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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) (#742)

Here's some insight into my fallible novel characters, Erin's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy. Hope you enjoy reading this excerpt as much as I did living it...ooops, writing it. BTW, I'm over 24,000 words now--almost half-way there! Woo, hoo! My mother has very little college education. In fact, when she finishes this semester in a couple more weeks, she will have accumulated twenty-four credit hours. She's only been out of high school for coming up on thirty years, though, so I think she's making progress. I must say in her defense that although she has taken few classes, she has made the maximum use of them. Only a rare woman would have gotten more mileage than my mom did out of this semester's Intro to Sociology class, and that's before the "A" even hits her GPA. "Let me tell you what Dr. May shared in class today," Mom began one night last week, and of course, my dad had no choice but to let her. "We were discussing the inequalities that exist between the husband and wife regarding the division of duties in the home," she went on, with little apparent regard for whatever divisions should exist between two parties to a conversation. "Oh?" my father interjected, still without having looked up from the computer screen. "And Dr. May said that in a typical American family, the husband and wife are each working forty hours per week outside the home, but that the woman is working an additional forty hours per week doing housework and caring for children…" "And the man?" he glanced up. "A measly eleven hours, and I'm pretty sure this includes how much time he spends talking to his wife." "Mmmm." "And she went on to say that sociologists have studied this phenomenon extensively, and have identified four 'techniques of resistance' used by men to consciously avoid contributing to the maintenance of the children and the home…" "I bet." "Do you want to know what they are? Sure, you do. The first is 'playing dumb'-the man pretends he doesn't know how to operate the washing machine or how to separate the darks from the whites, and keeps up the act until the wife gives up, and does it herself." "You're kidding?" "No. The second technique is called 'waiting it out.' The man sees what needs to be done, and knows it must be done, but figures if he waits long enough, she'll do it. Rather than beg him to do the obvious, she does it herself." "Seems so unfair." "I know. Wait until you hear number three-'needs reduction.' This is where the man has an important business meeting, and he asks his wife to iron his dress shirt, which is horribly wrinkled, but she doesn't have time. She apologizes nicely while she's packing five lunches, and scooting three kids into the van to head for school, and then she notices him putting on the wrinkled shirt and muttering something about how his pants and jacket and tie will cover the really bad parts-and then guess what she does?" "She doesn't?" "Yep. The last technique has to be the most insidious of all, in my mind. It's called 'substitute offerings,' and I find it morally reprehensible, if not completely nauseating. Believe it or not, Dr. May says this is the technique women find most acceptable…" "Well-?" "This is where the husband completely avoids helping his poor, overworked, exhausted and dedicated wife, and then bowls her over with some lame compliment, like, 'Oh, honey, you're so good with the kids. It's no wonder they love you best,' or, even worse, 'Nobody nukes leftovers like you, baby.' And then, if the syrupy compliments aren't enough to win her over, he plays Mr. Wonderful and offers to run over to Taco Bell for a ten-pack, to give her a little relief from her culinary responsibilities. What a guy." "The loser." Like I said, my mother doesn't have much formal education, but her rhetorical abilities alone achieve results most women with doctorates never hope for. Inside of a few short days, my father had strung the Christmas lights, cleaned the basement, scrubbed the shower, replaced the burned out lightbulbs, and changed the oil in two cars and a truck. Wow. She's good.

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(No Title) (#743)

Are cardinals in my yard all year long, and I just don't notice them when the trees are lush and full? Or do they migrate to my area as winter comes on, as nature's way of holding back the despair of barrenness? All I know is that a solitary red bird lands on my empty tree, takes flight, and returns again, over and over, all morning long. And that the stark beauty of it makes me cry.

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(No Title) (#744)

Yesterday was my two year anniversary of being a brain surgery survivor. It's not that the brain tumor itself was so life threatening--it's more that I was so unhealthy going into the surgery that I didn't have a lot of confidence in a happy outcome. My health has completely turned around since that day. So I've been celebrating my new lease on life by doing this full-time school thing, and trying to write a complete novel in November. I sure know how to have fun. If you could see my house right now, you'd wonder how there could be any survivors at all.

