Out of nowhere, I swear, I have the sudden strong urge to learn to play the ukelele. I know…they’re everywhere now. Maybe my brain finally reached optimal uke saturation or something. But mostly, it’s Amanda Palmer’s fault. Check out this:

and this:

Now tell me you still don’t want a ukelele.

Lorajean and I have a date to take a beginner’s ukelele class in early December. If I like it as much as I feel like I’m going to, I’ll buy one and go for it. Strum strum strummity strum strum…

Kiddo is really into music. I’m thinking I can learn the basics and then get him a little uke of his own and teach him what I’ve learned. Though if you could hear the way he already instinctively strums his kid-sized acoustic guitar or plays his drums you’d know that he’s going to take those basics and leave me in the dust in about five minutes. Natural musician, that one. It’s going to be a challenge to keep a light touch about it as a parent and not try to live through him, because damn am I envious of that gift he’s got.

The Revolution of Every Day is done. Started October 2005, finished October 2011. Eight drafts. I printed it out, gave it a big wet kiss, and sent it out into the world. Fingers crossed, yeah?

This means I get to turn my attention back to the next novel, started in–when the hell was it? 2009?–and then back-burnered so I could do some needed heavy revisions on Revolution. I was only one chapter into the first draft when I set it aside, and now it’s sat for so long the only way back into it is to start over again. The original working title had been Cold Black Stars. Then it became Damascus. Then Joshua Mohr published his Damascus, so… Yeah. He kindly offered to share the title, but I think I’ll let him have it. (He offered this on Twitter. How unexpectedly magical and uniting has Twitter proved? It’s a tool, folks. All in how you use it.) So we’ll just call this one Cold Black Stars until and unless another title asserts itself in the writing. If its lucky enough to find a publisher, the marketing department will rename it anyway.

My first two novels were set in New York. This one is set in Oregon, and it feels like the first time I dreamed in Spanish: I truly live in Portland now. No longer a New Yorker in exile. It’s good to be home.

Today, presumably under orders of Oakland, CA, mayor Jean Quan, police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up a completely peaceful demonstration.

Here’s an account posted by a journalist on the scene.

Here you can read the Twitter feed as the raid happened, and watch a video.

Outraged? Let them know!:
Mayor Jean Quan 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza 3rd Floor Oakland, CA 94612 Contact phone: (510) 238-3141 fax: (510) 238-4731 TTY: (510) 238-3254

In all my non-blogging, I failed to let you know that two of my friends have new books out.

Rachael Herron has two books out now:

Wishes & Stitches is the third book in her Cypress Hollow series. Rachael is a terrific storyteller, and writes some of the best dialogue you’ll find anywhere. AND this one is her best yet. She sets up the romance formula in this novel and then subverts it in the most wonderful ways. It’s smart as hell, this book. You’ll enjoy it.

A Life in Stitches. I already loved Rachael before I read this collection of essays. I love her even more after reading it. It’s lovely and heartfelt and honest.

You may know Sara Shepard from her best-selling YA series, Pretty Little Liars. Her second adult novel, Everything We Ever Wanted, has just been released. I was lucky enough to read it as an early manuscript, and I’m looking forward to seeing where she went with it in its finished form. Here is my interview with her, from when her first adult novel, The Visibles, came out.

Been a long time gone, hunh? Life gets in the way of blogging sometimes. But no worries. All is well. Life is good.

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with the Occupation of late.

I’ve been discussing the Occupy movement on Twitter, have been finding and sharing information there and on Facebook, have had some fascinating email conversations about it, and then I remembered…Oh! I have a blog! I could expand this conversation, couldn’t I?

I want to share with you an email I wrote the other day in response to a series of tweets between me and a friend who was not sure how she felt about the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was the beginning of an excellent discussion, one that’s still going on. I’d like to invite you to join in. Here’s what I wrote (edited some, to respect the privacy of the other participants), where I stand:

“I think the Occupy message is actually quite clear, and it has nothing to do with jealousy of the 1% and some misguided idea about the “American dream.” …The message is this: We have two major political parties in the United States. Effectively ALL the political power is split between those parties. And both of those parties live and die by donations from the extremely wealthy and from large corporations, and so government time and time again chooses the well-being of big business over the well-being of the citizens of the US.

