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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

(No Title) (#607)

My characters are not me, of course, nor are they anyone else in my life. They started out being close cousins to me and other people I know, but they've taken on their own lives now, have personality traits I don't remember assigning them, and have quirks and motives downright dissimilar to the characters I'd planned. Still, when the story arrives at a turning point for one of these people, and a new revelation surfaces that uncovers why they act as they do, it has the vaguest twinge of familiarity about it. And so I wonder how much we can authentically write of lives we don't know, of feelings we've never had, of motivations we've never been tempted by. They say that all the main characters in your dreams are really you. That if you dream of your father being a little too hard on you when you were a kid, you're really trying to resolve your own tendencies to criticize your children. Who knows? Maybe all these characters are me. And maybe after the novel's done, I'll go ahead and schedule some time with a good therapist. I think I'm suffering from Multiple Character Disorder.

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(No Title) (#608)

Names say a lot about a person, don't you think? I just did a google search with the single word "Katy" to see what I'd turn up. (For one thing, fallible appeared 55th out of 801,000 Katy sightings, which was cool. And most of the first 30 or so pertain to the Katy Trail, the Katy Railroad, establishments in Katy, Texas, etc.) I experienced an instantanous affinity with these far-flung Katys, amazed at how nearly their interests and pursuits reflect mine. One Katy is a celtic musician, another a purveyor of heritage lace. A third Katy is a dollmaker, and a fourth a retailer of hand-dyed fabrics. There is a Katy, the water-colourist, and a Katy, the antique Singer sewing machine collector. And a Katy who assembles resources for writers. Of porn and erotica. OK, but still.

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(No Title) (#609)

I'd seen him in Starbuck's before, caught him watching me more than once. He is tall and elegant, in his late fifties, greying, but in a good way. His taste in clothing is impeccable and ageless. He has the kind of physique that makes me think he could have worn those exact clothes when he was twenty, with the same effect. When he came in today, I realized right away I was sitting in His Chair, the chair in which he sips and reads the Kansas City Star. I'd finished with the paper by then, and was returning it to the rack on my way out the door. (I admit I was planning to steal--was in the very process of stealing, in fact--one page of the paper, containing the column about the new positive findings on the Dr. Atkin's Diet.) He saw me walking toward the rack and rose from his seat on the couch to greet me. He seemed as if he'd been waiting for such an opportunity. "Anything good in that paper?" he asked, his white teeth gleaming and his eyes smiling. A classic pick-up line if I've ever heard one. "It's all good," I stammered, like a silly schoolgirl. I left the shop then, but realized after I was in my car that I'd forgotten something inside. He was now standing in front of His Chair, trying to piece back together the hopelessly disheveled paper, section by section, page by page. I should have told him not to waste his time looking for page A8, but I didn't. He didn't meet my eyes again, and won't ever, I'm thinking. Something told him it just wasn't meant to be.

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(No Title) (#610)

The window is not high, but wide, like the panorama-sized photos you can have developed these days. The view before dawn from the dimly lit room was like looking at an old-fashioned cartridge of Shaeffer's blue ink lying on its side. The ink had been black just minutes ago, India ink, the permanent kind, and now this. Blue ink, washable, changeable, lightening by the second, a color that would write a beautiful letter home. I sip my coffee and silently celebrate the mystery of it, and then take up my fountain pen to greet the day.

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(No Title) (#611)

Our 23-year-old son Scott has a pesky problem pertaining to unpaid personal property tax and an expired license plate on his car. Apparently, Missouri doesn't have it on record that he owns the car, which we purchased for him as a graduation present in June, 2001. Scott didn't cause the mess, but he'll get to untangle it. Still, being the compassionate mother and red-tape-savvy taxpayer that I am, I want to give him a few pointers. So I ask my husband to help me with the details. "Which summer was it that we bought the car?" I ask. "Wasn't it 2001?" The year is critical, as it determines how much back tax Scott will have to fork over. "What year did he graduate from college?" Doug asks. "Because that's when we bought the car." "I know that," I say. "Help me here." "Well, let's see," Doug says, and the wheels start to turn. "I think he graduated from high school in 2000..." (and I'm thinking, no, silly, that was Carrie) "and so he must have graduated from college in 2004." 2002, a spaced odyssey.