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(No Title) (#745)

Hey, I'm up to 18,000 words toward a 50,000 word goal, so I'm still somewhat on target. Thanks for all your encouragement while I attempt this crazy challenge. A piece of novel for today: "Call us if you need anything," Dad said, when he dropped me off at her house that evening. "We'll be home all night, and we can run over at the drop of a hat." We had the run of Diana's otherwise empty house all night, with the exception of the locked den, which eliminated any activity involving the computer, or the coveted three thousand books. But we raided the fridge umpteen times, had all the TV and videos and CDs we could stand, took turns in the whirlpool tub and wound each other's hair in old-fashioned sponge curlers we found buried in a vanity drawer. We painted our toes, after a sophisticated and complete pedicure, and finally, around three in the morning, we headed up to bed. As long as the lights were glaring and the music was blaring, and we could peek out the window and see that at least one other neighbor still had a kitchen light on, we were fine. The house was huge, but we were wide awake, and familiar with each nook and cranny and creak. But at soon as we turned off most of the lights, set the alarm system, and tiptoed up the stairs, we both started to get nervous. It's the being in your own safe bedroom that gets you in the end, don't you think? Because even though it is a tranquil sanctuary when you know the rest of your family is downstairs reading, or napping, or playing Nintendo, or even in the bedrooms next door to yours sleeping, when you're in the house alone, in your very own safe bedroom, you're trapped. If an intruder, a bad person, a terrorist, bypassed the alarm system, made your dead bolt alive again, and let himself into your home, and you were alert enough to hear his very first foot fall upon the bottom step, could you get away? We closed the door to her spacious bedroom, but it suddenly felt cramped, small, and without sufficient air. It was the memory of the rest of the house, and its vastness, and the recent deathlike silence that had fallen over it, that made us whisper. You would whisper at the wake of someone you hadn't known very well, wouldn't you? It's not just out of respect for the dead, at that point, but also to keep from jarring and jolting the living. So we, too, whispered, though we imagined we had been intimate friends with the old place, for to offend the house at this late hour might be to invite unspeakable retribution upon our heads. And then we heard it. The first foot fell.

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(No Title) (#746)

A week ago, my husband Doug advised me that I needed to include some excerpts from my novel-in-progress on my blog. This morning, he advised me that I need to be blogging between novel excerpts. Sigh. For once, I wish we could talk about his needs. In the meantime, though, here's another excerpt: I can't believe there was a girl in the world who thought that Diana's brother was anything other than a dream. I'd had a crush on him ever since Diana and I had become friends, with almost as little luck as my brother Brian had had attracting the interest of Diana. Diana shrugged off boys in general, though, laughed at their infatuations with her, in fact, so Brian was just one of many rejected, whereas Jack always had a girlfriend, and usually more than one, and sometimes several more waiting in the wings. It was easy to see why. Every girl I knew who had been out with Jack described him later as the most polite boy they'd ever known. He treated girls like ladies, and while it was true he didn't stay with one for very long before moving on, none of those left behind had a sorry word to say about him. And he made sure their reputations were intact upon breaking up with them, too. He may have made out with some of the girls, but he never took serious advantage of any girl he liked. Jack was outgoing, popular, athletic, and sensitive. He could be the life of the party, but he didn't have to be. I'd seen him hole up in a corner with a date and just talk for hours, not needing or wanting to be the center of anyone's attention but hers. I guess maybe he had a problem with commitment, but after all, he was still a kid-- don't parents discourage teenagers from getting overly committed, too soon? To top it all off, Jack was the most gorgeous guy God ever made, with jet-black curls like Diana's, but with misty green eyes, instead of her gray-blue ones. Hers were stormy skies, and his vast, deep oceans. Going out with him that one, wonderful night was kind of like being with her, only with at least the hint of romantic possibility. Which is to say, it was heaven on earth.