And no, I don’t think it’s a disconnect that this movement is happening with the aid of smart phones and laptops. As I said, the problem isn’t that corporations and consumer goods exist (though certainly we’ve been distracted by our “toys” while our rights were being undercut). The problem is that corporations hold all the power. I learned about the movement online, mostly by following links on Twitter. And then we went downtown as a family and marched with the Occupiers, and took part in a General Assembly. And you know what? It was democracy in action, that General Assembly. (Slow, cumbersome, messy democracy. Damn, it’s a lot of work.) It was real people, brought together–mostly online, by this movement–meeting in real life, in the real world, and having a vitally important conversation. It was so damn beautiful.

I’ve got my family to take care of, my two young kids, so I can’t be downtown camping with the occupiers. But I can follow the movement online, on the Occupy websites, on twitter, and I can take part in the conversation that way, too. That’s how I know what the occupiers need when I do get the time to get down there, maybe bring some warm, dry clothes, some food. That’s how I know when the marches are happening and where. That’s how I know what’s going on with the other occupations around the country. Occupy Boston was raided by the police and I was one of thousands watching and witnessing on the livestream. Technology connects us all. I don’t think it’s a failing or hypocrisy of the movement that it’s being used to great advantage.

When the banking crisis (caused by the irresponsible actions and extreme greed of the financial sector/Wall Street) happened, our government bailed out the big banks. Massive amounts of US taxpayer money went to save these institutions that were failing as a direct result of their own actions. (And not a single person has been brought up on criminal charges for what they did.) The banks “needed” to be bailed out to save the economy. The thinking was that they had to have money to keep offering credit, so that our economy would keep rolling. Except that they then STOPPED lending. They did not keep offering credit. They sat on that money, earning interest on it. Meanwhile the Fed has kept interest rates at near zero (to encourage lending) so the banks have been making money hand over fist. And the bankers getting huge bonuses still. And the US economy continuing to circle the drain, and people out of work, losing their homes because they’ve lost their jobs, no jobs out there to get… I don’t think I need to tell you how bad it is out there.

And while all this is going on, there’s the super-rich 1% of Americans with 40% of the nation’s wealth. They’re being taxed at 30%. The working poor? Taxed at 16%. If the 1% were taxed at a higher rate, we’d be able to make a huge dent in the deficit. I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but I read somewhere recently that all the cuts to social programs that are being proposed by Congress would result in the same $ as some miniscule raise in the taxes of the super rich. Why isn’t that happening? Because the super rich own our politicians.

So what’s the goal? Get the money out of politics. Separation of government and corporations. Real democracy, for the people, by the people. I think the goals are still forming. Think evolution, rather than revolution. What’s happening in the Occupations is conversation. Desperately needed conversation. Yes, there is grave inequity between nations and peoples outside of North America. Yes, children and adults alike starve to death on a regular basis here in North America and around the world. Yes, we’re caught up in ridiculous wars. Yes, the environment is in deep shit. But you know what? It’s like on an airplane–you have to put your own oxygen mask on before you can help anyone else with theirs. Our country is failing. It is absolutely, unequivocally going to shit. And many of us are finally waking up to the fact that we need to ACT. That it is on us to act if we have any hope of things getting better. More equitable. If we want to keep those kids from starving. If we want to end the wars, save the environment. It starts with taking our government back from the corporations. Starts with cutting those puppet strings. No, I’m not sure how we’re going to do it. I know that the Occupations feel like a good starting point.”

I’m nervous about putting this out there. I’m no great political or economic thinker. But this is what I believe to be true. I’d love to hear what you have to say for, against, on the fence… To that end, I’m changing the way I handle comments from this post forward. I used to reply via email, an old habit from the early blog days (2003). From now on I will respond to comments within the comments, so we can all join in the discussion together, unless a comment merits a private reply.

You can also find me going on about this and retweeting the hell out of related tweets on Twitter, but be warned that I also talk a lot on there about my kids, and making pickles, and freelance deadlines, and writing. (Basically, Twitter ate the blog content.)

Want to read what people with more political and economic savvy than me have had to say?:
The Awakening in America
A Warning to OWS–and the Rest of Us
Occupy Your Conscience

Want to get involved? You don’t have to camp out to help out. Check in with your local occupation! See what they need! Join in a General Assembly! (I’ve only attended one so far, because they conflict with the kids’ sleep here in Portland, but the one I did attend was fascinating. The human mic gave me goosebumps.)

Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Portland

Today is my 38th birthday. Yesterday, I completed the final run of Couch to 5k. That’s nine weeks, going from huffing and groaning through 60-second running segments to comfortably running for 30 minutes without stopping. It may not seem like much, but it’s a lot to me. I’m much stronger at 38 than I was at 37. I’m proud of myself.

Happy birthday to my heart, lungs, and legs. Thanks for getting me up the big hill three times a week.

Confession: I’m newly obsessed with fermenting. I’ve been fermentation-curious for a few years now, but just this week I’ve finally taken the plunge. I thought it would be hard. I thought it might be messy. (I had heard rumors of exploding pickle jars.) I thought I might accidentally poison my entire family. I thought I needed an expensive crock like this. (OK, I knew I didn’t need such an expensive crock. I just WANTED that expensive crock.)

After another disappointing batch of vinegar pickles, which make me MAD because that means I wasted precious pickling cucumbers from our garden to make mediocre pickles, I finally decided to educate myself a bit on what it would actually take to make proper sour (lacto-fermented) pickles. You know what it takes? Not much. Certainly not a $100+ German crock.

To get started I borrowed Wild Fermentation from the library. It came with a fascinating DVD. Sandor Ellix Katz is charming and informative and really, really excited about sauerkraut. If he ever gives a workshop in Portland, I’m going. (I might actually be in danger of becoming a sauerkraut groupie.) Turns out you can use plain old canning jars for fermentation, and you can ferment just about any vegetable. And you can NOT get anyone sick by fermenting vegetables. Botulism? Strictly a risk from canning, not from lacto fermentation. I tried it out two days ago with three wee pickling cukes that were ready in the garden that day:

I also gathered about a cup of nasturtium seed pods to make “capers.” In the book, he insists this works. I tried one today and while they aren’t ready yet, it was tasty, so I’m optimistic:

You place the vegetables and some garlic (and dill, for the pickles) in the jars and top them with brine, then weigh the vegetables down with smaller jars filled with water. The idea is that the vegetables have to stay submerged, or whatever is exposed to the air will mold.

Making small batches in jars is great, but I want to make larger batches of pickles, and great big crocks of sauerkraut. And my birthday is coming up on the 20th. So Billy and I agreed we’d invest in a couple of crocks–not the expensive ones, though. In the DVD, Sandor (may I call you Sandor?) makes an interesting point in favor of the less-expensive crocks, like this one. With the fancy ones with a water channel designed to seal out the air and so avoid a layer of scum that has to be skimmed off, you need to close it up and basically leave it alone until the pickle is “done.” This means you can’t taste it as it goes to learn what “done” means for your particular palate and preferences. Since he assures the viewer that the presence of mold is not at all dangerous, this was a good enough argument for me. I opted for the lidless crocks. You invert a plate over the contents to hold them under the brine, and then weigh the plate down with a water-filled jar.

Today I bought one of these one-gallon crocks. Portlanders won’t be surprised to learn I paid less than what’s listed on that site at Mirador: $19.50. They didn’t have any two- or three-gallon crocks in stock today, and won’t have them for a few weeks. I’m impatient to try making sauerkraut, so I think I’ll be heading over to Urban Farm tomorrow, where I saw the larger sizes at a good price.

I brought the one-gallon crock home today and went out to the garden and lo! There were pickling cukes ready! Not enough to make a full batch, but enough to make it worth my while.

Per the instructions in Wild Fermentation, I covered the cukes, 2 heads of garlic (also from our garden), and three heads of dill (sadly, not from our garden because I accidentally killed our dill by planting it out front where I often forget to water) with brine. I used six tablespoons of sea salt to 1/2 gallon of water.

None of our plates fit into the crock quite right, but a neighbor’s plate, which had arrived at our home with a lovely little zucchini bread loaf on it, fit perfectly. (So…uh…DC? If you’re reading this? I’ll get your plate back to you as soon as I can get to Goodwill and find one that’s the same size.) I covered the cukes with the plate and weighted it down with a pint jar filled with water.

And that’s it. I’ll check it, and the two jars, each day and skim off any mold that might form. I’ll give a little taste to check progress and learn how long we like our pickles to ferment.

