Memoir, The Art of (The living of)

Well hey there, stranger. Nine months into 2015 and here I am, out of nowhere. I had not been missing the blog at all most of this year, but in the last few weeks, I've had the urge again. The urge to both journal, and share, and I'm not on Twitter, and Instagram doesn't favor those long comments, and then, hey, forehead slap, what about MY BLOG?

Duh.

These posts, whenever they come, will likely be short little microbursts rather than Big Deep Posts.

And so:

I'm reading The Art of Memoir, by one of my literary heroes, Mary Karr. (I wrote a big gushy post about Karr awhile back in this post.)  Suffice it to say that though she's from East Texas and I'm from Southern California, her people are my people in fundamental ways.

The book is a fast read, but I'm purposely reading it in short ten or fifteen minute bursts. My current morning ritual is to get the kids off to school, make coffee & breakfast, read a writing/craft book while eating, then write until I have to go to work -- which only gives me about half an hour of writing time, most days. But routine is a topic for another time.

Last Tuesday wasn't a great day, or evening. I pissed off a friend by bailing out on a reading I'd said I'd attend in OC. I attended another reading, in much closer Fallbrook. Sometimes stepping out my insular bubble is a good thing, but that night I felt raw, pointless, and very alone in my weird writer-head.

And I had this thought, ringing through me, that sometimes the writing is not about charging my laptop, the daily word count, the submissions, the rejections, the research, the reaching out for community.

Some days, the writing is all about the hard things, the brokenness, the sadness, the isolation, the swirl of shit that makes me feel I need to write a memoir in the first place.

That was Tuesday.

SNOW! (The Best Day)

I can't think of any time in my life when I would have declared New Year's Eve as the best day of the year.

But maybe, very possibly, this time it was.  The best for last.

In the very early morning hours of December 31, it started to snow here in Temecula.  Slowly, lightly, but snow it was. I woke the kids, per their requests.  (My Facebook feed was lit up all the previous day with locals talking about the forecast of predicted snow & wondering &  hoping & betting if it would actually happen.)

For context: this is Southern California.  About five miles north of the San Diego county line, our little valley sits at about 1,200 feet elevation. The temperature stayed in the 90s into early November, and the last time it snowed here was 2004. (And it sure didn't snow like this.) 

New Year's Eve was the best day. The longest day. We were up and outside around 1:30am, back inside for hot cocoa when it turned back to rain an hour later, asleep briefly and then up for good around 5:30am, when it started snowing in earnest. And of course, the kids still insisted on staying up until midnight, to ring in 2015. (We made it, barely. Also, I'm incapable of napping.)

The best day, the longest day.  Other words: Magical. Awesome. Amazing. Unbelievable. Magical, again. Narnia. The last day of the year! What a way to go, 2014.  We'll be talking about it...forever.

The Rambling Nest

Well, check me out. I went and changed both the look and the name of the blog.  The Reading Nest is now the Rambling Nest, and believe me, I pondered long and hard over how (and whether) to make this change.

I considered starting a whole new blog, but that didn't appeal. I want the "rambling" part of the title to reflect the many day trips, road trips & vacations I love to experience with my family. Since I already have quite a lot of posts on the "old" blog on that topic, I didn't want to lose them for good...nor did I want to copy them and somehow insert or transport them over into a new blog.  (When I decided to start blogging again, it wasn't because I wanted to suddenly start devoting hours and hours to tweaking and fixing a blog.)

There's still a lot here I want to change...most especially the URL [fixed!]  but also the About Me page, my photo, post labels and classifications, etc.

In the end, I decided that the old Reading Nest name reminded me too much of the subjects I most ended up ignoring here...I had neither a book review/bookworm blog, nor was it a "nesting" type of home decor/lifestyle blog.  And after a year away, and feeling so much differently about blogging in general, the old name felt like a too-snug and too-itchy sweater that I just wanted to shed.

