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FWPs and the Gift of Gratitude

09 May 2014 by KRAG

There is nothing so infuriating to my liberal mind than FWPs–First World Problems–and this week I have been beset with them.

Why do I find them so infuriating? Because with each FWP, with each annoyance, with each disruption to my life and my regular routine, as I climb the mountain of frustration, as I reach the pinnacle, the apex of exasperation, I am also acutely aware of how lucky I am.

I know that, should I step away from the desk in my home office, take my iPad and a fresh cup of coffee out onto the deck and wirelessly tippy-tap my woes out into the social medium, my friends (who are also online) will rally to my side, nod sagaciously (albeit virtually), and say “There, there” in their myriad, understanding ways. I also know that my rant, were it to come before the eyes of someone outside my tiny, privileged world, someone who had real problems, it would be met with gaping incredulity.

  • I have a connection to the internet.
  • I have a handful of devices with which I can connect to the internet.
  • I can connect to the internet wirelessly.
  • I can connect from my home.
  • I have a deck on which I can take a break from my job.
  • I have a job I can do from my home.
  • I have a job.
  • I have a home. 
  • I have fresh coffee.
  • I have water. In my home.
  • I have food. In my home.
  • I have a loving spouse.
  • I am healthy.

So, as the top of my brain is screaming because the latest upgrade to Widget-Master 19 has completely destroyed my DirectAccess Connectivity Assistance Service, thus forcing me to lose two whole days’ worth of work as I re-install and re-configure everything on my workstation, as my inner Time Management Center goes ballistic because the weeds in the back garden are growing faster than I can find time to pull them, and as my personal I-Want-It-All-Now nodes are confounded by rain (no drives in the convertible), the rest of me, my deep-brain reality receptors, they know that it’s all hogwash; it’s all just silliness and maundering.

In short, I’ve got it good, and I’m going to shut up, now.

k

Simple Living

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments »

Black Earth, Grey Sky

06 May 2014 by KRAG

Iris in RainI kneel in the dripping ivy. A trowel in one hand, my other is deep in the soil, searching for the dandelion’s root. The root twists and writhes beneath my fingers, wet and tough, unwilling.

The rain taps across my hat’s felted brim, caresses my steaming back with its cool touch. The spring day is cold, but my work keeps me warm.

The bite of woodsmoke reaches me. I lift my nose and scent the air. My breath comes out a mist.

I grimace as digits plunge farther down into the black loam. The earth envelopes my hand, its serenity infuses me, my worries leach away.

I am the root, now. I am the plant. I am the garden.

k

Pine Pollen

Posted in Gardening, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Yeah, No, and the Death of Uptalk

01 May 2014 by KRAG

Stack of BooksThere are some things that I really dislike. No. I mean really dislike.

Take crop pants.

Crop pants are, perhaps, the single silliest and most unflattering article of clothing ever contrived for the female form (and, yes, I include the entire decade of the 1920s in this assessment). I’m not talking about Capri pants or pedal-pushers, both of which are fine in small doses; I’m talking about crop pants: those pants where some designer decided to cut the trouser legs off mid-calf, use less material, and charge more for it.

Ladies, crop pants make you look like hobbits. They make you look short, and make your feet look big. They truncate the lines of your form and exaggerate the size of your rear end. They are singularly unsatisfactory; you’d do better to roll up your pant legs like a sock-hopper. Seriously. If you own a pair of crop pants, burn them. You can thank me later.

As you can see, I hate crop pants. I shall always hate crop pants. If the world were to be destroyed and built again, giving us all a second chance, if it has crop pants in it I shall consider the entire enterprise a failure and not worth the effort.

Same goes for uptalk.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

3 Things You Need to Know About HBO and Game of Thrones

29 Apr 2014 by KRAG

I don’t have HBO, so I can only watch HBO’s Game of Thrones a decade or so after the premium class sees it. However, that has not saved me from seeing meme after meme based on the series, nor from having to wade through a sea of posts about how this was so good and that was so bad and–of course–how so many things were different than they were in the book.

Aficionados are terribly tempted to hold forth on the subject of their passion (and trust me, I do understand this temptation) but before you do so, before you post that screed on that critical aspect that HBO got wrong, there are three things you need to know: Continue Reading »

Posted in Books, Television, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Shakespeare at 450

24 Apr 2014 by KRAG

Yesterday was the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s purported birth (we know the day he was christened, but not the day he was born so, as with Most Things William, we’re really just guessing).

In honor of this anniversary, I neither watched one of his plays nor read any of  his poetry.

Nope.

I watched Shakespeare in Love.

Travesty! Sacrilege!

Feh. Continue Reading »

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Sandwich Child

23 Apr 2014 by KRAG

Captive SlavesI’ve never given much credence to results of “studies” on human social patterns. We’re just too complicated to fit into neat little boxes. However, the other day I learned of one such study which so accurately described me, I had to give it a closer look.

I mention this here because this is the sort of thing that can be used to add depth to the histories of families and characters in my writing.

The study was about birth order and the “middle child syndrome.” Now, “birth order” is not new to me; I heard about it a long time ago but never paid it any attention because, frankly, my family situation doesn’t really fit any common form.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Culture, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Not Another Word

17 Apr 2014 by KRAG

Over on Facebook, a reader mentioned a scene in FC:1 that she really liked. I like to investigate this sort of specific feedback–the good and the bad–to see what worked and what didn’t work for my readers.

I remembered the scene she mentioned in general, but not in detail. The main reason I wanted to investigate, though, was that her description of it as dialogue-free was not my recollection; I remembered it as being chatty to the extreme, as two swoony teenaged girls prattled on about how divine it was going to be to see Sarah Bernhardt on stage. (For those of you out of the 19th-century loop, Sarah Bernhardt was the Lady Gaga of her day.)

So, I pulled down my copy of The Year the Cloud Fell and tried to figure out what this reader had meant when she referred to the scene’s “shared communication and not a scrap of dialogue.”

Continue Reading »

Posted in Books, Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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