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(No Title) (#747)

From today's work, a little about Erin as a little girl. BTW, I'm up to 10,000 words, which is way under where I need to be by now, but hey, it's better than I would have done without the National Novel Writing Month shot in the arm: I was a little embarrassed because it seemed like my parents were going out of their way to find something really wrong with the Bright's, and I didn't think that was fair. How would they feel if people did that to them? But, as far as I knew, all parents did these surveys, made these calls, asked these probing questions-all before letting their kid go watch "Annie" with a bunch of fourth graders. Do you see what I mean about normal? Back then, I actually figured everybody's parents held certain attitudes, thoughts, and actions in common. Little did I know, mine was the only mother around displaying this type of behavior. Maybe we weren't a normal family-what if we were weird? In spite of it all, I went to my very first slumber party, had the time of my life, and made a new best friend-Diana. It wasn't too long before Mom and Dad sat me down for a heart-to-heart-although their terrible words never really hit their mark-about my new best friend. "Diana's mother called today," Mom started, "and I think we need to talk to you about what she shared." She and Dad took turns then, telling me that Diana's own mother wanted all of us to know that her daughter was a confirmed liar, probably a pathological liar, and that she felt it was only fair to warn us that Diana made up stories-and they were whoppers-all the time, told them with a straight face to anyone who would listen, and that often even her own parents were fooled by her. "It's gotten to where we don't know when she's telling the truth, which makes it very difficult to try to help her," Mrs. Bright confided. "We're starting to worry that even she doesn't know-she's that convincing. If you don't want Erin and Diana to see each other any more, we'll understand…I wouldn't want my daughter to run with someone like Diana, if I were in your shoes…" The upshot was that I wasn't forbidden to see Diana, but from then on my parents were on red alert. They heeded her parents' warning very carefully, and were constantly on the lookout for lies, lies and more lies. "Even if she does lie every once in a while," I assured them, "I know she'd never lie to me. She's my friend, and I would know if she wasn't telling me the truth."

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(No Title) (#748)

I'm feeling very shy and vulnerable about having added a comments feature to my site. I'm hoping that you, however, won't feel the slightest bit shy in using it.

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(No Title) (#749)

Another piece of what will hopefully be a 50,000 word novel by the end of November: I've done a little reading in Intro to Psych, and it seems to me that my dad is in the throes of a mid-life crisis, while my mother is entering the horrible years of her empty nest syndrome. This can be a time when couples edge toward divorce, depression, career changes rooted in unhappiness with the present course of events, and other aberrant behaviors. My father's gone off the deep end and bought himself a new acoustic guitar, and is talking about writing music again in his old age. Mom has started going to college full-time, which is distressing. For me, at least. She is an excellent student, highly competitive with her other non-traditional classmates, but doesn't think too highly of the academic slumber the 18-year-olds are in. Frankly, mom and dad are exhibiting classic symptoms of serious emotional disturbances, and I feel powerless to help them.

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(No Title) (#750)