Next up, sauerkraut! Then kimchi! Pickled beets! Pickled radishes! Pickled green beans!!!!!

Last night I finished the first pair of socks I’ve made for Kiddo since he learned to walk. See, wool socks are crazy slippy and we’ve always had wood floors, and… Little kids and very very slippery socks on wood floors? It just seemed like a bad combo to me. Plus their feet grow SO FAST when they’re little. Now that he’s five he’s got more control over those limbs (sort of) and his feet aren’t growing at quite the same ridiculous clip and he’s old enough to understand when I say, “you MUST hold on to the railing when you’re walking down the stairs in these socks.” Old enough to understand does not guarantee willingness to comply. I have to admit, I kind of feel like I gave him a loaded weapon when I put these socks in his hands today. (Yes, a touch overprotective. Why do you ask?)

He’s so excited about these socks. He specifically requested that some part of them be “golden.” Luckily my sock-yarn stash is deep enough to accommodate pretty much any sockish request. The ball band for the main color has been lost for years, but I do remember it’s lightweight STR. The heels and toes are lightweight STR in “Sun Stone.” I think I’ll be making myself a pair out of the rest of that “Sun Stone.” How awesome would a pair of socks in that color be?

1. Sock Summit: didn’t get there, even though I could have walked there (a long walk, but not an unreasonable one) from my house. I was way too tired after a month of relentless freelance and too little sleep and just needed to take it easy with Billy and the kids. I did get to pass David in the hall a few times, though, since he and his girlfriend stayed with us, and that was great.

2. Couch to 5K is still going well. I finished Week 7, Day 1 today. It’s all straight-through runs now. No more walking segments. Billy and I are signed up to do a 5K run together on our anniversary in September! What better way to celebrate seven years of marriage?

3. I’ve started washing my face with honey. It’s Heidi’s fault. So far, my skin loves it. I had been using Dr Hauschka for years, and was happy with the results but not so much with the price tag. Luckily, organic raw honey is pretty cheap here, so if I’m getting good results with a product that’s even more natural than Dr Hauschka AND way cheaper? Well, yeah. It’s worth keeping a jar of honey in the shower.

4. I picked up a couple of running skirts at Goodwill, the kind with the teensy shorts attached. They’re great for running in the heat, super comfortable but I don’t feel naked like I would in just the teeny shorts, but…a question for my running friends: um…what do you do about the chafing?

5. Summer has finally arrived in our garden. You may or may not find a zucchini in your mailbox soon. Don’t worry: it’s organic.

I just completed Week 5, Day 3 of Couch to 5k. I mean it–just now. I’m sitting on the couch, icing my knees while the baby naps in the running stroller. I’ve been keeping quiet about doing Couch to 5k here in case it didn’t go well. But man…it’s going well. It’s going really well. I understand now why you runners run. It feels GOOD, doesn’t it?

Today’s workout on the program was five minutes of brisk walking to warm up, and then running for twenty minutes without walking. I did it. I ran every step of that twenty minutes. When the alert chimed (I use the C25k app for my iPod) to tell me to walk for the cool down, it caught me completely by surprise. I could have easily kept going. And you know what? That was probably the first time in my life I’ve run twenty consecutive minutes with no walking. No shit. I’m so damn proud of myself. On Wednesday, Day 2 of this week in the program, I had to run two eight-minute segments, and the end of each of those caught me by surprise, but I wasn’t expecting to feel that way with the twenty-minute run. On the walk over to the park where I run I was feeling a little nervous about the workout ahead, telling myself that if I found I had to walk before the twenty minutes was up, that was okay. I would take it one step at a time and just do my best. Well…wahoo!!! I can run twenty minutes straight without pain and without wanting to drop to the ground from lack of oxygen! Pretty cool.

(Twenty minutes doesn’t seem like all that much to run, I guess, but it feels like a real accomplishment to me. I was so deconditioned after all the pregnancies and miscarriages, and then the pregnancy with Ladybug, and then the lead-up to my surgery over the winter and the recovery from that etc etc etc… I can run for twenty minutes. That’s super-hero shit, considering where I started.)