The Rambling Nest, for me, is a nod toward my ever-present wanderlust for new roads and sights to explore. It's also about my "rambles" as a writer, working on essays and memoir & seeking out the writing life while mom of two busy, smart kids. And the "nest" still acknowledges my introvert tendencies to nest safe & cozy at home with a good book.

If you're new, welcome. If you've been around these parts before, welcome back. Hope you like how I've spruced up the place.

Wrapping It Up.

Hola! 

It's been so long, you probably thought I went the way of so many bloggers this year and just gave up the ghost and unofficially closed the doors here.   

Actually, you probably didn't think of me at all, and that's okay, too.  

So here I am, on this second-to-last day of 2014, doing a little shout-out to myself and my 2 devoted readers.  Wrapping up the year...but not the blog.  

I guess without meaning to, I up and took the year off from blogging.  I didn't plan on it, had no forethought or master plan.  What mostly happened was that I got a job, a real job -- a part-time job, and one that's ideal for the kids' school calendar (holidays and summers off!)  but a job nonetheless.  The upkeep of certain things took a definite hit -- the laundry, the dust along my baseboards, the general tidiness of the house during the week -- and most especially, the blog. 

With the time off and some mental distance from blogging, I could better appreciate what a total and utter failure I was at being a Real Blogger.  See, a couple of years ago, at the start of 2012, I set out on what I believed was a sincere attempt to have a Real Blog. With a Real Readership, and a Real Little Niche, and maybe even make some real-life, through-the-interwebs friends. (And maybe even make some Real Money...or at least nab a few freebies?) I even paid money to learn tips from an online blogging e-course. 

Reader, I was a dismal failure. Despite hours and hours spent on my tush applying myself to the art and the act of Blogging, I just....really kinda sucked at it.  Oh but Reader, how I tried! I focused on commenting regularly on my favorite blogs (building community), on participating in Link Parties and Month-Long Posting Fiestas and writing regular posts and features here and doing All the Bloggy Things.  (I even created a Facebook page.)  But nothing happened, or changed much.  My stats hardly budged. I got no shout-outs, just a few and far-between "Likes." I made no friends, really, despite driving across freeways to other counties and attending Bloggy Events and Putting Myself Out There to local-ish other bloggers.  

All for naught. Except that I got better accustomed to sharing my own voice, to putting it out into the ether, and knowing what I like and want from blogs...other blogs, and my own. I learned that simply because a blogger lives in my part of the state, or the same county, or down the street, and shares my same hair or the same job or enthusiasms or  astrological sign, it doesn't mean they want to be my friend. Or read my blog. I learned that as an incorrigible introvert, there's a lot of Bloggy Stuff that I'm never going to feel comfortable doing, or pursuing, or writing about. 

And that's okay. Blogging is weird, the internet is weird, and people are really, really, weird. Me included. Me especially, maybe. 

So, just to be clear: I'm back, and I'm not quitting blogging. There will be some changes here, for sure. Some clarity. Some winnowing down, some fat-trimming. Maybe even a (slight) name change. Who knows?  The pressure's off, the stakes couldn't be lower. The core of my deepest loves: day and weekend trips with my family, exploring my beloved home state of California, books and music and random ramblings: that's what my blog is about, that's what I've missed sharing and writing about. 

Until the next post:

 I'm a big grown-up lady person with kids and college degrees and houseplants, but some days I still need to have that poster tattooed on my forehead. (From the awesome and hilarious brain and Etsy shop of Emily McDowell. ) 

Happy New Year!

It's A Living

 Yes, look! I'm alive. Alive and....blogging. 

Apologies for being gone for so long, and without any warning. That certainly wasn't intentional.

A quick catch-up: So, the biggest new thing is that I got a job that I started back in mid-January. A real honest-to-god job with a paycheck and everything.  On paper, it's a perfect gig for this time in my life: a part-time library aid within the same school district as my kids, which means I get to enjoy the same holidays, breaks, and school calendar as they do. (Like right now, we're all on spring break.) Plus, I get to work with books and recommend them to kids and read aloud to the kids and re-visit the days when I was five years old and played "library" with my books. 

