Rachel Dull, writer personality

For some time I have been planning to make a website to present a professional “Rachel Dull, writer personality” to the internet. At last, it is live. There you can find a list of my short story publications as well as another blog I am writing to keep interested persons informed of my publication and writing exploits. I’m still figuring out what the difference is between the two blogs, but I think it’s that The Merest Idea is for RB and LB to learn to work together and give them each a chance to exhibit, whereas the other blog will be more writing focused. I would not be surprised if in time I needed to merge these concepts because keeping one blog is hard enough, but for now the division seemed necessary to keep both unshackled from the limitations of the other (i.e. Left Brain asked me to). Also, I don’t know what I’m doing.

If you have enjoyed my writing here, I hope you will enjoy my writing about writing over there. And I’ll be sure to let you know when I start my next blog, which will probably be writing about writing about writing, because going meta is my defense mechanism.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's the most wonderful time of the year--where I borrow a song and re-write the lyrics as an ode to my favorite season! This year, please imagine Johnny Mathis belting it out (with more enthusiasm than he mustered for his Oprah performance in 1991).

Autumn, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's the most wonderful time of the year
With the football fans yelling
And everyone telling you winter is near
It’s the most wonderful time of the year

It's the pump-pumpkinest season of all
With those kids trick-or-treating and bold colors fleeting
When leaves start to fall
It's the pump-pumpkinest season of all

There’ll be apples for picking
And ciders for drinking
And frolicking out in the leaves
There’ll be donuts for snacking, swim
suits we’ll be packing to
Make room for all the long sleeves

It's the most wonderful time of the year
There’ll be bonfires glowing
And crisp breezes blowing
When autumn is here
It's the most wonderful time
Yes the most wonderful time
Oh the most wonDERful time
Of the year!

Pocket!

It was a rainy day so I decided to sew a pocket into a skirt I have been wearing a lot this summer. I hardly want to buy anything anymore WITHOUT pockets, but I still have plenty of clothes that I purchased pre-Pocket Awakening, and every time I wear them I wonder if there isn’t a way to just stitch a fold in there for my lip balm at least.

This skirt's getting an upgrade!

My first idea was to steal the pocket pattern from a pants patterned I already owned, but when I got out the pattern, I realized it was for cargo pants from the 90s and the pocket for those pants might be a bit much (seen below, on left). Instead I found a dress with a pocket that works well and traced its pocket onto a scrap of tracing paper I found on top of the sewing room garbage (seen below, center). Then I sat back in awe of the size difference and lamented that smart phones and cargo pants weren’t in vogue simultaneously.

The fabric I used for my pocket fell off of the fabric shelf when I was pawing through the patterns. It is a piece of leftover muslin that happened to be the PERFECT size for one pocket. (My fabric shelves are a disaster right now and I often walk in to find fabrics in a heap on the floor. I think the cat tries to sit in there sometimes. But I wanted to be honest with you about how I make decisions while sewing, and more often than not it’s based on ready accessibility and chance.)

I ironed the muslin, pinned the pattern onto it, and then cut it out.

Next, I had to rip out the seam on the edge of the skirt where I wanted to place my pocket. I only ripped out a section just long enough for the pocket because, while it is easier to put in a pocket with completely detached front and back pieces of skirt, I didn’t want to take out the elastic and all that because I don’t like seam ripping THAT much. It had both a straight stitch and a serger stitch, so it took a little bit of work to get all the stitches out, but fortunately I am very experienced in seam ripper usage from many errant seams over the years. Running the seam ripper through the serged stitches worked pretty well.

Then I pinned the pocket to the skirt, right sides together. (That’s a lie. I first pinned the pocket wrong sides together, sewed it, and then had to seam rip it all out when I realized I’d done it wrong.) I placed one pocket piece on the front of the skirt, and one on the back. I used a 3/8” seam allowance and sewed the two pieces into place.

