Ann Marie Gamble

notes from the wordsmith trenches

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Cleaning Is Not Just a Stall Tactic


We baked something recently (probably that rhubarb pie) that means that every subsequent preheating of the oven results in clouds of smoke, bad enough that I swear that this time, this time, I will clean the oven thoroughly once it cools off. Then of course I forget until the next smoke bomb and dinner deadline. Today is perfect weather for sitting in front of the open oven and writing (what to do when you don’t have a fireplace), however, and I am about to embark upon a baking project with Elizabeth Able; time to deal with whatever is in the bottom of the oven.

The foaming oven cleaner works its magic

The foaming oven cleaner works its magic

And lo! I have a tool for this project: a bottle of oven cleaner bought at an Amway presentation I was dragged to many years ago. The label required my glasses to read, but since the instructions comprised about two sentences and the rest of the label was warnings, I decided these would double as safety goggles. I donned rubber gloves. I removed the lid—or tried—squeeze here, twist there, consider the various vise grips and X-Acto knives in the building, squeeze and twist, and bingo, we’re back in business.

I shook before using and a fine powder of dust was added to the junk at the bottom of the oven. I pressed the spray nozzle.

Nothing.

I realized that with the rubber gloves on, I couldn’t see where exactly the opening was on the bottle and carefully rotated things—by now I had read that the key ingredient in this elixir was lye—but now I couldn’t see what was where because a shaving-cream-like foam was oozing out all over my gloved hand.

I shook again and the foam stopped. I scraped this off and wiped it on the oven. I aimed the nozzle and pressed again. Nothing. I shook the can and more foam—now a different color—started oozing from the can.

Visions of Lucille Ball in the candy factory—this time with lye!—tripped through my head as I wiggled the nozzle with one hand and slathered foam over the insides of the oven with the other. I shook the can some more, snapped the nozzle off the can entirely—more foam—joggled it back on, and got the foaming to stop, although I was skeptical. I washed the can and put the lid on tight, and, since it still wasn’t foaming, put the can in the very back of a closed cupboard. Thirty minutes later, I’m wiping down to the original enameled surface, spritzing with vinegar as instructed, and ready to get back smoke-free work.

Smoke-generating sugary goodness

Smoke-generating sugary residue

(P.S. The baking project will go online around May 1.)

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April 27th, 2013  |  Posted in Cooking  |  2 Comments »

Big Snow


We went for dinner out last night, in case it was a while before we could get out again. Kid the Younger's "hey, I am getting ready to go" task turned out to be building this snowman.

Kid the Younger does some shoveling but also yard art.

Kid the Elder, the one who can do some serious yardage with a snow shovel, and I just devoured lunch. Central Missouri has had its second big snowstorm in less than a week, and we’re dancing out that “Food is fuel” tune. I’ve cooked for every meal, baked cake and panettone, in part to have an excuse to turn the oven on but also because my usual strategy–leftovers for lunch–doesn’t work when you don’t have any leftovers. That’s one part kids home all day due to canceled school, but the other part snow shoveling is hard work–even more effective than standing by the open oven door.

This second snow was not as thick as the forecasters thought it could be, but it’s at least as heavy. The storm started as rain and switched to sleet, then to big gloppy flakes; in the early hours of the morning the temperature was 32, and during my first round of shoveling I was enveloped in a thin Scotch mist. We share a driveway with college-kid neighbors who have had classes canceled today as well. One was up to clear their back stoop–as it turns out, so she could get into the downstairs apartment. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 26th, 2013  |  Posted in Parenting, Play  |  1 Comment »

Backyard Adventures


We did not burn down the garage in the course of this cleaning project

We did not burn down the garage in the course of this cleaning project

I’ve been to Bali. I used to eat lobster for lunch. I had a Filofax. Today, the thing that excites me is that my new vacuum cleaner has a nozzle that fits between the ribs of the radiators. I am dusting spaces that haven’t been dusted in years, and I finally have a vacuum cleaner with a nozzle that fits (I’m of an age that I’ve owned several vacuum cleaners; I’ve lived in this house for more than one vacuum). Under the hall radiator, I found a screwdriver with interchangeable tips. In the living room, I found a quarter. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 30th, 2013  |  Posted in Parenting, Travel  |  No Comments »

Knocking the Rust Loose


I got an editing lull for an early Christmas present–a week where the manuscripts were all with other people–and so a chance to get some other kinds of jobs done. I finished the shopping and the wrapping, baked some treats, and knocked back some home repair projects that had been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for uninterrupted blocks of time in which to do them. The result was extra space and new brain waves–it was refreshing to work on a different kind of problem, and to exert different muscles.

Also on the to-do list: address the hall table.

Also on the to-do list: address the hall table.