In reality...there is no perfect job. We'll leave it at that. (But it's still close, and I'm  pretty jazzed that I got it, no small feat in the competition to score a good district job around here.)

In other news, things have been pretty status quo  in terms of me still feeling fairly housebound and craving some change. (Because, y'know, my first job in a dozen years doesn't count.)  No major adventures or road trips or vacations lately. 

However: last week, the husband and I escaped for a quickie overnight stay to downtown L.A., to see Kraftwerk in concert. It was a little pathetic how excited I was to be in THE CITY! ANY CITY! and away from the 'burbs and our extremely kid-centric community. Our getaway was much too short but it was excellent, as was the concert.  I admit that I'm not the huge fan of electronic music that my husband is, but it was still thrilling to see those old iconic Germans up there on stage. (And though I may have nodded off a few times, in my defense, the concert didn't even start until 10:30. And also: Kraftwerk.)  

We stayed at the Westin Bonaventure, which I thought was sort of funny, just because the glass building is such an old icon itself.  Does anyone but me remember the early '80s sitcom "It's A Living"? It starred Ann Jillian and featured a group of cocktail waitresses who worked in a bar at the top of the Bonaventure. I kept thinking of that, and hearing the theme song in my head.

The Westin Bonaventure was the strangest hotel I can remember staying in recent memory. It feels very much like an airport, what with all the escalators, the lounge areas, and the random food court options.  On the other hand, the privately run brewery restaurant inside the hotel was really good. Best Caesar salad I've had in ages.

And the glass-elevators that run on the outside of the towers were still a hoot.  

So that's it for now. We actually have some minor travelling plans later this spring break, so I'll have something else to share soon.

Oh! And this: I recently deleted my Facebook page for the blog, so if that's how you've been receiving updates, I guess you won't see this. My reasons weren't that complicated, it just didn't feel right anymore.  But I am totes still on Instagram and you still follow me there. 

I am, and shall remain, your @readingnest1

A Hike for the New Year

 On the first day of the new year, I roused my family from our holiday stupor (we didn't go out on New Year's, but we did stay up past midnight) and got us all out of the house for a hike.

This is the same way we entered in the new year last January, too. You can see pics from that hike here.

This year, we headed a bit north to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve. It's only about 20 minutes north from us, plus a few minutes to climb west and into the foothills.

It was obvious that a whole lot of other people had my same idea, as it was busy, even in the mid-afternoon. 

I was so glad to be out in the open air, taking in the vistas and just feeling a part of the larger world.  Here are some photos of our day out, all taken with  my sucky camera phone.

The building you see is an old adobe, supposedly the oldest structure built in Riverside County, back when this area was settled by ranchers and cowboys.  The tree is  a big old oak that needed a hug. At least, that's what my Tucker said, and then he ran up and hugged it. 

I'm not sure what it is about the light, the sky, the long shadows, but these photos feel very quintessentially "Southern California winter" to me.  It's been a very mild and dry winter, a statement that probably makes you want to smack me upside the head if you live anywhere east of Arizona.  Sorry, Polar Vortex survivors.

But I do wish for some gray skies and a good dose or two of rain before the winter is done.

And this time, I AM speaking purely metaphorically.

Back soon.

Never Have I Been A Blue Calm Sea

I've always wanted this blog to be a place where I share my loves, my secret self, the things I hold most dear. Instead, too often I treat it like my Facebook page, the one where I share pics of the kids and say pithy things about nothing much at all and smile and put only the "best stuff" out there. (Because if I've learned anything this last decade in Far Suburbia, it's that one must put her Best Face Forward everyday, lest one be sent to the ranks of the Weird. Much like high school, come to think of it...)

Anyway. Here's something I love. A lot. I grew up pretty obsessed with Stevie Nicks. I mean, I looooved her. I wanted to be her.  Earlier, there had been Judy Garland and Julie Andrews and then Linda Ronstadt, but by the time I was in eighth grade, it was Stevie all the way.