The next step was to attached the two sides of the pocket together. I turned the skirt inside out, aligned the two halves of the pocket, and pinned. I stitched around the outside of the pocket, also using a 3/8” seam allowance. (The bottom and the top where the stitches meet up with the side seam on the skirt are always a mystery to me when installing pockets, so I did my best and cleaned up the gaps later.)

Finally, it’s the moment of truth! I turned the skirt right side out and tried it on. I was happy to find out that I had put my pocket on the right side even though I had forgotten to check when I started. I look forward to wearing this skirt again soon where I can keep my phone and lip balm close at hand throughout the day!

They Sent Us to College

They sent us to college to get diplomas and jobs from which we could retire, but instead we got opinions and debt. We job hop and get laid off and change our careers every other year, eschewing the stability for which they worked their entire lives. They told us we could be anything so we wanted to try everything. And they probably feel let down by all this. They probably think they failed, and we’re failing, and we just don’t get it. But we feel empowered. We feel liberated. Like we really do get it. We get all of it. We are alive and making our own decisions. We are trying new things and changing our minds. We are free to be anything and think anything and marry whomever we please. But one day when our kids grow up and put into practice all the things we thought we were teaching them over the years, we’ll be just as surprised as our parents were with us. The things we valued will be cast aside as they grow into their own strengths, test their own ideas, and live the lives stretched out before them, full of promise. We’ll ask ourselves “What went wrong?” and “How can they live like that?” as we take refuge in the boxes we’ve built from our experiences and settle down on the securely anchored cushions of our worldview where it is safe.

Words: about the ones I can't find to explain myself well, and the ones I can't spell

I don't even feel like I can put into words. Not enough thoughts to compute—just a general feeling of being not good enough at things I've said, ideas I've expressed. I've tried to capture them before they were fully formed and I made a bad image. But I don't have time or wherewithal to properly form good thoughts before I have to speak them.

"Before we can get all the facts, we may be going to have to act." —They Might Be Giants

I am torn and pulled in different directions. My mind cannot settle on one idea long enough to do anything about it. Dart, flit, swoosh, and I'm off to a new idea. I will paint my nails. Write a letter. Eat a snack. Tweet. Write a blog post about how I never liked the illustrations accompanying Shel Silverstein poems. Write a blog post about words I can't spell, like "occasion". Reminisce (<-- not confident on that one either) about how when I wanted to thank accompanists in high school for playing piano for me, I always had to write "Thanks for playing piano for me" because I never, and still haven't, learned how to spell the word for the role they do. Don't write a blog post because no one cares about my quirky asides that are one sentence long and decidedly not worth an entire blog post. Write a blog post about how I always want to write blog posts to have an excuse to tell people my quirky asides. Don't write a blog post, just say my asides randomly to my spouse who is across the room and who will probably love me anyway, even if I say things completely out of context and annoy him by interrupting what he is reading. Is this a blog post? I can't post this—it's the pointless ramblings of a restless person who drank coffee 13 hours ago and wonders if the caffeine (<--that one I can spell, oddly) is just now kicking in. But what if it has comedic value? As soon as you ask that it doesn't. But what if other people sometimes feel the same way? But what if they don't and I look like an idiot who talks to herself?

I write for the case of "just in case": "Just in case I'm not alone on this." I write to make connections with people. I write because I want to say the "connections" thing better but I'm having trouble sentencing today.

All spellings checked and corrected before publication. (Thanks, red squiggly line!)

Bonus quirky aside: What's with cookbooks without pictures? I'm already trying to imagine what a recipe going to taste like and now you want me to imagine what it is going to look like, too?

26 Books in 2015: A Follow-up Interview with Andrea

Last year, my friend Andrea decided to participate in a reading challenge she found on Pinterest: 26 books from different categories. All year I enjoyed asking her about what she was reading and hearing about her progress on the list. Below are the results of her year of reading along with her answers to a few questions I posed to her about the adventure.

