Melissesages

It’s the middle of Day 2 of the Writers Institute, and I’ve learned a lot about being a “writer” in this day and age. Last year at this time, I learned I needed to start a website (which you see before you), and this year I’m learning that I have to take care of it better - more updates, more information, and hey, more blogging. Apparently, if you really want to be a writer you have to actually WRITE, and not just your book or screenplay. I’m supposed to be marketing myself all the time, and using things like Facdebook and Twitter to get myself out there constantly. I had no idea being a writer could be a…job. To me, it’s just always something I had to be doing somehow, like reading or talking to my family or breathing.

My meeting with the Hollywood agent went well, I think. I spent probably 50-60% of my 15 minutes (someone else do that math) explaining who I was and how I got from Chippewa to film school to the studios to Madison to housewivery. It’s funny how the more you tell a story like that, the less real it becomes, and the more like repeating the plot of something. Or maybe I’ve just got plotting on the brain.

Tonight at 5:30 I’m running a “Critique Group Gathering” for anyone in the conference who wants to participate. I’m not nervous, exactly - public speaking doesn’t really scaring me - but I’m sort of curious about how it’ll go. Will I get five people? Sixty? What will happen to me personally, will I find a group or critique partner? Will I get totally sucked in and start running a group and going all nuts with it? And if I do, will that mean success in the writing world?

Who knows. But I’ll blog again later tonight, so if you’re interested, stay tuned. Oh yeah, and if you Twitter, please feel free to find me there for constant updates on my activities. I’m not sure why you’d want to, but hey, it’s an option.

Today is Day 1 of the Madison Writer’s Institute, and it began with a serious blow to my ego.

The first day starts with a sort of assembly, introducing the instructors and announcing the winners of the Poem or Page Contest. The contest goes like this: you submit the first page ONLY of any work - poem, novel, nonfiction book - and pay an entry fee of $10. The idea is to write a first page that is completely entertaining and hooks the reader into wanting to know more. In each category (genre fiction, mystery, poetry, etc), there are first, second, and third place winners, as well as a number of runner ups, which are basically the people whose work the judges like, but don’t put in the first three places.

This is my third year at the conference, but my first year to submit an entry for this contest, in genre fiction (it was a women’s lit piece I started awhile back). And I did not win, which really isn’t that bad until you hear about the numbers: in my category there were fourteen entries. Three people got first, second, and third places, and then the judges chose FIVE people as runners-up. Five. Now, if you’re a math wizard you may have noticed that out of fourteen, my writing did not place in the top…eight. Ouch.

But hey, appeasing my ego is exactly why I have this website, right? (Kidding, kidding.) Just for fun, I’ve made my entry temporarily available here. (Note: this is NOT from the novel I’ve been working on. The first chapter of that can be found here.)

At any rate, the first day of the conference has been good…ish. I’m taking more business-oriented classes this year, in the hopes of actually selling my stuff. These classes are good, and very important, but not the most exciting or inspiring. I’m mostly looking forward to tomorrow, when I have my meeting with an agent about my screenplay, and I’m sort of running a gathering of conference participants who are looking for critique groups. So stay tuned for further adventures from Writers Institute.

For years now, I’ve been writing a film column for the Chippewa Falls Herald Telegram (it can be found at www.chippewa.com if you’re interested). But it was only a few months ago that I decided to see if any other newspapers were interested in carrying it, and in order to write a proposal I had to sit down and figure out what exactly the column was about. Yep, I’m backwards like that. Anyway, I discovered that for the whole time I had been writing about movies and TV, I had unconsciously been following a set of rules, so that when you look at all of my columns together, they really do follow a theme. That theme is “Pay Attention.” The thesis, if you can call it that, of my writing for the paper is that popular culture matters. What we see and read and listen to makes a difference to our lives, it affects our perspective and the way we make decisions. Because of that, it’s incredibly, incredibly important for us to actually pay attention to what we take in and what it represents. Any given column may examine a trend, like the popularity of superhero movies or the national obsession with horror remakes and ask, “why is this happening?” What does it mean?”

Anyway, I can’t remember how it happened, but last night Tyler and I got into a discussion of what exactly can and can’t go into this blog. On the blog homepage there’s a little introduction to me that sort of details my objective, but I realized that just like with my column, I I’d unconsciously set up a little list of rules about the content of what I write here. I thought I’d take a moment, with this post, to clarify what I would like this site to be.