So there I was today, heading up a hill, feeling comfortable and not really wondering about how much time had passed, when the alert chimed in to tell me I was halfway done with the run. Then my darling iPod served up “Beginning to See the Light” by The Velvet Underground and I was all like “grrr!” and “fuck yeah!” and all-powerful charging up that hill on my good strong legs with my good strong lungs and heart and it was so, so good.

I’ve tried to run before and I’ve always ended up injured within the first couple weeks. Patellar tendinitis, to be specific. (It sucks. I don’t recommend it.) I used to think I had bad knees, but then I married a physical therapist and learned that I actually have weak ankles and tight toes, and those things combine to jack up my knees if not addressed properly. Billy was convinced I could run if I put a whole lot of work into my legs first. I pretty much decided I just wasn’t built for running.

I’d started doing the 30-Day Shred workout after the baby was born, and I liked it–it was fun and short so I could fit the workout in after the kids went to sleep, before heading into my office to do freelance or write. That was working for a while, but then I started to do work to heal a pretty severe post-partum diastasis recti (more on that in a later post) and many of the 30-Day Shred exercises were now off-limits. I was going for long walks with the baby–I love to walk–but as I worked the diastasis program and got some of my core strength back I started craving more intensity. And then some of my favorite people started doing Couch to 5k and having fun with it and it was working for them, and I thought, well…yeah. I want to do that.

Billy gave me a few exercises to do every day (squats and lunges and stretches) and I bought a decent pair of running shoes (Nike Frees. LOVE them–and no, not getting paid to say that and yes I bought my shoes. Weird we have to specify that these days in blogs. Strange times.) I did the first two weeks of Couch to 5k and my knees kind of hurt and my shins kind of hurt, but it was okay, and then…yeah. Jacked up my left knee. I was bummed.

But not completely crushed. Nope. I took two weeks off, went back to long walks with the baby and kept up with my lunges, but I laid off the squats because they seemed to aggravate my injured knee. Any time I saw someone running, I watched them. I noticed who looked comfortable, and who looked uncomfortable, and found something that all the runners who looked natural and easy in their pace had in common–something that almost none of the pinched-face miserable-looking ones were doing: The comfortable runners were all bringing their heels up behind them. Some moved fast, some moved slower, some shuffled, but they all brought those heels up behind them. Nearly all the uncomfortable-looking runners were reaching forward with their feet with each step.

After those two weeks, I went back to the beginning of the Couch to 5k program, and I focused on bringing those heels up behind me. You know what? Not a moment of discomfort in my knees or shins. No leg discomfort AT ALL for these past five weeks. And I’ve run every step of every running segment in the program. I’d always assumed running is a natural activity that my body should just know how to do right, that my form is my natural form. Well, no. Bringing the heels back engages my hamstrings, giving me push-off. Before, I thought push-off came from literally pushing the ball of your foot against the ground. You know what else is working for me? Thinking about the fact that my mechanics have to be different on hills or on the flat. The park where I run has hills, because it’s Portland and you can’t find two consecutive flat miles in this town. I bring the heels back on the flat bits and on the downhill (though I also lean back on the downhill because of the running stroller), but to climb hills I bring my knees up in front of me. Those mechanics may change once I’m no longer pushing a three-million-pound running stroller up the hills. We’ll see about that when that day comes.

I’ve got a good routine going that lets me get in my three runs a week while still meeting Ladybug’s needs. I run on the days when Kiddo is in preschool, so I’ve just got the one kid’s schedule to consider. I wait until she’s ready to go down for her nap, then strap her in and head out. She hangs out and checks out the scenery while we walk to the park, then falls asleep usually before I’m even done with the five-minute warmup. She stays asleep for the run and the walk home, then usually stays asleep in the stroller, parked in the hallway, while I stretch and ice my knees. (I’m icing as a preventative measure now. Plus it feels good to relax on the couch with bags of peas on my knees. It’s the most sitting down I do. Feels luxurious.) Once in a while she’ll wake up as soon as the stroller stops moving and I’ll have to bring her upstairs to nurse her back to sleep in the bed and my muscles will get all stiff from lying down for twenty minutes or so without stretching, but…hell. I’m home with a 15-month-old and I’m still managing to get out there and exercise three times a week, so I won’t complain too much about that.

I’m thinking I’ll sign up for a 5k race when I’m done with the program. Just for fun.

Hey there. I’m Cari. I’m a runner. (WHHHHHHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)