July 2009

The caves

We arrived at the cave site, went to the bathroom in a smelly outhouse.  Not because that hanging out in smelly outhouses is our idea of fun, but because this was a three hour cave jaunt and obviously there would not be bathrooms inside. 

There was a thirty minute hike to the cave site, straight up, that felt like around a 12 incline if I was on my treadmill.  Which would have been fine if I had been visiting my lonely treadmill lately . . . but I haven’t.  So, I was really huffing and puffing and wondering how I was going to get through this next week of hiking with my dignity intact?

It was a hot, gritty day.  I was glad I brought water.  So was the rest of my family, as we all shared it. 

When we got to the top of the hill there was a small metal door in the ground.  It looked to be around two feet by two feet.  We’re going in that, I thought.  I’ve been in caves before and I never had to crawl into a little hole in the ground.  The littler caves, I’d just walk in, enjoy the dark and the cool, and the bigger ones I’d visited, had boardwalks, lighting, etc. 

Not so with this cave.  We had to sit on the ledge, feel around with our feet and then once we found the ladder rung, we had to twist our body around, try not to scrape the skin off our sides and the top of our back as we disappeared down the hole. 

It was way more adventurous than any cave I’d ever visited before!

The first thing you notice is the cold air.  The second is that there is no closed in feeling that I thought I might feel when I watched other people disappear down the darkened hole, the air is fresh, invigorating and seems to circulate in it’s own private air conditioning system. It was 8 degrees C and was really, really refreshing. 

Then once in, there was something quite exciting about the pitch black and the bobbing helmet lights. 

The first cave was the most beautiful, it was one that only had guided tours and so many of the formations were untouched and pristine.  When we got deep in the cave, we all turned off our helmet lamps and sat in perfect darkness.  It wasn’t scary at all.  Actually, there was something very peaceful about it.  It’s hard to explain but it was as if, in turning out the light, I dropped deeper inside my true self.  I could feel the space around me, the other people, but mostly myself, my inner self, the inner voice, I don’t quite know.  All I am sure of, is I would have been quite happy to sit in the dark and silence for a lot longer.

After the first cave, we were so caught up in the adventure that we were ready to sign up for the 5 hour extreme caving, where you have to rappel down the equivalent of a seven story building.  Yes.  I was actually wanting to do it.  After the second cave, I was thinking, maybe I’d go, but maybe I’d drive them and they could do it.  By the end of the third cave, everybody had had enough and nobody wanted to do it. 

We had had a great time, but by the end of three hours we were tired. There was a lot of clambering around like Golem, sliding on one’s butt, clinging to rock faces, wedging oneself through narrow cracks and squeezing our way through wormholes.  I was covered in mud because I kept myself a lot closer to the earth than most people.  I must have looked a little odd, but I really had to be careful, because I didn’t want to louse up my friend’s big birthday week with a sprained ankle.  My sister, Becky, emerged from the caves, pristine and clean . . . Other than the stink that clung to her forehead from her rancid, smelly helmet.  That even she couldn’t escape. 

If you decide to go caving, go for the shiny new orange helmets that don’t stink.  The scraped up ones are permeated with other people stale sweat and are not nice.  I also had one of the stinky helmets.  David, Will and Brandon had unsmelly ones.

When I got home, I had to take a bath and wash my hair to get the smell off.  I peeled off my mud-clad clothes and sank into the nice hot water.  It felt good after the cold of the caves.  I was glad I went.  And I was glad that I was home.  Safe and sound, ankles intact, my family out in the living room, eating ice cream and talking louder than normal.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, July 24, 2009 in Chewing the Fat

An outing

I finished my edit and am now waiting for the arrival of a copy-edit to land on my doorstep.  Not anxiously awaiting, mind you.  I am enjoying the free time.

Don is missing all the cozy summer ambling around as he has a writing deadline looming, but luckily, Will is spending the summer at home and we have been doing all those lazy summer things that one imagines doing.  Exploring, hikes, cotton candy, bumping around town.