I do not, for example, use this blog to rant about my political or religious beliefs, and go off on tirades tearing apart others’ viewpoints. (I may go on a little rant or two, but they’re generally movie- or TV-related, and I don’t ridicule other people for their movie tastes. That’s just not how I roll.) I don’t talk about my sex life, or the sex lives of people I know, and I don’t use this blog as a forum to whine about my bad childhood (not that it was) or make lists of the people whom I can’t stand (I figure you know who you are). It isn’t really a diary, as in “today I had Rice Krispies for breakfast and then I went to the grocery store and here’s what I bought.” And I try not to be one of those people who chronicles every aspect of their lives, convinced somehow that the entire world truly cares about the minute details of their day. I do my best to practice “if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I guess in short you could say that this blog is supposed to reflect my life, not affect my life. I write some anecdotes about the baby and my day and my plans for the weekend, and I’ll also talk about whatever’s on my mind at the moment, whether it’s the difficulty of seeing a movie with a baby, or the inherent humor I find in anti-abortion activists. Reading this blog will tell you a lot about who I am and my life, but it’s never meant to make changes to either of those things. For example, I might write about some of the strange things men seem to do to impress or restrain women, but I wouldn’t use this site to complain about a specific ex-boyfriend and all the mean things he did to me. I don’t get into details about how and when Mattie was conceived, and I never will. Those scenarios would have repercussions out in the real world; they would hurt other peoples’ feelings and cause awkwardness and fighting. Frankly, I can get into enough trouble live and in person (ask anyone); I don’t need for this blog to do it for me. Instead, I want to write about writing, about having a baby, about being a new wife and mother in a time when being so seems to be more and more unfashionable. And, of course, about movies.

Everything in the blog statement on my homepage is true. But at the end of the day, my reasons for keeping this blog are purely selfish: I need to write. I’m not going for arrogance here, but whatever the quality of the work, I need to write like painters need to paint, or singers love to sing. If I go too long without writing I get itchy and frustrated, so maybe this whole blog is just me being too lazy to work on my book or screenplay. You be the judge. But if I can make somebody laugh, or make somebody say, “thank God, I thought I was the only one,” with this, then I’m accomplishing something with my writing. And that’s pretty much all I could ask for.

Preparations have begun for Mattie’s big weekend.

On Sunday, we’re having Mattie baptized at a church here in Madison. There was never any question of Mattie getting baptized - both Tyler and I are from strongly religious families, and both of us want her to have the kind of experience that we had, growing up in a church community. I want Mattie to go to Midweek classes, to sing in the Children’s Choir, to complain about having to get up early on Sundays, the whole nine yards. Of course, it has not escaped my attention that this means that Tyler and I will have to be involved with a church as well, which is okay. It’s been seven years since I lived in my parents’ house, but I still feel a little twinge of guilt every Sunday that I sleep in.

So back in January, we started interviewing Lutheran churches in town. We finally settled on one not far from our house that’s mid-sized: not so big that you never know anyone, and not so small that everyone notices if you don’t show up for church sometimes. I joined the bell choir, which is the one group activity that I can both enjoy and still participate in (I checked, but none of the high school jazz bands would have me). And now, on Sunday, we’re going to have the big baptism.

If you’ve never attended, a baptism is pretty simple. It’s the process of recognizing Mattie as a member of the church and a child of God. In the Catholic religion, baptism is your ticket into Christianity - if a baby dies before it can be baptized, for example, it can’t go to heaven. Unbaptized babies don’t go to Hell, either, they go to Limbo, which is the creepy in-between place. Why do Catholics insist on embracing all the creepiest parts of religious ceremony? Seriously. Anyway, Protestants, and Lutherans in particular focus on baptism as a celebration, a sort of a welcoming ceremony. (Quick crash course for the uninitiated: Christianity is separated into two groups, Catholic and Protestant, but each side has sub-groups. Lutheranism is a branch of Protestantism. A few others are Methodist, Angelican, Episcopal, and Presbyterian.) The baby is welcomed into the church, and is given sponsors (also known as godparents) who are charged with supervising the baby’s spiritual journey. Then the baby’s head is ceremoniously wetted down with holy water, symbolizing the washing away of sins. At the end, the pastor usually walks the baby down the aisle to ‘meet’ the congregation, and everyone is happy. Then afterwards there’s a big party with cake.