This morning's excerpt from my novel: I don't know what could be weirder than getting an email from a girl you used to go to high school with that contains the subject line, "Your Mom Is So Cool!" At first I thought it must be a forwarded joke, and then it occurred to me that maybe Kristin had run into my mom at the mall, on a day when Mom had put on lipstick or something. That would be cool. "Wow!" Kristin wrote. "You never told me your mom was a blogger! She's got me hooked…" My mom's a what? I called Brian on his cell, because he's the computer guy, and evidently this is some perverse computer thing Mom's gotten wrapped up in. "Bri, it's me," I began. "Do you remember Kristin Winslow from school? She and Mom have some weird computer relationship happening, and we need to figure out what's going on…" I should mention here that Kristin and I were not exactly friends back in high school, or at any time since. If I remember right, and I do, the few times I got in really serious trouble with my parents were because of incidents in which Kristin played a key role. In fact, it was Kristin's idea to smuggle a box of wine onto the premises of the sophomore retreat, making it even more of a spiritual experience than it otherwise would have been. "Remember," she preached, "the Bible says we should all 'take a little wine for the sake of our stomachs, and our frequent ailments…'" By the time we were finished taking a little wine, our stomachs and our frequent ailments had become well acquainted. And when word got out that the communion service had turned into a giggling, stumbling mass of underage backsliders, our little, quiet Christian school took it on the nose. I took it on the calendar. I've never been on house arrest before or since, but my social life came to a grinding halt that day. It would be a month before I would see Kristin outside of class again, and by then, I didn't want to. Because of her, my boyfriend took another girl to Homecoming. Because of her, I had to withdraw my bid for Student Council Secretary. Because of her, I couldn't try out for "The Sound of Music," and I would have made a perfect Lisyl. Except for the drinking problem. "And now," I told Brian, "because of Kristin Winslow, Mom is in deep. And we have to get her out."

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(No Title) (#751)

So I was looking at fallible.com's referrer report, trying to figure out where all these new hits are coming from. You know, to send them a thank-you email for linking to me, or something. Turns out my six new readers clicked over to me from a hard-core porn site. They must have been shocked.

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(No Title) (#752)

I, too, have joined the ranks of those who have enlisted in National Novel Writing Month, an event in which as many people as can attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I'm going to put excerpts from my story on this site, and let you hazard a guess as to what in the world my novel might actually be about. Let me be clear: According to the rules of the contest, it's about finishing 50,000 words! Not rewriting, not editing, not working much on outlining, or plotting, or involved character development, just finishing. So, with all the pressure to "be good" removed, I'll give you an example of my typical brain dump. By the way, I've written about 6000 words so far, so I'm almost on track.