In my wild and dysfunctional childhood, I sought out the occult and Ouija boards and all the paranormal stuff that made up the weekly segments of "In Search Of..." Gypsies and palm readers and crystal balls, oh my.  I wanted answers. I wanted reasons. I wanted to feel in control of days and decisions that were anything but under my control.

Some days, I feel I haven't changed much at all in thirty years. I haven't listened to Stevie much in the last twenty years. But every once in a while, I'll watch something of hers, or catch something on the radio, and it will trigger those days, when she represented all I wished to be: a twirling white witch, mystical and beautiful and blonde and able to rise, rise, above them all.  Wouldn't you love to love her?

 

I spent untold hours staring at the photos from her Belladonna album. 

This week, I remembered this obscure Stevie song, "Storms," from the Fleetwood Mac album Tusk.  It's slow and quiet and a bit passive about a whole lot of buried emotions.  Maybe that's why it speaks to me again, in this odd and empty and changing season. The video doesn't feature Nicks, but a changing montage of nature and mountain scenes that complement the mood.



I'd like to leave you with something warm
But never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm.
 
This is my Jam for the week. 

The Playroom Must Go!: Week 2

 

Welcome back to Week 2 of the One Room Challenge, hosted by the Calling It Home blog. Quick recap from Week 1: I'm re-imagining our small downstairs playroom/sometime guest room  into primarily a guestroom, while still keeping the kid's computer area and games in the space. Here's a Before:

Confession: I haven't done much at all with the playroom in the last week. Not unless you count my little internal shudder that happens each time I glance inside.  But I do have a tiny bit of progress to show you from the previous week.

I'm at the not-fun stage, where I'm organizing and de-cluttering and making messy piles of "stay," "donate," and "figure out WTH to do with this thing." And piles don't look very pretty or glamourous, either in person or on my blog.

Well.  Part of this mess you see on the floor here:

 is due to the fact that I've successfully purged out the pressboard "rustic" wardrobe from Ikea. This piece is leaving, and it's just about ready for me to create a listing on Craigslist and bid it farewell.

Empty wardrobe:

I haven't been as productive in purging out the desk sitting beside the wardrobe. The desk drawers are chock full of both my things and kids' stuff. It's actually my own stuff that's harder to figure out (most of the kid's stuff can be chucked).

So that's where things stand as of this week.  But enough of ugly Before.  Let's see the vibe and direction I have planned for the room.

I like this small room below, especially because the lay-out mimics that of my own space. (Except it's still bigger than my tiny room.)

Design by Erika Ward, via My Colortopia. 

I plan on painting the large wall where the wardrobe/desk area is now a similar dark color. I'm picturing a nice true navy blue though, not the blue above that tilts a good bit toward violet.

And I also plan on placing the bed in the same location as above. (I don't know yet whether I'll try for some kind of faux-headboard, or just use some art above the bed.)

In this little recessed nook where the bed is now:

I plan on putting a console desk for the computer monitor. It's not very wide though (just as wide as a queen bed, in fact) but I hope to find something white and clean-lined, similar to this one from Ikea:

This is the Besta Burs desk, which is 70" wide and therefore won't fit in the nook. But you get the idea of what I'm after here.  (I could also put the desk on the wall where the Expedite system is now, swap that into the nook area, and flip it up to use vertically.)

Here are a few other shots of a room that I really love. It's a lounging area for a teen girl, but mostly I just love the clean white with pops of intense color, and the fun vibe:

Photo of K. Mathiesen Brown's design via House of Turquoise

 Photo of K. Mathiesen Brown's design via House of Turquoise

 Photo of K. Mathiesen Brown's design via House of Turquoise

(All of the above 4 inspiration rooms can be found on my Pinterest board, "Tween Room Ideas." )

Obviously, with a navy blue wall, my guestroom isn't going to be as white and bright. It's the overall playful vibe that's my inspiration.  (And the other walls are going to be re-painted in a brighter, semi-gloss white, to replace both the flat white paint & the pastel green walls.)  In keeping with the inspiration rooms, here are a couple of fun pillows that I've already purchased for the bed:

 The sequins on the "Famous" pillow are just printed on, which I love: no picking off sequins by bored little hands.  And the shiny patent-orange pillow is just fun, and I think it'll  pop like crazy against the navy wall. (And both were bought at HomeGoods.)