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(No Title) (#612)

"My husband keeps asking me when I'm going to get a career," says 25-year-old Hannah, who works at both Starbuck's and at a Hallmark store. She loves her jobs, gets great discounts at both of them, has made terrific friends with her co-workers and her customers, and is happy. "Careers are overrated," I say, as if I know. Not only have I never had a career, I rarely hold a job. "I can't tell you how many people I know who resent their careers, or who end up trading them in for a plain old job they love." It's the truth. My RN friend, Nancy, chucked it all and now creates custom stained-glass windows for word-of-mouth clientele. It had never occurred to her in her youth that her temperament is so well suited for creative pursuits. Another friend and I met in the early 1970s, when we worked as data entry recorders for a pharmaceutical firm. Helen recently walked away from her own insurance agency, which she had built from the ground up, gave away her possessions and the considerable proceeds of her retirement accounts, and moved to Phoenix, where she gives her time to a local ministry. She doesn't know where her next dollar is coming from, only that it is coming, because of God. Her happiness is astonishing. "Tell your hubby you're considering your options," I say. "Tell him you've had some great conversations with fascinating people, and that there are indeed a number of wonderful opportunities out there." "And then what?" she asks. "Then have yourself another venti latte breve with sugar-free vanilla syrup," I say, "and give it some thought."

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(No Title) (#613)

Overheard on the Log Homes Holiday Tour we went on yesterday: First man: "So, are you interested in building a log home?" Second man: "Well, we've been researching it for three and a half years." First man: "So, you're not interested in building a log home." Talk about cutting to the chase.

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(No Title) (#614)

I sit down in the brown velvet chair at Starbuck's, turn on my portable keyboard, and wait for...what? Within a minute or two, a man sits on the couch opposite me, clutching his coffee, not looking me in the eye. He plants himself firmly in the remotest corner of the couch, feet squarely set on the floor, and looks beyond me, out the window. He is forty or so, with huge glasses, enormously clunky black tie-up boots, and a pocket protector. His jacket and billed cap display a Pepsi logo, and I glance into the parking lot to confirm he is a truck driver. Another couple minutes go by, and a woman joins him, dressed identically, only with earrings. They are trucking partners, here for the first time, pop drinkers in a coffee drinking world. She sits down a little left of center, a little closer to his side of the couch than he might have liked, and I picture each of them at home in bed with their own spouses, the men hugging the edge of the beds, and the women hugging the men. They both wear wedding rings, but not each other's. "This is pretty good," she says, as if she's never tasted coffee, or maybe has had her doubts whether there could be anything virtuous about such an expensive beverage. The man clutches his coffee close to the vest, never putting it on the little table they might have shared, never letting himself get too comfortable. The woman is a little stiff herself, at first, but loosens up rapidly. Soon, she is leaning on one elbow, head hanging back, legs crossed femininely and in striking contrast to her costume, sprawled over 2/3 of the couch, stroking the velvet as she sips. She is laughing easily at everything her partner says. He isn't a funny man, that's the thing, but he is friendly. He looks straight ahead when he talks, but she turns to look right in his face when she responds. He's afraid of falling for her, I think. And she's already fallen for him... I'm thinking her husband never makes her laugh like this. Not only is her husband not funny, he's not even friendly. The trucker, on the other hand, is sincere, honest, droll, a good man. He is not trying to entertain her, but she is more than entertained--she is relaxed and happy. And he's starting to realize it. He's only had this effect on one woman in his life, and when it happened, he married her before she could form a second impression. Now he can't believe it's happening again--lightening isn't supposed to strike in the same man twice. She takes her jacket off and throws it to the side, settling in, as acclimated now to these surroundings as if she spent every lunch break here. Over the speakers comes the tune, "I am a man of constant sorrows..." and she says, "I don't like this song." "You don't?" he asks, and then he makes some comment that has her laughing so hard she's punching him on the arm. He doesn't move, just holds his coffee a little closer to his heart, and wonders. By now, she's sitting on the edge of the couch, closer to him, and leaning into him as she speaks. He still faces forward. Finally, she looks at her watch and says, "All right, let's go." Before she can grab her coat and purse, he jumps up and makes a run for the door, eager for the relative safety of the truck. Seldom have I seen a man more frightened, or more in awe of his own astonishing charisma.

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(No Title) (#615)

"I'm alive," I said, because sitting there next to me as plain as day was my brain surgeon, in an audaciously bright holiday sweater, the kind I'm thinking might be banned in heaven. The last time I'd seen him, he was in scrubs and a mask, looking sober. "Was there ever any doubt?" he asked, grinning. Actually, surviving brain surgery has been one of the happiest surprises of my life. Three years to the day later, I'm still celebrating by living on purpose, still thankful for new mercies, and still surprised by a faithful God.

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(No Title) (#616)

"I gotta tell you," my husband says, "I kind of feel like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop." "Yeah, well," I answer, "I'm starting to suspect there might be more than two shoes."

