Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
(No Title)
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.(No Title)
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.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?
(No Title)
"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.(No Title)
SOMETHING ELSE I WISH I'D SAID...Third in a Series: Carpe Dessert.(No Title)
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.(No Title)
"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.(No Title)
From the Fallible Archives, January 2001 "While we don't know yet if Bush is a great man, we are reasonably certain that he is a good man, and for that we are breathing a sigh of relief. Greatness is a revealed trait, often unable to manifest itself until trying circumstances arise, and so we shall have to wait."(No Title)
My favorite t-shirt used to be the one that says, "What If the Hokey-Pokey Really Is What It's All About?" I can't even use it for a nightshirt now, it seems so shallow. My second favorite t-shirt says, "If A Man Speaks In the Forest, And There Is No Woman There to Hear Him, Is He Still Wrong?" This one will feel OK to wear again in public someday, but who can say when? My final favorite t-shirt says, "Chocolate--It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore." To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season. And a time for every t-shirt under heaven.(No Title)
If we show God's love by praying for our enemies, and we demonstrate His mercy by forgiving them, should we not also declare His righteousness by stopping them?(No Title)
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Charles Mackey A New York Times article is reporting that more than two thirds of Americans admit to being depressed, many unable to sleep and multitudes unable to focus on their work. "Homeland Security" may restore our collective mental health, or maybe it will only defend the ragged borders of our minds against fresh, virulent attacks from without. What about the parts deep in the interior, where anguished hostages are already held without ransom? Heartland Security is accomplished slowly, personally, one by one. By the One who knows each heart, and knows what it will take to heal each heart. Homeland Security for all of us. Heartland Security for each of us.(No Title)
"I can assure you," says the wife of Tom Burnett, one of the passenger heroes on the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, "that he was not calling me to whisper sweet nothings, or to reflect on his life..." What could be more extravagant than imagining that you, in the hour of your death, will be afforded the luxury of time standing still, so that you might have a few moments to reflect upon your life? Reflect today, tonight, this hour. Repent if God is calling you to repentance, and then rejoice when your heart is right with Him. But don't delay. Who knows what might be asked of you in that hour, the hour of your death? Who knows whether courage might override reason and whether you, instead of fleeing to save your own life, might rush headlong toward eternity to save another's? Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Because tomorrow, there may be no time left to reflect.(No Title)
We should all just get back to normal, some will say. We need to get back to the business of living, get back to our daily routines, don't let them see the fault lines just beneath the surface of our steely resolve. Don't let them see the cracks. Can you go to class-history, sociology or psychology-and not feel that each chapter of each text was written for such a time as this? Can you listen to "your song" and not weep for those who may never sing without tears again? Can you hurt someone-even accidentally-and take very many minutes before returning to say, "I'm sorry"? Suddenly, everything about our daily lives is stressing the fault lines. We'd all love to get back to normal, but it's shifted now, altered, almost split wide enough to swallow all we hold dear, all we believe in. Normal has changed, and will not stop changing anytime soon.(No Title)
No matter where their daddy was, they'd always known they could reach him on his cell phone. Hadn't he called four times in a row, Tuesday morning, before he never called again? "Can we call Daddy on his cell phone?" they asked their mommy, still believing. "No," she answered, and a new belief slowly dawned on their upturned faces. "There are no cell phones in heaven."(No Title)
"For what, when you went out into the wilderness, did you expect to see? A reed shaken by the wind?" (John the Baptist) For what, when you hunted down the innocent and the unsuspecting, did you expect to kill? Mere bodies, without spirits to cry out from the white dust of their deaths? Or mere flesh, whose souls were somehow unconnected to the very souls of the brothers and sisters they left behind? "There was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone...and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet--a vast army." (Ezekiel 37) Remember the prophets, and the Valley of Dry Bones, and wonder. For we are yet one people, one flesh, one mind. One breath.(No Title)
We'll always remember where we were. Please, dear God, let us also remember who we are.
