My Writing Process

There's a nice little community of Foreign Service bloggers, and I've been following several blogs and bloggers for a few years now. It's an online community, of course, but I've had the chance to meet a few of these ladies in person. One of them is Bfiles-- who has a real name, of course. (And it's not Bfiles, though that would be kind of cool.) We met in real life earlier this year while we were both in DC. She was studying Mandarin for her upcoming move to China, and I had just moved FROM China. This in and of itself doesn't qualify one as "speaking Chinese," but since it was my major in college, I do actually speak a bit. So we got together and talked China for a while. 

And now she has tagged me in a Writing Process blog-hop. And since I'll pretty much jump at any opportunity to talk about myself, I said I'd be happy to join in. I'm not going to tell you when I was supposed to have posted this, but we'll pretend it was today and not sometime last week. Okay? Great!

What am I working on?

When I moved to Brasilia in January, I was working on absolutely nothing. I even went back and reread (i.e., read for the first time) The Scarlet Letter, because I had nothing to do. I'd brought a cross-stitch project to finish, but I finished it my second day here. It was a long six weeks with no internet.

But now I'm working on several things:

1) Building small people. 

Did I mention that I had a baby boy a few months ago? He's 2 1/2 months and learning how to laugh and kick. This does make nursing kind of challenging. He's relaxed, chill, and generally so much like his father that I absolutely adore him! I couldn't have asked for an easier baby.

My older two girls are going to day camp at the embassy this summer. They won't go every week because I miss having them here, but they're gone today and having a blast. 

2) Playing the violin

This is new. It has been over a year since I've played the piano, and I miss it terribly. We're realizing, though, that a grand piano doesn't fit in UAB, so I'm going to be going without it a lot in the future (between posts, etc). I used to play the viola, but for various reasons, I decided I'd like to learn how to play the violin. I thought about it, but never seriously. Then last week someone was selling their violins before moving back to the US. I jumped on it, and now I have two violins and no excuse not to fill our home with beautiful music. Except that it wakes the baby. And "beautiful music" isn't quite what I'm playing yet. I'll get there, though.

3) Learning Portuguese

My biggest dose of Portuguese comes every week at Church. I sometimes study our Relief Society manual a week in advance. And I have a goal to read the Book of Mormon in Portuguese before the end of the year. But my serious study has dropped significantly, see item 1.

4) Other creative projects

I have a bunch of sewing projects that are in various stages of completion. For a while I was kind of bummed I never had time for them. But considering that I just created an entire person, and he has never eaten ANYTHING except what I physically created for him, I think I'm doing just fine in the "creative" arena. 

5) Harry Potter

It got to the point where (dorky as this sounds), I missed Hogwarts. The last time I read the books was when I was nursing Penny, and that was in 2009. I don't think I'll reread the series annually, but every 5 years or so sounds great. Next time it will probably be with my kids. How fun!! 

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Well, first of all, I prefer to call it my Opus. And my Opus has significantly fewer pictures than many others. This is because my google account has a stifling limit on how many pictures one can upload. I've been blogging on here since 2006, and my account has since filled up. I could pay money to expand my limit, but I haven't because I am cheap. I could go through and upload significantly smaller versions of a bunch of my photos, but that would take time and I'm lazy busy. So sometimes I upload the pictures onto facebook and then just use the urls and link to my pictures. But I'm busy, as I said, so I usually just upload pictures onto facebook and then write on my blog. 

Otherwise, it's pretty much your typical narcissistic blog. 

Why do I write what I write?

Because I like to talk about myself. I have never had a more captive audience than my blog, and for that, dear blog, I thank you. 

I just like to blog about what happens in my life. I don't aspire to chronicle every happening in my life, but I do enjoy writing about things that happen.

How does my writing process work?

First of all, what I don't do: I don't do catch-up posts. The point of my blog is not to cover everything interesting that happens. I try instead to write something interesting about whatever happened recently.

I once kept a diary of a family road trip. It went something like this:

This morning we ate breakfast at Burger King in Rio Rancho. Then we drove through Albuquerque. Then we ate hot dogs at a gas station in Gallup for lunch. Now we're somewhere in Arizona.

