Kris’s Kolumn

As Julie Andrews sings – “These are a few of my favorite thing.” I suppose favorite isn’t the most honest answer – it’s more like obsessions. I’m always, always, always looking for the best flops, purse, and a vacuum cleaner that actually works and lasts longer than a month or so.

Flip flops are a no-brainer.  They have to fit perfectly, have a bit of an arch, look kind of awesome and last longer than a month or so.  I’m off to get a new pair later today and I’ll keep you posted.  Thus far – Merrell’s are the winners even if they stopped making them in bright colors.  Hello???? Did someone go color blind over there?  Black and brown?  Really? I was the last person in Wisconsin wearing flip-flops in December and it’s one of the many reasons why I moved to Florida.

Purses are hard.  Right now I have a vinyl blue thing with little birdies stitched on the side that I got at a bargain store for seven bucks.  I’m a bird freak but I have to say when I’m flying through on my scooter with the purse lying sweetly against my side, everything all snapped where it belongs,  I’m pretty damn happy. I can also put two wine bottles in it when I sneak home from the wine bar. What’s not to like? I’m on month three with this one so I’m pretty happy and just before Christmas I took a bag filled with dead purses to Goodwill.  What was I thinking?

The vacuum cleaner fetish may be just about over. I recently splurged on a Dyson and it’s into it’s fifth week and hasn’t broken down yet.  It’s the long one that you only plug in to charge and it was on sale at Target. I was all excited until my friend Justine told me about Rosa.  Rosa is her little computer-programmed vacuum that cleans her house all day long while she is at work.  Justine is a bit obsessed with her vacuum and when I saw it I immediately had dark thoughts of kidnapping her her.  There we were drinking wine in the kitchen while Rosa hummed away ALL OVER THE HOUSE>!!! OMG!!!

So now I have this dream about taking Rosa for a spin while I’m wearing bright red flops and my blue purse is hanging off my shoulder. Eat your heart out Julie Andrews~~~

This morning I paused by the door to my office and looked around my tiny little writing kingdom.  I’m usually so focused on plunging into  the work that awaits that I don’t pause but before I work today I’m going to go through the piles, and dust, and throw out the garbage.  It’s called cleaning.  It’s also therapy for me.

Before my first cup of coffee I was struck by how much I love this simpler way of living.  You know all about the selling house, selling car, selling stuff business and it’s pushing in on a year now since all of that has happened.  We won’t mention the running of yet another small business besides this writing stuff – that’s not a blog, it’s a book anyway but today’s thought is about how much I like the easy of having less.

I tried for a few moments to remember what I had on all my shelves in my last, much larger, office. I couldn’t remember a thing but I know there’s still a few boxes of stuff in the storage shed. My small kingdom warms my heart, makes it much easier to clean, and keeps me focused on the next page.  I love it….but….

The one element missing from this new way of living – besides parking and storage is outdoor space.  The balcony is tiny and I’m fueled by being outside as much as possible and here it’s possible ALL of the time.(Sorry all you blizzard people). So of course this makes me think of the beach or a place on the Intercoastal but that also would mean MOVING again.  Be still my heart.

So how much does one compromise? This is my thought of the month as I dust my dwindling book collection, the few do-dads I didn’t pack away or sell and when I can sometimes hear the people next door sneeze. This place of living is three minutes from the wine lounge and a minute from everything else but how important is that if you can’t open your bedroom window?

I also know, because I’m getting older and wiser every day, that we all want what we don’t have.  If we move to one place it’s impossible not to miss something about the old place. And is there a perfect place?  Well, I’m the Queen of Happy Endings so I think yes…~!!

First I’m going to dust, then I’m going to organize my desk, them I’m plunging back into research and I’ll have to take a power walk later to get some fresh air – because we can’t open the damn windows on the 12th floor. But the view is amazing and I’m luvin’ the lightness.

All good in Radishland.

It’s time to come clean. I bought a Kindle and I am totally, madly, seriously in love with it.

Half the world has asked me if I have an ebook reader.  I have always said no for two reasons.  First of all I never have much extra cashola and second of all…I love the feel of a book in my hand.  Don’t you?  Pages and black letters and the smell of the world you are reading about and the weight of the lovely thing on your chest when you fall asleep every night. Oh Lord have mercy – I love books~!

But then I saw how many of you buy books on Kindles and Nooks and whatever in the hell else is out there.  Not just any books either – MY BOOKS. One day three weeks ago I just up and ordered a Kindle and thus my affair began.  Now I can barely stand to be more than five inches from the lovely thing.