Q: Did you ever think you weren't going to make it, or did you consider stopping at any point?
A: Towards the end I got a little nervous about finishing, but I had such a fast start from the beginning of the year that it was never a huge concern (I finished on Christmas Eve). I never thought about quitting! Which I'm a little proud of because I quit lots of things.

1. A Book you own but haven't read:

Into the Wild

2. A Book that was made into a movie:

Paper Towns

3. A Book you pick solely because of the cover:

I'll Give You the Sun

4. A Book your friend loves:

Why not me?

5. A Book published this year:

All the Bright Places

6. A Book by an author you've never read before:

Red Rising

7. A Book at the bottom of the "to be read pile":

The President is a Sick Man

Q: Did you do any rating/reviews of the books?
A: No ratings/reviews in a formal sense (other than my Twitter review of The Scarlet Letter: "if you want an old book that takes 200 pages to get interesting, this one's for you!") Lots that I informally talked to friends about though throughout the year.

Q: What was your favorite book you read this year?
A: Picking a favorite book is hard. The book that stuck with me the most and that I still think about sometimes was Les Miserables. I don't know that I would ever read it again though, mostly because of the length so it's hard to call it my favorite. Maybe I could get one of those kid versions that's a bit condensed, though it probably wouldn't be as good. I really loved that one though—the way all the stories fit together and the redemption were great. Even the super long tangents weren't too bad! I became kind of obsessed with this story while I was reading it. I also really liked Modern Romance. That book was fascinating from a real life/science standpoint. Plus it was funny and entertaining to listen to (one of the audiobooks I "read"). I'd want to read it again because I feel like I can't remember all of the facts.

8. A Book with a color in the title:

The Devil in the White City

9. A Book set in a place you want to visit:

The Rosie Project (Australia)

10. A Book you started but never finished:

Guns, Germs and Steel

11. A Book with a lion, a witch or a wardrobe:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (it has all three!)

12. A Book with a female heroine:

The Royal We

13. A Book set in the summer:

The Paying Guests

14. A Book "everyone" has read but you:

The Scarlet Letter

Q: What was your least favorite book you read this year?
A: Worst book—well, as you can tell from my Twitter review, I was not a fan of The Scarlet Letter. Thank God it was a short book because I wouldn't have made it through much more. The whole introduction of that book didn't make a lot of sense and I didn't feel like it really added to the story, but it was like at least 1/3 of the length of the book so I didn't feel like I could skip it. I also didn't like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Maybe I'm kinda dense, but I just didn't really get what was going on in a lot of that book. It was one I was supposed to read for a college class. I'm glad I didn't back then—I'm sure my time was spent better elsewhere.

Q: Which book surprised you the most?
A: The Devil in the White City surprised me, but not in a good way. I thought I would enjoy it a lot because I enjoy history and serial killers (not in a creepy way!) and I had heard very good reviews. I found it kind of slow though really wished that there was more about the serial killer and less about the financial woes of building a World's Fair. On the positive note though, the history in The President is a Sick Man was fascinating. My dad recommended the book to me and I thought he just liked it because it was partially about a journalist (dad's a writer), but the whole book was really interesting. There were weird medical procedures, US history, and presidents! Some of my favorite things. :)

15. A Book with a great first line:

Modern Romance ("Many of the frustrations experienced by today's singles seem like problems unique to our time and technological setting: not hearing back on a text.") (or, if you count the introduction: "oh, shit!")

16. A Book with pictures:

Castle Waiting

17. A Book from the library:

The Rosie Effect

18. A Book you loved...read it again!:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

19. A Book of Poems:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

20. A Book you learned about because of this challenge:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Q: Have you been able to lift your self-imposed book-buying ban yet??
A: I just bought a book yesterday! I still haven't made it all the way through my own bookshelf, but I decided it was okay to reward my efforts.

Q: What are some of your takeaways from this experience? Would you do it again?
A: Takeaway #1: I thought I would come away reading a whole bunch of different genres and liking lots of different stuff. While I did branch out a little in the genres I chose, at a certain point, you like what you like. And that's ok! I still enjoy memoirs and books by funny people most and have no interest in picking up another book of poetry any time soon. I like hearing peoples' stories, which is harder to get out of poetry.