And that was it for the day.

I didn't write much-- because that's boring to write-- and I almost died from the pain of trying to read it. No one cares where we ate for breakfast!

Instead of chronicling everything that happens, I try to write about the experience: what happened, why, how I felt about it, and what people had to say. Dialogue makes it interesting-- and it breaks up long paragraphs that I generally skip when I read things.

I also don't edit very often. But when I do, I realize that I ramble a bit and start too many sentences with "so." It would be a good thing for me to start doing, but I usually have something that needs doing. So there goes the editing.

Passing the torch

I've asked the lovely Kate, from Pulling Stakes, to write about her writing process. I did have to offer my first-born son in exchange, but I think it will be worth it. Plus, I should get him back. (Right? Maybe? Please?)

Kate lives in Brasilia-- like me! So I thought it appropriate to pass the torch to someone that I happen to know is a lot taller in real life than online.

Mrs. Penny

When we first moved here (6 months ago now), Penny started asking me a lot of questions about getting married. Why did Dad and I get married? How do you choose someone to marry? What does it mean to get married? She was asking some good questions, and we had some good conversations about marriage in general.
Well, it turns out that Penny wasn't talking about marriage in general. She had someone very specific in mind, her friend Lucas from preschool. Some other moms from church and I set up a little preschool with 4 little kids in it-- 3 girls and 1 boy. And Penny decided that Lucas was the one she was going to marry-- after she grew up, of course.
Whenever Penny saw Lucas, she would go sit by him, or hold his hand, or give him a hug and a big kiss. One time I think I told her she probably doesn't need to be kissing Lucas so much. She replied, "But it makes him happy when I kiss him!"
I asked Penny one day how she decided that she was going to marry Lucas. "We had preschool over at Lucas's house, and we played together. He was really nice to me, and," she looks up at me and simply says, "We fell in love."

Penny and Lucas dancing at preschool

Lucas would always share his toys with Penny and was always very nice. Now that I think of it, I married Kevin for pretty much the same reasons.

Penny and Lucas at a Primary Easter activity

Penny and Lucas during the opening prayer

Lucas has since moved back to the US, and Penny has taken it all in stride. She misses him, but she seems to think it's normal that her friends always move away, and it hasn't been as big a deal as I thought it might be. I think that's actually the sad part.
Anyway. Penny told me yesterday that she doesn't want to get married when she grows up. She wants to be a doctor instead. (This is after several episodes of Dr. McStuffens on Neflix, by the way.) I tried to tell her she could do both, but she would hear none of it. "Maybe at kindergarten they'll have doctor class AND violin class."

Festa Junina

We went out this weekend, which for a family with tiny kids and a baby, is pretty exciting just in and of itself.
I didn't take any pictures. And so, I shall write.
This whole weekend, there was a Festa Junina at our neighborhood Catholic church. I'm not going to try and explain all about it here, but here's a link to the Festa Junina article on Wikipedia. Suffice it to say, it's a festival like an American carnival or fair, with some fun traditions and activities.
So the girls and I headed over on Friday evening leaving a sleeping William and a gleeful Kevin, who jumped at the chance to stay home. I made Penny a little Festa Junina skirt, intending to make the rest of the dress at some point. But I've finally learned something about making clothes for the girls: always make the bigger one first. That way when I don't finish them for a year or two, I'll still have Naomi to squeeze into it. But try telling that to the 6-month-sized dress that's half-finished in my to-do pile. Maybe next year Naomi will fit into this Festa Junina dress, and I will have gotten around to making an even bigger one for next year's Penny. No promises. But I can't imagine having LESS free time next year. The baby's not getting any younger.
So we went to the festival, where they were selling all sorts of flashing light toys, balloons, and other stuff for parents to spoil their whining children with. I saw this from hundreds of yards away, though, and told the girls we'd walk around the WHOLE fair before deciding what to buy. And it worked! We walked around the fair, where they were selling all the Festa Junina foods, and then we bought tickets for the girls to go "fishing." They were pretty excited to catch their fish and then get a prize-- a Brazil tambourine for Naomi and some butterfly stickers for Penny. Then we bought a hot dog on a stick for the girls. I tried some of the arroz doce, corn pudding, and then some chocolate pudding with the last of my tickets. I liked them alright, but I brought most of it home to share with Kevin.
One of the Festa Junina traditions is to have a love letter delivery service during the fair. There were some teenage girls with hearts stuck on their shirts, and from what I understand, people can write a note and have these girls deliver it anonymously. I'm pretty sure that if I had been a teenager in Brazil, this is where I would have spent all my money-- first to write secret admirer notes to the guys I liked at the moment, but more importantly, to write a bunch of fake ones for my friends to get all excited about. If you've never written a fake love letter for someone, you've never lived. Add it to your bucket list.
So, the girls jumped on the trampolines for a few minutes, and then on our way out, we bought some firecracker poppers (those little things you throw on the ground and they pop). I was pretty impressed that even Naomi, being able to reach about 3 feet off the ground on her tippy toes, could even throw them hard enough to pop. The girls and I emptied an entire pack and then headed home at about 8:00.
When we left, we were pretty much swimming upstream. The party was just beginning. People were still coming, bringing their dressed-up kids who were as small or smaller than mine. Brazilian kids are on a different schedule than my American ones, that's for sure! If I brought my kids to something starting at 8:00 and tried to keep them awake for the duration of it, you certainly wouldn't call it a party. Torture session, more like it.
But anyway. I'm glad we went. Maybe next year I'll make the girls dresses, and then I'll be sure to take pictures. Happy Festa Junina, y'all!