Tonight, David arrives for a sleepover, and one of Will’s friends might come over as well, and then tomorrow, Auntie Becky (the kid’s aunt, my sister) is coming and I am going to make a huge breakfast.  I’m thinking I’ll make delicious sticky cinnamon buns, because those are Dave’s favorites, and a batch of sausage and bacon (I bet you’re glad you aren’t here, huh Morton?  We know how you feel about pork!)  And I’ll make a big batch of scrambled eggs with several kinds of cheeses and maybe a little tomato and basil. 

It’s going to be fun.  Our little house will be stuffed full to over-flowing.  It will be nice.  Like the old days.  Big weekend breakfasts, lots of bodies tumbling into the kitchen, groggy faces and sleep-hair, sniffing hungrily at the air. 

I’ll sic Don on the cappuccino/espresso machine and maybe I’ll make some homemade hot chocolate as well.  Maybe I’ll even splurge and make a dollop of fresh whipped cream to go on the top.  Why not, we are already going to be way over our caloric intake.  Might as well make a day of it.

THEN, after we have eaten more than we should, we are going to pile into the car and drive up to some caves where we are going to go spelunking! 

I’ve never gone spelunking before.

We get to wear helmets with light strapped on to our heads.  It’s going to be dark and cold.  The cold will be a nice break from all this summer heat. 

We are going to be an adventurous cave explorers.  And if we really like it, we can sign up for the one where you are stuck in the cave for 5 hours instead of three and have to squeeze through impossibly tight cracks and rappel down rocks, and wade through underground creeks.  HA!  I just don’t see THAT happening.  I am almost 50 after all!  No rappelling for me.

Unless of course I love it, and lose all sense of reason.  Either that, or my boys really want to go and they really want me to go too, and then…well, I’d probably give it a go. 

So much for saying, no, to peer pressure.  Although, one’s children don’t really count as ones peers do they?  Aren’t peers suppose to be in the same age range?  I don’t know.  But if it was really important to them that I go, and experience rock rappelling, who knows? 

Luckily, for me, I doubt that Will would be chomping at the bit to rappel down rocks in pitch black darkness, with only a feeble light attached to the head.  I raised him way too practical for those types of shenanigans.

David however?  Well, seeing as how he is mountain biking as I type, I could see him doing the Extreme cave exploring thing, but he would probably prefer to do it with one of his extreme sports buds.  Which I, thankfully, am not.

Anyway.  That’s what we are going to do tomorrow, and then on Friday, I am off for a hiking week with my friend, Ilene, to celebrate a big birthday.

And yes, to those of you who are curious.  I am preparing just the way I do whenever I go on one of these healthy adventures.  I laze about, because I can, and I eat everything I can fit into my mouth.  It’s funny how much better things taste when one knows they will be forbidden. 

I wish Emily could come for the cave spelunking, but she has her project.  Actually, I bet she’s glad she has a real good excuse, but who knows, she might like it.  We had fun when we explored Carlsbad Caverns when we were on our road trips to and from LA when she was little.  And this is even more exciting because there are no lights and paths and things like that. 

I wonder if it’s going to be scary.  Spooky.  Bats and things fluttering about.  Eeee!  I don’t know why, I am sitting here smiling?

Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 in Chewing the Fat

Ahem… I’d like to extend my abject apologies

Okay, I’m not going to blog every day.  And yes, I am in the middle of an edit.  But I can’t keep my mind on it because I am consumed with guilt. 

I shouldn’t have said that the Ptolemy guy was weird.

It doesn’t matter that I was worried that my daughter wouldn’t have proper food to eat.  It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know how many foods were actually in some of those short stories. 

That is my short-coming, not his.  This is especially embarrassing, because I actually read short stories.  Tons of them.  There have been many periods in my life when I prefer short stories to novels.  And when I find an author of short stories that speaks to me, I devour whatever collections I can find. 

So, how could I have read reams and reams of short stories and not retained enough to know that there could be short stories that contain LOTS of food? 

What kind of reader must I be?  I bet a lot of the short stories I’ve already read have loads of food consumed or mentioned in them and I just don’t remember.

Now, you need to know that in our family, the calling someone weird, is not an insult.  It is more an acknowledgement of a fact.  Our family is weird.  All of us.  Some of us weirder than others.  But the Ptolemy guy doesn’t know that.  And to be truthful, I wasn’t saying he was weird in a cozy sort of way, I was worried about my daughter so I was flailing out.

Darn.  Why did I have to admit that?