I usually write down the names of books I want to read on little slips of paper and then order them when I remember where I put the little pieces of paper.  The first time I remembered I could simply order one and it would be there in a literal blink of an eye I confess I was a little teary-eyed. There it was, in not minutes, but seconds. Well, it doesn’t smell or look  like a book and you have to plug it in now and then – but wowowowow.

Deep into research for my tenth novel, and there’s a @!#%load of research for this baby, I am still needing to get real books.  It’s quicker for me to reach over and pick one up and read and re-read passages and information that I need. And who doesn’t want to have the real book of a favorite author on their shelf…(hin, hint, hint – new book coming out in two weeks…) There’s also that whole autographing thing.  Yes, I know about electronic signatures but get real here – because they ain’t real.

So my Kindle has it’s place and I think it always will but there’s still nothing like the real thing.

And I’m thinking about what a deal this is for all of you – me too, I suppose.  I worked for 1.5 years on my new novel – Tuesday Night Miracles and you can buy a real book or a cyber-book for under $15. Book rights and sales are another topic – we seriously don’t want to get into that right now or this blog will turn into a novel.

But you should know that last night I feel asleep with my little Kindle on my chest and I swear it felt just like a book..and I didn’t have to turn the light on to read.

It’s been one of those years – you know? Losses and gains and challenges and change and me always getting up out of bed with my fists clenched and ready for the fight and folly of the day. I especially love the folly part.

So the other day I was out hiking, which is like hot yoga, free beer, a massage, or a huge pork roast to some of you – depending on what floats your boat. Besides the glory of silence, and blue skies, and the crunch of tree droppings under my boots, I saw the must unusual bird in the most unusual place. This is especially interesting because I am writing about birds right now and there was a sweet black and white messenger laughing at me as I threw my angst around the forest.  Then just as my partner and I were about to leave the trail I heard the clump, clump, clump of an approaching human. I stopped in my tracks for two reasons.  First of all I wanted to brace myself for the person who was intruding on what I thought was my sacred space and secondly, the clumping was unusual.

The man who appeared seconds later only had one leg and was using crutches to hike. And yes, he took my breath away.

I’ve always thought that when life is hard for me it’s harder for someone else. I’ve always thought that things could always be worse no matter how worse they already were and the moment I saw the man clumping down the trail I called myself an ass.

Sometimes I am an ass and I’ve never really been afraid to admit that true fact.

But I’m also lots of other things, the least of all being that I’m honest, and I know I can always do and be better.

The man in the forest was a lovely gift and so was the bird and so was Sally who came to see me today from Chicago.

I’d never met her before but she’s written to me and sent me some precious emails and today she held my hands and told me that my writing was a gift that had helped her and many of her clients. Sally was just what I needed today – and she has two legs. She also has a lovely heart and a great husband and the courage to say the things that need to be said. She was like a sweet bird that landed at the the edge of the stream and I’m here to tell you there are birds, and Sallies, and clumpers all over the place.

All we have to do is look.  Really.

Lift up your head and look around and then move forward with one leg, or two, or with your hands or whatever in the hell you have to propel yourself.

That’s what I’m doing.

You may have seen my float past your window just a moment ago.

I could care less what the rest of the world says or does.

I’m flying baby…….

There are a few things I can’t bring myself to discard as I lighten my load for the next fifty years of my life’s journey. One of those “things” is my maternal grandmother’s bigass roasting pan. I’ve been hauling  the large, grey, dented thing around for the past thirty years and every time I look at it my grandma springs right back to life.

My grandma, Lucille Goodreau was definitely her own person. She loved to fish, wore bib jeans before they were hip, and cooked on a wood burning stove until the day she died. Grandma died a pretty horrible death- an undiagnosed brain tumor swept her away when I was barely a teenager – but I choose to remember her in the kitchen and not how we saw her those last few years.

Grandma was an amazing cook and her food was the only gift she could afford to give us.  My grandparents never owned a home, worked very hard, and struggled to pay the light bill. Those things didn’t matter when my two brothers, sister, and I flew in through the kitchen door during one of our many visits.  Grandma was always cooking, the house smelled amazing, and the roasting pan was always filled with something that we knew would make us swoon.