How do you like Brasil?

People ask me all the time how I like Brasilia. It's not much of an answer. I like it. I like it a lot. The air is clean, the weather is perfect, and we have a lovely apartment. In fact, the air is clear, sweet, clean, and refreshing-- nothing like the smog we lived through in Shenyang. The weather is always about 80 degrees, perfect for shorts or long pants, and the seasons (all both of them) are either clear-without-a-cloud-in-the-sky (dry season) or with-a-refreshing-afternoon-rainstorm (wet season). Our apartment is big enough that we have a sewing room and a guest bedroom, but small enough that I can keep it clean on my own. I love watching the trees outside our windows blowing in the breezes, looking so ALIVE.
So in a nutshell, I like Brazil a lot.
But if you read carefully between the lines, you'll notice I don't get out much.
We take taxis a couple times a week. If we go to the Embassy, it's about R$20 each way (or 10 bucks), and if we go across the lake to visit friends, it's more like R$50 each way (or 25 bucks). It's cheaper than Washington DC cabs, but still expensive enough to keep us from going everywhere all the time. (Unlike Shenyang, where you could practically go anywhere within the city for under $7.) But most days we just stay home.
There's a subway line, but it's a long walk to the station, and it doesn't go to the embassy or across the lake to Lago Sul, which are the two places we go most often. So... no metro.
They recommend we don't take the public buses because they're dangerous. I'm not sure if it's the driving (definitely dangerous-- to the other cars on the road!) or if you're more likely to get robbed on the bus, or what. But we follow that guideline.
I'm a little tired of taking my kids with me every time I go to the doctor. True, I could ask someone to babysit them for me, but the one time I did that, it meant she drove 20 minutes to pick up my kids, then drove 20 more minutes back to her house, then repeated that again to drop them off. The other option would be for me to take them in a cab, which would add about US$100 to the Dr. appointment tab. And insurance doesn't reimburse it, I'm pretty sure. So I just take everyone with me. But it will be awesome to not to, because....
A couple days ago... we got our car!! (Penny's imaginary pet dragon, Toothless, came too.) This opens up a world of possibilities. We went to the baby playgroup the next morning, and then in the afternoon we went to ballet class without mooching a ride home afterwards. I can go to Zumba class this week! I can go to the big-kids' playgroup! I could set up a play-date for the kids! I can get out, go places, and make friends!!
I'm kind of excited.
Brasilia's a great city, but it's made for driving. But our vehicles take FOREVER to get here. We got here January 15, and lo and behold, 5 1/2 months later, here comes our car! But we're grateful it's finally here, and we're going to probably go a little nuts driving here and there, going out every day to everything we can think of. It will be awesome!