Takeaway #2: There are a lot of good books out there! Every once in a while I should take a break from Netflix and get back into reading.

Takeaway #3: Audiobooks aren't so bad...for a certain kind of book. I still will probably only choose audio for lighter books, mostly non-fiction, but I loved the efficiency of "reading" while walking to work.

I would totally do it again! I think I would want a different type of list, but sure!

21. A Book that will make you smarter:

What If?

22. A Book with a blue cover:

Wonder

23. A Book you were supposed to read in school but didn't:

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

24. A Book more than 10 years old:

Les Miserables

25. A Book based on a true story:

Yes Please (Amy Poehler memoir)

26. A Book by an author you love:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (JK Rowling)

Q: Any reading goals for 2016?
A: I told myself I would read 12 books that have been adapted into films. Then I would see the movie. (or that order might get reversed). I'm already behind schedule. :)

If you enjoyed reading about Andrea’s adventures in reading, then perhaps you would also enjoy my friend, Kate’s, blog. She reads and reviews a ton of books, and completed her own reading challenge last year, and is doing it again this year.

Yuri Ran a Marathon: The Interview

Just before I dig in to eat a pile of greasy fries and a giant bacon cheeseburger, I'm likely to turn to whoever I'm with and say guiltily, "Don't tell Yuri." The truth is, Yuri isn't one to judge—she lets me be me—but I've accidentally attributed to her that voice in my head that nags me to exercise and eat better. In real life, she is more encouraging, and always willing to share her boiled chicken. She is also a great resource for guessing the amount of calories in something, or discussing exercise strategies. I am grateful to have her as my friend and healthy role model, and so happy she agreed to let me interview her about her experience running the Chicago Marathon in October.

R: What made you decide to train for and run a marathon?

Y: I think it was late spring/early summer of 2014 (May/June), after I completed a half, my trainer Alex said to a few of us casually that he'd run a marathon with us if we choose to do one. I took that as a challenge and decided shortly after that conversation that I wanted to train and complete one. Nobody else took him up on that. I injured myself for the 2014 season and Alex ended up taking my place and ran the Capital City River Run. I signed up for the Chicago Marathon next season.

R: I remember you saying once that you didn't see yourself as a runner. Do you now?

Y: I still don't consider myself a "runner", only because my definition of a "runner" is very narrow. People who live and breathe running, and all the strength training and other forms of fitness-related endeavors to make them a better runner—that's not me. I use running as a tool to become healthier and stronger.

Yuri in blue at center. Photo courtesy of Nick.

R: What motivated you to keep going after your injury, and through the long months of training?

Y: Once I decided that I was going to run it, it wasn't an option for me to not go through with it. I had a training plan, and I was convinced that I would only succeed by following the training plan.

R: What was the strategy behind your training regime? How much did you run per week? Did you pretty much stick to it?

Y: Since I got injured the first time around for running too much too soon (I decided to do a marathon too late to properly train for my fitness level at the time), the strategy this time was to start early and build mileage slowly, with enough rest. Alex created the training plan for me, so all I had to do was execute it. At my peak, I ran about 45 miles in a week. I stuck to the plan for the most part, except a few times when I wanted to attend CTL demo classes when I was supposed to run. Also toward the end of my training when my legs were not cooperating, I had to take a break a week or two leading up to the race instead of tapering to prevent injury.

R: What were the practical things you had to think about during your training, like time management or caloric intake or the like?

Y: I had to plan ahead about when I was going to run at least a day in advance. I had to coordinate with my husband Nick to make sure the pups were taken care of. (There is NO way I could have done it without his support.) I had to check the weather to see if it was going to rain, or how hot it was going to be, and when it was going to get dark. I also had to plan when I was going to eat before, during, and after for the long runs. For the long runs beyond 10 miles, I always created a fueling plan so I knew when I was going to consume what during the run. In terms of deciding how many calories were appropriate for me to consume, again I was fortunate enough to have a trainer who figured all of that out for me. He did the hard part of planning everything for me. All I had to do was follow.