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Last night my mom and dad had what has hopefully turned out to be a Starbucks-induced medical event. They bought this car yesterday, and as part of the celebration (the way I understand it, the only other part involved two ninety-nine cent orders of Wendy's chicken nuggets), they ordered coffee. Mom got her usual latte breve grande, iced, sugar-free vanilla syrup, easy on the ice. Like I've said, she can be difficult. Dad got his usual grande caramel machiatto, only this time, it didn't sit well with him. Mom swore from the hour she imbibed that the guy who made the drinks was trying to kill someone-that he was a cappucinno terrorist trained within these very United States by unsuspecting Starbuck's managers to do the unthinkable. We citizens have been recently advised to beware of all suspicious activity, and Mom has put her radar to good and frequent use. He looked like a regular guy-no racial profiling for any middle eastern appearance would have singled him out-but, oh, my! There was so much caffeine in that one large coffee that Mom had to speed-through Wendy's for nuggets to try to neutralize the effect. Dad didn't think the coffee had given him much of a buzz, though; at least he didn't say anything. He joined her in the nugget fest, because he had the munchies, and didn't seem any the worse for wear. Six hours later, when they got the new car off the show room floor and onto their gravel driveway, she was starting to chill. Unbeknownst to her, he was starting to freak. My dad doesn't freak. He doesn't argue, fight, swear, yell or turn beet red when he's mad. He doesn't get mad. He has been accused of being comatose, and that's on a good day. But he just smiles and goes on about his business. So late last night, after he watches Mel Gibson lose his ever-lovin' mind trying to get his kidnapped son back in "Ransom," he joins my mom in bed. "Erin," my mother reported by phone around seven this morning, "I was right in the middle of a nightmare around midnight, and something kept waking me up. I hate it when that happens, because then when I go back to sleep, I end up right back in the same nightmare loop, which won't end until I finish the darn nightmare. Your dad kept interrupting me with his tossing and turning, so finally I smacked him with a pillow and said, 'What is wrong with you?'" "Mom," I interrupted this present nightmare, "where is Dad? Is he OK? What's happening?" "Oh, he's fine," she concluded, but then went back to where she had left off. "After I knocked some sense into him, he told me how his heart had been racing and jumping out of his chest all afternoon, and how it had gotten worse when he was watching Mel try to get his little boy back from the bad guys, and how in spite of everything, Rene Russo's hair held up, and while he's thrashing around on the bed and telling me this, he breaks out into a cold sweat all over his body, and that's when I said, 'I'm taking you to the E.R.'" They had had the suspicious laced coffee at 9:30 in the morning, and it was now past midnight. She had a hard time believing the cappuccino terrorist had succeeded in having his way with them. Surely, there was another, more plaque-ridden-artery type reason for his malaise. So she got Shawn out of bed, an amazing feat for a woman of her slight build and sweet temperament, and insisted that his services would be needed in transporting Dad from our rural residence to the hospital 20 minutes away. She gave a passing thought to calling an ambulance, and that idea gave her the one good laugh she had all night. "911" wouldn't be able to find my parent's house if their lives depended upon it, and since that seemed to be the point, she took matters, and Dad, into her own hands. He could do worse. Emergency rooms don't mess around with guys who come in with complaints like my dad had. Before my mom could finish the paperwork with the check-in lady, Dad had already had all his vital signs checked, the heart rate monitor hooked up, and was being wired for the EKG. They drew so much blood so fast his head swam. Then they took his blood pressure lying down, sitting up, standing up, and okay, let's do it all again. "They lavished so much attention on him," my mom told me, "that, I swear, they wore him completely out. After a while, they said they were just going to let him rest there with the heart monitor in place, since they couldn't find any indication of anything wrong. Here I was on 'red alert,' with my eyes bugging out of my head, imagining again that maybe the terrorist had hit his mark, and your dad and brother are blissfully sawing them off…" So she took him home, and put him to bed, with doctor's orders to let him rest, and forsake Starbuck's for what may turn out to be the rest of his natural life, and see our doctor on Monday. I drove in from college this afternoon, just to make sure everything was really OK, and that Mom was being a good nurse, and taking care of him. Brian had the same idea, so for an hour or so, we all hung around. It was…weird, in a nice kind of way. I've gotta' say, I don't know when I've ever seen my Dad look happier, more content, or more healthy. What's that about?

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(No Title) (#753)

"I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world. I have found…that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil." Flannery O'Connor Lord, return us, your characters, to reality, even if it must be at considerable cost. Prepare us, your subjects, to accept our moment of grace.

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(No Title) (#754)

SOMETHING ELSE I WISH I'D SAID...Third in a Series: Carpe Dessert.

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(No Title) (#755)

Have you ladies ever stopped to calculate approximately how many times you've applied makeup in your lifetime? It's not a pretty picture. I performed a quickie calculation, loosely based on having worn makeup for over thirty years, with periods of working full-time which required daily makeup application, and other times of life during which I considered myself fortunate to be attending a makeup-intensive event once every six weeks. I estimated that I applied makeup one day out of every three, for a total of 3000 days. I'm not much of an artiste, choosing to spend only five minutes to complete a given job, but still I've invested over 200 hours of my life covering, concealing, blending, shading, lengthening and outlining. They say if you spend fifteen minutes per day on learning a new subject, you will be a sought-after, bonafide expert in your field in something like six months. Yeah, right. This morning, I mangled my mascara, lopsided my lips and streaked my shadow in ninety seconds flat. I'm not getting better, but hey, I'm getting faster.

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(No Title) (#756)

"Don't leave," I hear myself implore aloud, and have to stop and wonder to whom on earth I am speaking. I sit alone in the house, here at my desk, reading, writing and staring through the window frame at the crimson landscape just beyond my reach. And then I realize, I'm doing it again, just like last year and the one before, and all the ones back to my seventh year, when I gave a month of first grade to staring out the window at a blazing maple. Only this time, I hear an urgency in my voice, and feel one in my soul, that I can't recall from autumns past. Once again, as if in remembrance this time, I'm begging the leaves not to.

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