopsis of your book?

A girl grows up in the rural South, on a farm at the end of a dusty dirt road. She wonders about her family, about the societal heritage lost to them because of the Civil War, about the secret heritage no one talks about, ever, and she wonders about herself, why she doesn’t seem to really belong, about where she will go when she grows up, because she can’t stay there, on that muddy-in-the-spring, dusty-in-the-summer farm. She can’t forever run barefoot through the woods when the dogwoods first bloom, because she is a girl, who will become a woman. And what if she doesn’t want to keep the family secret? What if she wants to embrace the secret part of her heritage?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Ha. I will submit this masterpiece to Bywater Books when it is finished. They get first dibs. Bywater is doing something amazing, and finding some amazing writers and books.  I want to be on the Bywater list, just because I want to rub shoulders with all the excellent writers they are publishing these days, like Jill Malone, Sally Bellerose, Hillary Sloin, and Joan Opyr. Val McDermid. Georgia Beers. Jesse Blackadder. I can go on.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I started over a year ago, got 50,000 words in, and that’s when the family research really took hold, so I may be starting over. Usually, a first draft comes to me in a dream, all in a piece, and I sit down and don’t stop writing until it is finished. It will go through several drafts. In fact, I don’t really stop working on it until an editor takes it away from me.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My mother died four years ago. Grieving is a process, they say. I found myself wanting to ask her questions about the family history, like I did all my life, and now I can’t any more. So I started looking.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

How about a mocked up cover?

A lot of people have asked me to write something funny. I can’t say yet if this is the book for humor, but I can tell you that writing funny is very difficult, and attempting it greatly increases my admiration for writers like Mari SanGiovanni, Lisa Gitlin, and Joan Opyr who do it so well.

Tune in next Wednesday over at http://lisagitlin.blogspot.com/ to see Lisa Gitlin tackle the same questions.

I Got Out

Today, it’s finally ours, this new home, this new place we inhabit. A place of peace, and security, and consideration, and kindness, and more love and more fun, and more care given to each other. This is our new home.

A literal new house with a football-field-sized yard, in the country, with trees, and stars and the moon at night, and amazing sunsets and sunrises, with this giant oak centered in the back yard, spreading its limbs as shelter and shade. Inside, it is open and bright and airy, easy and comforting. Outside, it is home. Home to the woods and the trees and the dirt I grew up with, the feels and smells and sounds. Roots that run so deep in me are springing to life, not just recalling certain known things, but giving those things to me again.

This morning it is cold, freezing cold. The moon is heavy and low. The animals are crouched and still. In this cold, and in the stillness, and in the dried brown grass crusted with frost, I can feel spring.

But there is more here, more than a chance to revive childhood recollections, other chances we now can take. We begin a new life together, with a renewed awareness of how precious it is, how dear, to be able to be together, to have one another’s love and attention, to be able to say finally, and fully, you come first with me, and I come first with you.

Does it sound exclusionary, isolationist? Maybe it does. We have reached an age, a time, when we both recognize that the time we have is all we have, and we mean to spend it deliberately, thoughtfully, on each other.

Retirement, that’s what I told people about why we wanted to move, to get ready for retirement. We are not retiring. We are coming to life again, and life is coming to us in the most surprising ways.

We feel free, and better, and excited about each day.

They call it closing, when you sign all the papers to buy a house. I call it opening up, smelling the fresh pages of a new book.

A Sense of Place

I spent the day throwing up. Eat, take a pain pill, throw up. Repeat.

Not a nice image, but there it is. What has throwing up got to do with a sense of place?

We have spent the last three months waiting to close the deal on our new house. The title agent got so frustrated recently that she quit. Our real estate agent called to say that the title agent resumed her position in this complicated process, and that we should close soon. Soon, that’s what they have been telling us for the past two months now.

We have been renting the house. We already live in the house we are trying to buy. Sandy and I love it. We both felt an immediate sense of place, of belonging, when we saw the enormous oak in the back yard, the shop, and of course the house itself. It is open, airy, full of light. 

The sights and sounds and smells of living in the country bring back memories of my childhood. The complete darkness when night falls, the calls of the birds and insects.  We spend a lot of time outdoors now. When we lived in the city, we stayed inside.

This return to country living was a deliberate choice, and it satisfies something I didn’t know I missed. What do we want to do, where do we want to be, when we retire? We talked and brainstormed and fantasized about it, and what I wanted was to return to the things I grew up with. The trees, the dirt, the air, all remind me of the places where I grew up in Alabama. I want to be a kid again, and that is what we are doing.

The field behind our property was planted in peanuts during the summer, and we watched them harvest. They turned the cows into the harvested field, and we took pleasure in sitting and watching them every evening. Then they planted winter hay, so we miss the cows.

We have an acre here. The front yard is big enough to play football. It has lovely sycamores. But the back yard is where we live. We have a fire pit, and we build fires and have coffee on weekend mornings. We make fires at night too, and sit gazing into the flames, and come inside smelling of wood smoke.

It feels like home to us. While the closing process and been long and tangled and scary, we haven’t really felt the amount of stress that normally would accompany it. We have relaxed into this place like we lived here before, a long time ago, when we were children, listening for the giant owl, watching the stars and the moon and the fireflies, breathing in the night air, debating whether to put another log on the fire, counting the wild turkeys when they appear, and feeling better than we have in years.

The throwing up doesn’t count. That is due to arthritis in my neck causing a pinched nerve or something. The pain is almost unbearable. I see specialist next week, but I have no idea what the doctor will recommend.

We are looking forward to Christmas this year. I want to put lights in one of the evergreen trees out front. Not the tiny white lights, the big colored lights I remember.

Which brings up this reminder: books make great Christmas gifts. Easy to wrap. And if you are like me, you can read tyhem before you give them away. Just a thought.

I recommend you buy directly from the publisher if you can’t find what you want in the local bookstores. http://www.bywaterbooks.com/

If ebooks are your preference, you can get those too at Bywater Books, or download them from amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I hope you don’t mind the self promotion. I have a new house to pay for.

Why I Write

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ruta-sepetys/post_4027_b_2191826.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

I caught this link on Twitter this morning, and the remarkable story resonated so deeply that I had to break my cyber silence of the past few months to say something about why I write historical fiction.

I write about the past because I can’t figure out the present. I always joke by saying that I don’t understand how modern technology works, and that’s why I always set my books in an earlier time. It is true that I barely know how to operate my smart phone, and I use but do not understand computers.

My first two novels were fiction in their entirety, meaning that no part of anyone’s lived past were represented in them, the characters were all fictional.

My third book, which has sat, half-written and neglected, deals with my own family’s past. Maybe that is what has stumped me, sent me back time and again to old census records, old photographs, fading memories of stories my mother told me. I am looking for something.

50,000 words in, and I still am not ready to commit to the story. I don’t feel it yet in my gut, in my heart. When that happens, I suspect that the original hundred pages will get thrown out and a new draft will emerge, whole and sleek.

On Thursday, November 29, at 4:15 pm I will be on the radio with Merry Gangemi. and Woman-Stirred Radio, WGDR 91.1 fm and WGDR 91.1 fm live. We’ll be talking about What’s Best for Jane.  It will be fun, so listen in.

Lesbian Authors on Alcoholism Abuse and Acceptance | Advocate.com

http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2012/09/18/lesbian-authors-alcoholism-abuse-and-acceptance?page=0,2