Photo courtesy of Nick.

R: What was the best part about this whole experience?

Y: The crazy amount of support I got from so many people. Starting with Nick and Alex, and friends like you (Rachel!), many people who donated money to my ACS TeamDetermination fund raising efforts, to spectators who were cheering me on.

R: What advice would you give to anyone thinking about training for a long race?

Y: Make sure you are able to make time for training. If you have kids/pets, do you have a family/friends who can watch them when you train? If your work is crazy busy, can you make time to get your training in? Everyone is busy. But training takes time, and you have to be able to make time, and not feel guilty for spending the time training. For me, I made sure I was committed, but also double and triple checked with Nick that he was ok with this since this impacted his daily life as well.

R: Would you do it again?

Y: I think so. If I get another opportunity to spend a few months training.

R: What's your next big goal?

Y: I want to do the Urbanathlon! I have some strength-based goals that are pretty big, but I tend to get more excited about "events". My guess is I do better when there are deadlines associated with my goals.

R: An Urbanathlon sounds cool and scary! Is this like the Men's Healthy sponsored one I found when I Googled?

Y: It is! They used to have one in Chicago, but they didn't do it this year. I'm hoping they'll bring it back next year. I have to get some other people to do it with me. This is one of those things you don't do alone. But I really want to do it, so I WILL convince someone to do it with me.

R: What did you learn about yourself through this process?

Y: Apparently I do not put my all out there. Even though I was exhausted after the marathon, I knew I still had reserves left in the tank. I'm trying to figure out how to give 100% for better performance.

Yuri at Mile 26. Official race photo.

R: That's really interesting. Matt has said before that he never likes to use up all his energy because he likes to know he has a little left over in case he really needs it. I guess that would be like if he finished a workout but then unexpectedly a bear started chasing him? I also tend to keep some energy in reserve, but only until the end when I sprint most of it off.

Y: I did "sprint" at the end, but at that point my body didn't listen. But I didn't feel like death. I guess for something like a marathon it's ok to reserve your energy since you'd have to practice more to know how you can race so you have just enough to be able to finish an endurance event like that. But I'd like to be able to give it my all on my other stuff where it's less critical if I can't "finish". I think it all stems from my fear of failure. I'm working on it.

R: What did it feel like to cross the finish line at the end of the marathon?

Y: I didn't really have an epic "I did it!" moment. I remember just trying to get out of other finishers' way, and trying to figure out where I needed to go to meet up with Nick and Alex. Unfortunately the first "feeling" I clearly remember is that of being annoyed that I had to walk really far to get to the designated meeting area. And then there were a few steps we had to go down and that was unpleasant. Sense of accomplishment and all that didn't really come until I saw Nick and Alex.

Nick, Yuri, and Alex after the race. Photo courtesy of Alex McBrairty.

R: How did you celebrate your accomplishments that day and even in the next few weeks?

Y: I ate a cheeseburger and some ice cream "pie" for dinner. Then I took a week off from exercising. I guess that wasn't a celebration as much as my body didn't really do much. But the celebration part was to not feel guilty about not exercising! The moment I actually felt like I accomplished something didn't come until weeks later. I was driving all over Ann Arbor/Saline to run errands, and it seemed like I was driving forever, but it was only 18 miles. It was a "holy shit, I ran a lot" moment.

R: What place did you come in and would you mind if I include that? I thought it was neat how high (relatively) you placed for your first marathon.

Y: I don't mind at all but it's not very good.
Gender 12209/17253
Division 2088/2915
Overall 28845/37438
Finish Time 05:15:38

R: I think they're lovely. And thanks!

Y: Now that I've rested for a while, it's the "I can do so much better" side that's coming out of me!