So that's my vision, and you've seen the reality...now it's my job to make it all come together.  Back next week to hopefully show some further progress! Thanks for coming by.

The Play Room Must Go!

And so we find ourselves yet again in my guest room-slash-playroom. That room that rarely houses guests, and rarely gets "played" in by my kids (unless you count Minecraft, on the computer).

I first wrote about cleaning it up, here in this post.

Above is what it looked like all freshly purged of (that round) of kids toys, back when we still used the small orange Ikea futon for guests.

And then I showed you how we removed the aging futon and put our too-soft for the master bedroom, but fine-for-guests mattress into the room, earlier this year in this post.

Which as you can see, hogs up most of the space in this small room. (Although we did finally get the box springs up off the floor with some bed rails.)

We have 4 bedrooms upstairs in our house, which works perfectly for us: the master, one for the girl, one for the boy, and an office for the Husband, who works from home and is a bit of a mad-scientist/techie geek (i.e., his office is a mess of computers and parts and wires and mother boards and isn't fit for guest traffic).

And then we have this funny little angled room downstairs, right by the front door, and one of the first things you see when you come into our home.

I've been to other houses in our neighborhood with our same floor plan, and the builder had intended for this to be an open "den" small office area.  The wall that you see below, with the map, is usually opened up as a great big open window, often with plantation shutters.

But the family who lived here before us had more kids, and so they closed up the open window (in a rather rough job) to use this as their eldest girl's bedroom. They also framed out the doorway and installed double-doors, as again the original intent was for this "den" area to be open. 

People!! I am so OVER this room, and the way is does, or does NOT function in my house. 

I am taking on the challenge of emptying out most of the toys and furniture, and restoring it to function primarily as a guest room. I'll continue to store some games and books in the Expedit system, but I no longer see it as a "play room." I'm keeping the kids computer in here, too, as this is where they play Minecraft and noodle on the shared computer -- but its not where they do homework.

And I wanna get all this  done by the end of the month, which is why I'm joining up with the blog "Calling It Home's"  One Room Challenge Linking Party during the month of October.

Here's what I'm getting rid of:

 Both of these big pieces, the Ikea "rustic" wardrobe, and the Ikea "secretary" type desk, are going.  The wardrobe is full of games and craft supplies, with a rail to hang guest's clothes.  The desk drawers (there are 4) are full of memories and journals and innumerable broken pens, receipts and ticket stubs.

This wall o' fun also needs to get dealt with: 

Lily has agreed to sell her Fisher Price dollhouse, so that's going, too. 

I'm also changing out the pale green paint and most of the artwork. I would LOVE to explore the idea of bashing out that faux-window seat. It has a bullnose lip, is too narrow to actually serve as a window seat, and is totally useless, except to look "decorative." And eat up precious space.

In the meantime, if you're new here from the link party, I'd hate for you to think my whole house is also just as cluttered and awkward and uninspired. So here's a recent DIY project I completed with the Malm dresser in our entryway:

 Yay for Overlays! Yay for gold spray paint!

Come back week, and I'll share my inspiration photos of what I'd like the new guest room to feel like, plus a couple of fun pillows that I've already bought for the bed.  
 In the meantime, it's cleaning and purging over here (oh, and Halloween decor for the rest of the house.)

The fun never ends.

Bucket Listing in L.A.

 I don't really have a bucket list. I have some hazy, intangible ideas of things I'd like to do and see, things that might be really cool or wonderful or just personally meaningful.