My Mom was an only child and when Grandma died we were the ones who cleaned out the house. I remember my Mom sobbing  when we discovered the hundreds of aspirin bottles  hidden under the basement steps. Grandma apparently had been trying to cure her headaches without going to see the doctor. We also found her little homemade whiskey making apparatus which made us smile.  And I found the roasting pan.

I used it this week when I cooked a Thanksgiving turkey for all the meat eaters and I’ll use it again during the holidays when my daughter comes home and wants another turkey.  Sometimes I just open up the cabinet door and look at it. It’s the biggest cooking thing-be I have and I suppose one of these days the bottom will give out but I’ll never get rid of it.

When I look at the pan I think about her bent over the stove, a red bandana tied on top of her head to keep her hair out of her eyes, a stick of wood in  her right hand to keep the fire going, wooden spoons lying all over the place, steam rising in waves from all her pots and pans.

Some day I’ll be a grandma (Please – let’s be careful children – not for a while!) I’m not the world’s greatest cook but I do pretty damn good and I’ll cook up some kitchen memories for them.

And just in case you’re wondering – I have Grandma Goodreau’s whiskey recipe too and I’m going to make it for the grandkids. Grandma Goodreau would be proud.

Sometimes when I need to think I clean my office.  This morning it was also in dire need of a bit of cleaning.  Two birds with one stone – not that I would ever, ever throw a stone at a bird and truth be told it was more in need of organizing all the piles of work I need to attend to but I launched into it and very quickly got lost – in my own life.

I have life treasures all over the place in here and this morning I touched almost all of them.  Ready?

The doorknob from my office at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Post newspaper; a India inspired Buddha-like figure that was on top of my computer when I was managing editor of CNI Newspapers; my daughter’s high school graduation photo; a mess of baby pictures of my son and daughter back-dropped by one of them as adults; a coaster from New Mexico; a framed letter from the publisher’s reader who wanted to see the manuscript of my first novel; a brick from Havre, Montana; rocks from Lake Superior, Canada, Utah, and about fifteen other places I love; a gourd bowl my sister made for me; a Indian stick charm from one of my oldest friends, Carolyn, that she gave to me in 1976; a photograph of my partner the night I performed in the Vagina Monologues; a beautiful pottery bowl my now deceased and much beloved friend Jane gave me; the My Mom is My Hero paper my daughter wrote in eighth grade; a touching photograph of a young girl I wrote about just before she died hugging her mother at the UCLA Medical Center….well – there is more.

So much more but today as I was winding my way around my 12 foot by 12 foot office I felt as if I were taking a trip through portions of my own life…and I was doing just that. These little pieces of my life help me remember where I was, who I was with, and who I have become because of all of them. No one else would ever know what the rocks mean or why I keep the WRITER plaque Linda gave me on the wall but these do-dads help me tell myself a story. And sometimes I need to look back there and see where I was and what was so important, so consuming, so life-changing.

It’s the bits and pieces that create a life – the stringing of rocks and paper and photos and love and loss and longing into a dancing line of hopeful happiness.

What a life I have had!

What a life I am having!

Is it really so hard to design a bike seat that doesn’t make a woman cry or shoes that don’t maker us cry even harder?

First the bike seat.  Seriously. We can talk to each other on little cell phones, fly to the moon, turn our cars on from airplanes and watch our children enter the house when we are a thousand miles away.  My rear end can’t take much more of this. Could someone please design a bike seat that doesn’t make me feel as if I am in the third stage of labor?

To be honest here I have never had much of a rear end.  I’m not bragging either because the rest of my body – which is quite a huge hunk – has been making up for my missing ass. I’ve got lovely rolls here and there and it looks as if my neck has exploded. My buttocks is not as lucky.  I’m sure in a few years someone will have figured out how to shift weight around with a lazer but until then – someone save my hinder.

Now, on to the shoes. Really? I’m on my feet a lot now serving wine and running around the Wine Madonna.  Some days, usually three or so a week, I am on my feet for 15-plus hours a day.  So far I have purchased four new pairs of shoes and so far I can only wear the one pair that doesn’t make me weep after three hours.  I’ve had these shoes for over ten years and of course they don’t make them anymore.  They are Born leather sandals and they are starting to fall apart. (Watch Kris cry.)

Comfort and style please, right now, before I have to hop on the scooter and get back down there. Are there not any women with size ten feet designing shoes?  And here’s a warning to all you goofballs wearing high heels.  YOU ARE GOING TO RUIN YOUR FEET AND YOUR BACK AND YOUR LEGS. There – I told you so.  Not to mention the fact that you all look as if you are about to fall over, we all know you are not that tall, and did I mention you are ruining your body?

