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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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(No Title) (#697)

Wouldn't you think in this day of cell phones and email and instant messenger, you'd never feel the need to be chained to your house, waiting for an old-fashioned, the-doc-only-calls-if-it's-bad-news phone to ring? Waiting for iffy medical news feels just like waiting for a crummy boyfriend to call: You know the phone's going to ring eventually, but it'll be too late to go to the movie, and his car's broken down anyway. So why do I sit here? I'm waiting by my old home phone because there's certain stuff you only want to learn about while sitting in your recliner sipping a cup of coffee with whipping cream and sugar-free vanilla syrup. I'm waiting here because I've got a whirlpool tub I can retreat to at the drop of a phone. I'm waiting here because too many accidents are already attributed to drivers on cell phones. Why should I be one more statistic? As it is, I'm waiting and praying not to be one in 50,000, or one in a gazillion, or whatever. Wouldn't you rather do that at home?

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(No Title) (#698)

So I'm writing this novel. Why did I imagine that I already knew these characters, and that they would just start doing stuff and saying stuff and I'd take dictation? When you know people, after all, don't you almost know what they're going to say before they say it? Or, if they're exceptionally unpredictable, you can at least be sure they're about to do or say the exact opposite of what you should be rightfully able to expect--right? I swear I've never met these people in my life. Before I can predict what they're going to do or say, and before they'll feel comfortable enough around me to let loose, we have to get to know each other. In the real world, that can take a while. One thing for sure: Christie, David and Julie are a threesome, and I'm an interloper. I hope they learn to trust me soon.

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(No Title) (#699)

A couple of half-way interesting movies were on TV last night, during the same time slot. "Let's do Armageddon," said one of the kids. "No," I answered, "we can do the end of the world any time." Did I say that?

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(No Title) (#700)

"Some people decide to follow the devil," said my five-year-old niece, Logan, as we sat at her kitchen table, coloring. "But we've decided to follow Jesus." "Yes, and someday we'll go be with Him forever in Heaven," I said. "I wonder what it will be like there?" She picked up her purple crayon to apply some broad strokes inside Barney's rotund lines. Her eyes gleamed. "It's going to be the world's biggest Chucky Cheese!" she said. And with her there, it's going to be a blast!

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(No Title) (#701)

Yesterday, I unplugged my laptop, stuck it in a bag, and hightailed it over to my closest Starbuck's to write among the bohemians. OK, so I'm not Hemingway or Fitzgerald, and Starbuck's isn't exactly a bar in Key West or a cafe in Paris. Still, the men play chess, and the women have their tete-a-tetes, and the fragrances of exotic coffees and a dozen different delectable pastries permeates the air. Ah, Paris! That is, until I looked up from my reverie and spotted the Oreck vacuum store and the Mail Boxes, Etc. store across the SUV-filled, devoid-of-vegetation parking lot. I'm thinking of trying the Starbuck's on the Plaza.

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(No Title) (#702)

I've been thinking a lot about how our "religion of origin" stays with us for a lifetime. When I was a child, I was taught that one is to receive the communion wafer into one's mouth, let it partially dissolve, and swallow it without chewing. To defile the body of Christ by allowing it to come into contact with teeth or lips or jaws was considered sacriligious. I must admit I've done my share of gossiping, back-biting and believing the worst (aloud) about my fellow members of the body of Christ from my earliest memory. I can chew them up and spit them out, and sometimes feel pious in the process. Funny, though. I still handle communion as carefully as the first time I received it. I'm praying the day comes when everything I do with my mouth will be done in remembrance of Him.

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(No Title) (#703)

As a result of three encouraging meetings with editors (and a fourth with an agent) at the writer's conference mentioned below, I am completing a full-blown proposal for a contemporary women's novel! For those of you who read excerpts from what I wrote during National Novel Writing Month last November, don't cry for me! This is a different story all together. Can't quite say how excited I am to be attempting this "for real." I covet your prayers!

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(No Title) (#704)

My son Scott invited me to go to Michigan with him to a writer's conference! We're leaving today for a five-day trip. Spending time alone with an adult child is just like when I spend time with my mother, only in reverse. For example, I must allow Scott to snicker when I obsess over silly travelling details, and realize that, of course, he's right--I need to chill. I would be snickering at my mom, too. And while I've taken to asking my mother if she needs to use the bathroom before we leave the house, I must resist asking Scott if he needs to go potty. Please, dear God, don't let him ask me!

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(No Title) (#705)

I am a person who, as a matter of high principle and personal security, locks all the doors when I'm home alone. Even during the day. This morning, just to fly in the face of sound judgment on a fabulous spring day, I purposefully left them unlocked. Without even stepping outside, my spirit soared.

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(No Title) (#706)

For the angst-ridden and for those in need of a little comic relief: Alanis Morissette lyric generator!