I'd love to get to Europe someday, something that nobody in my immediate family has ever done.  (Wait, whoops --  my aunt went to Spain in the early '70s.)  Someday I'd like to get up in front of a crowd and sing some great karaoke. (I belted out some epic Dio a few years ago, but only to a tiny group of sympathetic ears.) 

Late last year, I realized that someday, I'd really love to participate in a sing-a-long showing of The Sound of Music which is tied with The Wizard of Oz as my favorite childhood movie. ("Sound of Music" clearly has a better soundtrack, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" notwithstanding.)

So when my sister texted me back in August if I'd like to go to the Hollywood Bowl with her and a friend to the Bowl's annual Sound of Music sing-a-long, I immediately texted back my reply: "Oh holy fuck, yes!!" 

And so it was that on a Saturday evening last month, I joined dozens of other fools participants in donning a costume and walking across the stage at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the pre-show costume parade.  (By the way, Hollywood Bowl organizers: that  parade  would've been a lot shorter and more interesting if you enforced the rule that people should actually be in costumes, not just wanting to walk up onstage and wave to their friends.)

Behold me in my Maria-esque finery, and looking pretty thrilled to be there:

Note the faux-Edelweiss tucked behind my ear, provided in the fun prop bag:

It was a great, fun evening. I loved singing along with the crowd, and especially everyone hissing whenever the catty, nasty Baroness was onscreen. (And catcalling to hunky Captain Von Trapp was funny, too.)  My only regret is that I didn't belt the hell out of "I Have Confidence," which may be my favorite song in the film, but it was early on in the evening. And I wasn't feeling quite that confident yet.
*******
Another thing I'd love to do is hear the mighty voice of Linda Ronstadt singing one of her great love songs in person. Sadly, as you may have heard, Ronstadt can no longer sing, as she recently revealed that she suffers from Parkinson's and the disease has stripped her of the power to even sing in the shower.  But last Tuesday evening, she appeared in public at an event sponsored by Writers Bloc to talk about her new memoir and be interviewed by famed L.A. journalist Patt Morrison.

I bought my ticket practically the moment they went on sale, and it's a good thing I did: evidently the event sold out in record time, and it took place in a fairly small venue. But after I bought the ticket, I realized the venue was in Santa Monica, not downtown L.A., as I'd assumed. 

Because it's such a far drive for me (just about exactly 100 miles, one-way), I almost talked myself out of going. The Westside in rush-hour traffic is just hard to get to, and I did sit in my car forever as I crawled through the last 10 miles of the trip.  But I'm glad I went, and not just because I spotted legendary rock photographer Henry Diltz in the row in front of mine...and then later recognized an attractive woman in the aisle as Rita Wilson...followed closely behind by her husband, Tom Hanks. (He's tall. And he looks just like Tom Hanks!)

Linda talked a lot about her childhood in Arizona, of being influenced by her very musical family. She talked a bit about dating Jerry Brown back in the day, and told a funny anecdote about his famed cheapness.  She talked a lot about music, and how she came to sing the songs she chose. She had lots of opinions about politics and music education and the current sorry state of audio technology (she really hates MP3s and digital sound quality).

The crowd was allowed to use their phones & cameras to quickly snap some shots at the very beginning of the program. My sucky phone-camera just didn't manage much, so here's what I got:

Here's a photo from the L.A. Times of Linda at the event:

And here's my copy of her memoir, Simple Dreams.  It has her signature inside, pre-signed before the event. Due to her Parkinson's, she didn't have the physical stamina to sign books in person afterwards:

I spent the night at my mom's house after the event was over. Even living in L.A. county, it still took me nearly an hour just to get to her place with the traffic. I'm very glad that I soldiered through and saw one of my idols in person -- but I'm not signing myself up to drive out to Santa Monica alone again anytime soon.

So that's where I've been and been up to lately. Another bucket list item? Publishing a book. I've been forcing myself to sit down and write in the morning, but it's been slooooow going. But that's better than not sitting down to write at all.

Tomorrow, I plan to be back with an actual nesting post about the house, and a one-room challenge link-up that I'm going to participate in this month. See you then.