The ceremony itself is pretty straightforward, but requires a great deal of preparation. The baby has to have a special baptism outfit, first of all, which for boys often means a tiny white tuxedo. Girls (and some boys, actually) wear a snow-white dress that, for some reason, is about twice as long as the baby itself. (Granted, at this age most babies can’t crawl yet anyway, but I’ve never really understood the super-long dress thing. Or why most dresses come with a bonnet. I mean, the whole point is to get the hair wet, right?) These outfits are, naturally, expensive.

Then there’s the sponsors. Tyler and I had Mattie’s sponsors chosen pretty much the second we found out I was pregnant. Now, most often, there are two sponsors, one from the mother’s side and one from the father’s side, a man and a woman. But you can actually pick anyone you want. Technically, I don’t think they even have to be Protestant. Anyway, we decided to pick Tyler’s dad for our male sponsor, because he’s a very religious man (he’s the director of music at his church), and a good role model overall. Tyler is also not biologically related to him, and we thought this was a nice way of sealing him into the baby’s life despite the lack of blood ties. Then my eldest sister will be a godmother, because she’ll be great at it and because in my family there’s sort of a tradition around godparents. All of the cousins, and the next generation of cousins, have a godparent in the family. They exchange special godparent gifts at Christmas, and just make a little more of an effort to have a special relationship - you might team up with your godparent in a family Nerf battle, for example, or choose their side when settling a bet or handing out candy. I wanted to make sure Mattie would have that, and Chris is very responsible and cares about family. And, to be fair, I’m also her only chance to be a godmother in the near future: she has three kids, so my other two sisters and I are all godmothers, but I’m the only other one with a kid. I like the symmetry of this.

However, in planning Mattie’s sponsors, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted in a godparent, and how I saw that role in her life. This is kind of hard to explain, but I wanted her to have someone who was outside the family, a little different from our day-to-day Wisconsin life. Someone she could turn to when she was sick of Tyler and I and her life here, but someone who would still steer her in a good direction. This person would have to have great morals, be someone I planned to have in Mattie’s life forever, and be the kind of person who would take the job seriously. I also kind of wanted them to be at least a little religious, and maybe have a different perspective on some things, so Mattie could be aware and open to different viewpoints and experiences.

You’d think that would all be a tall order, but actually I knew exactly who it would be the whole time: my friend and college roommate, Tracy. She’s from a religious background, is loyal and a great person, has a really different perspective from most of the people who will be in Mattie’s life, and is just a dear friend. I know I’ll want to know Tracy forever, and I could totally see, in fifteen years, Mattie being able to call her up after a big fight with me to have someone to complain to. I seriously have this whole little scene in my head of how that could go.

I am so happy, and so comfortable, with our decisions for sponsors. It’s a big deal to me, something I take really seriously, and I feel really good about it. My sister will provide Mattie with a strong connection to my family. Tyler’s dad will be a religious presence and a great role model. And Tracy will be an escape if she needs it, an ear to listen, and a person who will be willing to discuss the tough questions about God and politics and different views. Most babies have two godparents, but mine will have three, and I think they form the perfect triumvirate. And if something happened to Tyler and me, I trust all of them to stay in Mattie’s life and be good influences.

But, I digress. This blog was supposed to be about the preparations for the baptism, and I’ve been diverted into an explanation about the baptism itself. Apologies. Anyway, with a bunch of family and friends coming for the ceremony, there’s just a ton to be done. Tracy is flying in from California on Thursday and will be staying with us for through the weekend, so there’s a ton of cleaning to do. I’d clean for any guest, obviously, but Tracy is a neat person and I’m a little embarrassed about the shabbiness of our lifestyle, so I’ll be making extra efforts to sparkle up the house. I’ve got a bunch of errands to run, I have to figure out the food situation for the party, I still haven’t gotten RSVP’s from the majority of the people we invited (Dear Everyone: you suck), and we’ve also been trying to get around to random house projects, like cleaning off the porch and ditching our crappy ottoman. The whole thing reminds me of planning our wedding, on a much smaller scale, because the baptism is a big deal, it’s important. Mattie only gets to do this once, and it should be special, requiring a lot of preparation. And at the same time, it’s essentially a big party that will be over in a few hours. I’m so excited to see Tracy and to have my niece and nephews here and to show off my gorgeous baby, and at the same time part of me wants to go hide under the covers until next week.