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(No Title) (#617)

You've got to be pretty old to remember candy cigarettes, but I do. So now you know I'm not a kid anymore. Candy cigarettes were the confection of choice for children of smokers back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was no such thing as a surgeon general's warning back then. For all I know, there was no such thing as a surgeon general. Political correctness hadn't been invented yet, and if it had, my parents would have passed it up in a heartbeat. Why buy into a philosophy guaranteed to make everyone miserable by denying them their ciggies--candy or otherwise? Candy cigarettes were so popular they often appeared in the spilled-out Halloween bags of pre-schoolers, in convenient treat-sized packs of three Lucky Strikes each. A kid could always count on getting a stash from the Angelos, the Perkins, and the Mahoneys and on good years, the Hedricks and the Ramms. During the rest of the year, a standard pack from Katz Drug Store held twenty smokes, just like Dad's, but people tended to cut back a little for Halloween. (And, it should be noted, during Lent.) We lived in the middle of a long block of small bungalows in 1959, next door to Patty and Karen, and not far from the twins, Mary Janice and Mary Jeannette. Way up the street lived Dennis "The Menace" Van Buskirk and way down at the other end lived Pamela "The Pig" Murphy. Under no circumstances were we allowed to go past the Van Buskirk's house on one end or the Murphy's on the other. And as you might have guessed by their nicknames, we didn't often venture too close to their houses, either. (At our next house we had Scary Larry and his wolf-dog "Baby" to deal with, but that's another story.) My five-year-old sister Lizzie was a bully, and not frightened like I was of Dennis the Menace and Pamela the Pig. Lizzie spent much of her time on the outskirts of our boundaries, making life for those on the edge as hair-raising as possible. One day, she decided to show Pamela the Pig, who was hanging out on the corner smoking cigarettes with all her juvenile delinquent friends, what was what. Lizzie took off for the corner with her brand new pack of candy cigs in hand. She planted herself squarely in front of Pamela the Pig, demanded the attention of the whole gang of hoodlums, and said, "Hey, look at me, Pamela the Pig! I'm smoking, too!" With that, she puffed sophisticatedly on her stick of candy. Undaunted, Pamela the Pig pulled her lighter out of her pocket, sneered, lit the end of Lizzie's candy, and set it dripping into a puddle on Lizzie's saddle oxfords. Lizzie bawled all the way home, but never regretted taunting Pamela the Pig. In 1959, that's what neighborhoods were for. Wouldn't it be great if things were still so simple? If you could still get away with naming your enemies, calling them what you named them right out loud, and standing up to them even if they were five times your size? And wouldn't it be swell if they could still curl their surly lips and light your candy on fire to pay you back? The older I get, and the more hemmed in I feel by political correctness, the harder it's getting not to miss the good, old neighborhood, and candy cigarettes.

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(No Title) (#618)

The trees are bare now, outside this window of mine, the fields blanketed in a variagated yarn of gold, russet, red and purple. I spotted an errant piece of green grass just now, like the verdant lap of a needleworker whose afghan has a hole in it, and wondered how the knitter slipped that stitch. Out of no where, from no tree at all, a solitary gilded leaf falls onto the green, completing the creator's handiwork.

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(No Title) (#619)

Night before last, Rudy Guilliani called. I hung up on him. He's a great guy and everything, but still. Last night, Doug answered the phone. He didn't say much, but his eyes got big and he looked excited. "It's Julia Louis-Dreyfuss," he said, "and she's really angry!" He gets a thrill out of angry women. "She wants us to vote for Jean Carnahan, and protect a woman's right to choose," he said. For a moment, I thought he was almost persuaded. "Bye-bye, Julia," I said, as I reached out one finger and hit the disconnect. Just protecting my right to choose.

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(No Title) (#620)

If I confessed how much money my husband and I have spent in Starbuck's in the past 18 months (since my addiction kicked in), you'd be embarrassed for me. Let's just say for the same amount, I could have had a lot of things that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. Still, our fortunes have reversed and we must be realistic: Starbuck's or Retirement? Starbuck's or College for the Kids? You know the drill. In the process of getting our financial house in order, we are getting rid of stuff that somebody else could be using, good stuff for which we can claim a tax deduction at the end of the year. Some of it is new stuff, acquired through a website where you paid for the merchandise, received it, filled out rebate forms for all of it, and got ALL your money back. Today I found a manual milk frother, which looks like a coffee press, and perfectly froths enough milk for two in about 30 seconds. I didn't even know I had it--it had been in my "gift closet" for three years. I didn't pay a cent for it, and it meets my frivilous need for froth fantastically. Starbuck's will forget our names soon, and our faces by and by. It is best this way. And it goes to show that froth--like information--really does want to be free.

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(No Title) (#621)

If I can't be completely sane myself, this is the next best thing: "If the result of something I do is that someone feels 10% less crazy because they see someone else thinking what they're thinking, then I provide a service." Albert Brooks Ah, the heart of a servant.

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