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(No Title) (#707)

"Are you playing the game?" I asked the young man who was checking my groceries. It was difficult not to notice how efficiently he was bagging. "What game?" "You know, the one where you try to see if you can finish bagging the groceries before the customer finishes writing the check." "I've never heard of that game." "I've never heard of it, either," I explain. "But when I used to check groceries, I played it all the time." "No, I'm not playing it," he said. I ripped off the check and slapped it down on the counter one nano-second before he added the eggs to the top of the bag. Everybody plays the game.

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(No Title) (#708)

I'm a voracious reader and book accumulator. I acquire everything from the lowly mass- market paperback, to the less-homely trade paperback, to first edition clothbound hardcovers, to antique copies of the classics. All books are not created equal. With books intended for the mass-market and trade audience, I edit. Before I open the cover, I've got pen in hand, ready to proofread, mark-up and cast dispersion on the plotline, character development, theme, structure, author and publisher. And, after that, maybe even upon life in general. The benefit of the doubt is usually extended to any book that has the exalted good fortune to make it into hardback. I find myself jotting my own clever musings alongside the author's, yes. But in pencil, rather than in indelible ink, and lightly-and always using a pencil with a good eraser on the other end. It occurs to me with these books that my opinion might be wrong, so I make sure my expression of it is reversible. It occurs to me that these authors have proven value, both in the publishing marketplace and in the marketplace of ideas. It even occurs to me that if my stories were better than theirs, they'd be marking up my books, instead of the other way around. It's the old books, the valuable ones, the classics, which I rarely touch. Some have been in my family for a hundred years or longer, and are brittle with age and handling. I hesitate to move them even to relieve the burden of dust that settles in sorry layers upon the edges. The slightest brush upon such a delicate surface might inflict irreparable damage, so they sit for years, for decades, unread. Surely the writer wanted these books to be read and enjoyed for as long as they endure! Still, I hesitate, I pull back, I miss out on the message out of respect for the package. Sometimes, I wonder if the people in my life aren't sorted in much the same way as the books. And I picture the Publisher sadly shaking His head, and wishing I'd read. Just read.

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(No Title) (#709)

I've been out traipsing and have rediscovered how much I love stepping stones. You may think I'm talking about the kind in the pond at Loose Park in Kansas City, the tall manufactured cylinders small children delight in walking across the water on, but I'm not. Or maybe the ones that arise spontaneously in shallow creeks and bubbling brooks, offering all manner of barefoot creatures the chance for a natural whirlpool footbath. Those aren't my favorites, either. The ones I love are cast from kits by enterprising mothers who then bring them to life with the handprint of a baby or the pawprint of a dog. They are the ones that come pre-sentimentized with words like, "Grow Old With Me, the Best Is Yet To Be, The Last of Life, For Which the First Was Made." Or a design from the Book of Kells. They can even be flat-topped rocks dug up from my own property, and then reset into different soil, used in a new way, as a footpath for a refuge-seeking soul. I don't love these stones at first. At first, when we hollow out the places for them and pound them into the ground, they are contrived, artificial and out-of-place. At first, I won't set foot upon them. But later, seasons later, the most endearing greenery has sprung up around them! Not crabgrass, with its insidious and self-promoting behavior, and certainly not clover, which is pretty in a single unit but obnoxious in the way it overtakes the lawn. No, this is a fragile growth which has as its only observable purpose surrounding, comforting and connecting earth's stepping stones. It appears nowhere else in the landscape, and indeed, wouldn't seem right in another place. It is a plant which has found its reason for living. Do you know the kind of greenery I mean? The kind that speaks of age, and permanence and maybe even of wisdom? Of love and devotion and the passing of years with the people you care for? Then you know why I love the stepping stone path in my own front yard.

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(No Title) (#710)

Six months have passed, they say, and for some of us, it's almost true. But for others, others, the mere passage of time is no longer the marker of a day well-spent or a life fully embraced. Does a month crossed off on the calendar move them any closer to a new ending or any further from a horrible beginning? One young wife and mother, Lauren, spent the first month of these six in a medically induced coma, in order to survive the pain of the rest of her life. Burns cover eighty-six percent of her body. She is missing most of an ear and parts of her hands, and doesn't look like the girl Greg married, unless he's looking deep in her eyes. He looks at all of her, though, loves all of her. Greg read her Robert Burns in those early days, and does still, not so she'll remember, but so she'll believe. "My love is like a red, red rose," he says, as he gazes upon his beloved. With tears streaming down her scarred face, she recites her love back to him wordlessly, breathlessly. She dreamed of her husband and baby boy that first faraway month, longed for them, and decided to live for them. A decision she'd already made every day until Day One, in every place before Ground Zero. How could she change her mind now? Her husband has compiled a book of his email communications with all her many friends over the course of these six months. It is called "Love, Greg and Lauren." Lauren cannot read it yet, may never be able to. All of her strength must be focused on moving forward, or there will be no movement at all. She cannot risk a backward glance. Don't look back, Lauren. Not yet. Six months have passed, they say. And for some of us, it must be true.

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(No Title) (#711)

Something Else I Wish I'd Said (part of an ongoing series): "It's easier to act your way into a new way of feeling than to feel you way into a new way of acting."

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