But on the bright side, at least I know there’s going to be really, really good cake.

Over the weekend I took Mattie up to Chippewa to meet the extended family.

One of the things I love about the Olson clan is that there’s always some celebration going on. It’s always someone’s birthday, or a holiday (we count Memorial Day and Labor Day, incidentally),a religious ceremony, or someone home from school or a different state. Any one of these scenarios is grounds for a big group dinner, and with a full four generations of Olsons, there’s now a group dinner nearly every week. This past weekend was my brother-in-law’s surprise 30th birthday party, my sister was home from North Dakota, and my niece was turning four. See what I mean?

And, of course, everyone got to meet Mattie. I am not above loving the attention she gets from all my aunts and cousins and grandparents. I, the girl who rarely meets her feminine side, confess to getting a little emotional just driving up to Chippewa, thinking about all the new people Mattie had lined up to adore her. The weekend itself was incredibly busy - I had something going on for nearly every minute I was there - but really nice, too. It always interests me to see who is comfortable with babies and who is clearly not: my aunts called dibs on holding Mattie the second they walked in the door, while some of my uncles were content to simply admire her from a distance. Plenty of people wanted to hold her, but also wanted to hand her back the second she started fussing or messed her pants. (In fact, my mother is the only one in the whole family willing to change a poopy diaper. Good to know.) I really enjoyed seeing Mattie with my father, who’s too lazy to walk around with her or change her, but who will lay her down and sing and talk to her for ages. And Mattie, quite unusually, fell completely under his spell more than once.

I use the word “spell” quite deliberately, because I’ve discovered that having a baby is all about trying to to break the spell. Mattie will get into a chill mode where she just wants to cuddle and stare at you, or she’ll be trying to fall asleep, or she’ll actually be asleep, and then my life becomes all about making no sudden sounds or movements. Seriously - I have taken to tiptoeing around the house, trying in vain to avoid the areas where the floor creaks. (This house is post-WWII, so almost every foot of the floor will make noise. It’s like living with landmines.) I also spend a good deal of time trying to keep the dogs from barking, moving too quickly near the baby, licking the baby (well, just Max), accidentally hitting the baby with a wagging tail, eating too loudly, drinking too loudly, whining and scratching at doors, etc. The dogs, who were formerly the kings of this house, are understandably confused by this. I can’t count the number of times Max has given me a baffled look that plainly says, “Uh, but I ALWAYS get to jump up by you when you sit on the couch!”

If it sounds like I spend a good deal of time walking on eggshells, it’s because I do. And this is never more of a problem than at bedtime, when we’re trying to get Mattie to go to sleep. There’s nothing more frustrating that finally, FINALLY getting the crying baby to close her eyes, with a full stomach and dry diaper (the timing of all those elements together is ridiculously difficult), and then having Max jump up next to her on the couch and lick her hand. Or even just stepping on one of the many, many creaky spots on the way to putting her in the crib. In fact, as I write this, Mattie is stretched out on the couch next to me, and she has finally acclimated to the noise my keyboard makes when I type, so I’m trying to type continuously so as not to startle her with silence. Sigh.

I hadn’t realized just how much I had slipped into these behaviors until I spent time at my parents’ house, where none of these rules apply. Their house doesn’t creak, which made me feel really silly every time I started to tiptoe hesitantly around. Their dogs don’t always bark when someone comes in the door, so I didn’t have to keep whisper-yelling at them to keep quiet. On the other hand, people in that house quite rightly use regular speaking voices to communicate, even (gasp!) calling to each other from different sides of the house! I couldn’t believe the nerve!

Over time, I’m sure Mattie will be less sensitive to this stuff - after all, she got used to the sounds of the trains that run behind our house. As she gets older, I’m sure it’ll all be less of a big deal. But for right now, it’s just kind of funny how Mattie has changed this household, and how we all basically bow down in deference to her. My daughter: the iron hand in the wet diaper.