Is it too much to ask for? Shoes and a bike seat?

Mrs. Claus – get on this will you please?

It’s quiet this morning – always a good thing for those of us who like a little time to settle our thoughts for the hours and hours ahead.

I like to hit the ground slowly in the morning.  I love to slip out of the dark bedroom and look out across the bay to see what’s already going on out there and what the sky might predict for the rest of the day. The silence of the morning is a great friend to me.  There’s a quiet hum from the kitchen refrigerator, someone pounding now and then against the wall next door, the whistle of cars twelve stories below – but mostly sweet quiet.

This morning started with a photo text from my daughter who is camping with her brother and his girlfriend on his birthday.  Rachel knows I love and miss fall, which is a concession I made to get this view and the sun all the days of the year.  She sent me a glorious photograph of blazing orange trees shimmering in Mirror Lake.

I thought of them then, my two grown babies smiling into the morning, hair sticking out from under their wool hats, their beautiful faces looking out across the quiet lake and the “Happy Birthday!” shouts that must have followed. I always think about the day of their births on their birthday as a day to remember like no other. Andrew was ass-backwards and had to be quickly removed from me because he was having a bit of a problem down there. I remember every second of that 24 year-old event as if it were yesterday.

But all that really matters now is that he is happy, and drinking coffee on the shore of a lake that stretches around  the rocks he will climb all afternoon with two people that he loves so very much. I can close my eyes and see him stretch and then laugh into the blue morning sky as he starts a fire and then throws his bacon into the pan.

He is a wonderful boy turned man who has learned how to create his own days to remember.  How lucky can a mother be.

I think it’s the weight of my mother in my arms that gets to me.  She’s as light as a beautiful bird, sixteen feathers if that, her little mouth puckered for a sweet kiss. When she grabs me before getting on the airplane I feel strong, vibrant, so special and as if I could wing us both through the clouds and back to her home.

But what happens the moment she turns – once, then twice to wave and throw me a kiss, is a river of tears and instant missing and the strangest yet most wonderful feeling that she is still nestled against my tall shoulders.

My mom is back in Wisconsin now but the goodbyes, harder and harder with each flight, have me remembering this past week with a tear and then a smile. This is life.  I know this because it is what I live and what I write and as long as I do live – the goodbyes are my demise. I am such a sap, a baby, a tender heart and I’m also so very, very lucky to still have my mom in my ife.

I’ve written about her often here and for those of you who have already said the last goodbye to your own mom, I send you my own special hug. My mom has a long row to hoe every single day with my father and his many maladies, but she bucks up, rarely complains and of course – she is my heroine.

I plan on slipping back across the Wisconsin border in a month or so to check up on her and my dad, to see my own children, to make certain that everyone is doing okay. I know it’s going to be hard for her to say one day, “I need more help” and I may have to say if for her.

Until then, and my next visit and hers here, there’s the pink swimming suit cover-up she left hanging on her bathroom door down the hall here. I know she left it because there’s no way in hell she’s going to need it in the tundra but also because she will have to come back and get it.

What she doesn’t know is that when I miss her the most I will pick it up and hug it, just as if we were saying goodbye at the airport, so that I can feel close to her. It’s not the same but I’ll take it and when I go back I’ll leave my only sweater on her doorknob.

Of course she’s in my heart but there’s nothing like that hug – even if it is another goodbye.

Those of you who do not walk, drive, sleep, eat, stand, squat, run, swim or breathe with ear buds blaring music in your ears are going to love this blog.

I just got back from riding my bike to the post office and this reminded me how many people are missing THE SOUNDS OF LIFE because they never turn off their music machines.  I was trying to get past a walker who had those little thingies hanging from his head and he had no clue I was behind him.  This happens to me all of the time and yes, it’s annoying as hell.

I especially don’t understand why people have on music at the beach.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m certain I was a backup singer in a prior life.  Music is very important to me, kind of a song of the soul thing-be, but there are many types of music.

Wind in the tress. An approaching storm. People laughing. A sweet sigh. Birds winging overhead. Whispers of the night sky.

Those are the real sounds of life that create a kind of music that not even a symphony can mimic.

And how about a random conversation? I’d love to chat with some of the interesting people I see bobbing their heads with their eyes closed.  I’ve got a few great stories of my own.

Take an ear break and let me know what you hear. I’m telling you – the sounds of life are extraordinary.