I guess because if I’m going to apologize, I better do it right.  Not let myself off the hook in a half-truth.

I am sorry I leapt to judgement, Ptolemy.  I’m sorry I accidentally misspelled your name.  And then when my husband mentioned it to me, I went back and corrected it, and apparently I misspelled it again, just in a different way.  I finally got it right, but I am sorry for getting it wrong.  Twice.  And I bet that happens to you all the time, and it must get tiring.  And I’m sorry that I wondered if it was your real name or an acquired one.  That, I should have kept to myself.  And for those of you who are wondering, it is his real name.  I got it from a very good source.  My daughter who knows a friend of his. 

Not only that, but his week seems to be going WAY more smoothly than my week did.  She’s having fun, instead of spending torturous hours in the dentist’s chair.

Okay.  I’m glad I got that off my chest! 

Bye everybody.  I’m back to my edits.  And by the way, if you haven’t gone to my daughter’s site, the guy’s full name is Ptolemy Tompkins and he is an author, so if you are interested, check out his books, who knows, maybe they’ll be something you’ll want to buy.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, July 18, 2009 in Chewing the Fat

Emily’s first week down, fifty-one more to go

Well, my week planning my daughter’s schedule is over.  And I find I am both relived and wistful all at the same time.  I’m glad that it went relatively smoothly.  Ahem… if one doesn’t count a late evening visit to ER, a cut foot, an hour dentist appointment morphing into 8 hours of terror, anxiety and tears, staggering around town drugged out on some kind of tranquilizer the dentist gave her, putting Emily at risk for God knows what. 

BUT other than that, it was a pretty happy, good experience.  I’m really glad I did it.  Really glad.

ALTHOUGH, there is this,(and excuse me Ptolemy, if you happen to read this, but I am her mother, and really!) weird guy, Ptolemy (is that his real name?  Or an acquired one?)  Who is requiring Emily to only eat the foods found in a short story by… Oh god, it’s too complicated to describe.  You’ll have to go to her site and read it for yourself. 

How he came up with such a scheme?  I have no idea.

When I read it, my stomach dropped.  I thought, “The authors he’s mentioned don’t write cookbooks for crying out loud!“  I was worried that Emily was going to starve!  But then I reminded myself that on the eve of starting her Ptolemy madness, I treated her to a seafood feast, so even if all she could find mention of was a crust of dry bread in her short story, at least she would have a nice store of food in her belly from the night before, and starvation was impossible in two days time. 

After I calmed down from my panic, the whole week sounded rather interesting.  Sort of like a literary scavenger hunt. 

Well, I’m off to my editing.

And for those of you who are wondering.  Yes, I have written, worked way more on my manuscripts, since I have cut back on blogging so much. 

So, this is how I’m going to work it.  When I’m working on an edit, I will blog around like I am doing now.  When I dive into a new piece, I probably won’t blog at all.  When I am free and easy, and taking time off from my projects, I will blog more frequently than even you would like.  But what-the-hey, this isn’t like my daughter’s life where I was in charge of one week.  I get to tell myself what to do, blog or not blog, make plans, or cancel them whenever I damn well please!  Wheeee!

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, July 17, 2009 in Chewing the Fat

Emily

My daughter starts her life-as-art project tomorrow.  I sent off my week’s schedule that I made for her, and a little video commentary thing that she asked me to do, as well as a bio and picture. 

I can’t believe it starts tomorrow.  Seems so weird.  She told me about the idea maybe a month and a half ago and here it is, the eve of the kick-off week. 

I’m nervous.

I hope it’s a good experience for her.

I’m eating a lot of candy to help take the edge off the nerves.  It’s a good thing candy is my vice, because otherwise they’d be having to lock me up in re-hab.

Today is her birthday, and I am being bombarded with images of Emily big and Emily small.  Her tiny hand tucked in mine.

Oh dear.  I hope that she is able to keep herself, throughout this year.  Keep herself strong, safe.  I hope that this project is something that stretches her wings and horizons rather than something that makes her need to shrink into herself.

I have hopes and I have worries.  Everybody who reads this, please send good wishes, and positive thoughts her way. 

Thanks.

Love, Meg

Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, July 08, 2009 in Chewing the Fat

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