The lull is over, though: the work is back and it’s time for me to get back to my own writing. But, ahh, the rust! It has caked onto the joints during this break! Netflix is frighteningly close to the top of the frequently viewed pages list. The clothes I wear to the gym are at the bottom of the laundry pile. And writing . . . why, yes, I’ve heard of writing. A year (or maybe two) ago, I launched the year with a new notebook and a commitment to try morning pages. I’ve gotten frustrated with other attempts at journaling–the entries feel like an ever-more-petulant whine away from a very real list of duties that gives even the Inner Critic a craving for tropical getaways. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: resolutions
January 7th, 2013  |  Posted in home repair, Process, Work  |  No Comments »

Deja Vu All Over Again


“The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out…”

—Howard Pyle

Christmas in Manchester

Christmas in Manchester

My son goes to the same junior high school that I went to. There’s a new wing, but the main part of the building, the entryway, the band room, and the gym are the same. He plays in the pep band for basketball games; I played basketball one season and kept stats for another. He’s there for eighth and ninth grade; I missed eighth because my family went to Manchester for a year.

My Anglophile grandmother was ecstatic over this development. Granny Becky was a not-so-closeted royalist—she’d once squired an Anastasia Romanov claimant, who she totally believed, around Chicago—and watched any BBC that was broadcast in those days before cable and satellite, including Doctor Who. Read the rest of this entry »

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December 17th, 2012  |  Posted in Genealogy, Process, TV  |  No Comments »

Coming Up . . .


The next reason for not blogging: NaNoWriMo. Sitting on the sidelines last year was a drag, so even though I’ve got things in line to revise, I’m going for the fast draft.

Efficiency: I haven’t written anything yet and I already think it sucks! (Except the barn scene–that’s gonna be great. And the brother and the TV scene has promise. . . .)

I’m in a totally different place with this story than I’ve been other years I’ve NaNo’ed, which so far has been . . . uncomfortable. But already the time spent deciding to do it has resulted in questions answered. Some issues that came up when I was poking at this project last spring now seem obvious. As usual, yes, it’s hard; as usual, it gets easier if you stick with it rather than leaving it.

And as usual, November is being its hectic arrhythmic self. We’ve got days off school, an election that I’m working (not just voting in), teacher conferences, and a major holiday. For the next five weeks, I’ll have to be ruthless about sending the Inner Critic out of the room (the Inner Editor has to stay on task with a book about health policy and genome mapping).

The three principles I (re)engage:

  1. I’ll figure out what I need to know to go forward by thinking about the story and going forward.
  2. Any and all progress is success.
  3. Don’t think (freak) about the total; think about what’s next.

It’s a timely mood to go into Halloween with: the thrill (setting up a new world! new files! new characters!) and the terror (how the hell is this going to play out?) of starting something new.

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October 24th, 2012  |  Posted in NaNoWriMo, Process, Writing  |  1 Comment »

Data


Column headers: which eater. Column data: which color do you like.


With the help of a coupon, I ordered a sampler of different-flavored macarons for an after-school-snack adventure.

We have a household of three in a two- or four-per-box world, so we have tactics: I cut everything in half so everyone gets “one,” and then we can negotiate for the leftover halves. Invariably someone likes one better than the other, or isn’t that hungry, or is willing to trade for other goods. I started carving and told the kids to notice which color macarons they liked: they were all different, and we could look up what flavor each color was–did they really taste like that, and we might want to try making some.

While I’m trying to remember if the green ones are pistachio or the yellow ones are mango (I knew there was one in this mix I was allergic to), the chart to the right is going up on the new chalkboard wall. The younger has just started middle school, and they’ve been learning about the scientific method and recording observations in lab notebooks. Have data? We’ll collect it.

Exasperatingly to the data collector, older brother liked them all.

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October 4th, 2012  |  Posted in Parenting, Play  |  No Comments »

Moonlight


What is it about little kids and the moon? We’ve always lived in town—where there were plenty of other lights—and their personalities are quite different, but at a certain age, they each were the first to spot the moon when we went out at night. On Twitter and Facebook, it’s the parents of toddlers who are posting things about the moon’s phases. When I was a child, I called the moon the cookie, and my father the linguistics professor used that anecdote to open a paper about metaphor.

Now that my kids are teens, they aren’t as impressed. We drug ourselves out into a moonlit night recently and I tried to take them for a walk on a trail that it helps to be able to see. (One joy of our neighborhood is that we’ve got this little pocket darkness within walking distance of our house.) It was already late, we hadn’t planned this, so I had to settle for a few yards into the woods and an agreement to try again next month when I’d given everyone fair warning. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 28th, 2012  |  Posted in Reading  |  No Comments »

The Harder Part of This Summer


my aunt and my grandfather

my son

Also this summer
We did another underwater photo shoot with different wardrobe. We ran through some of our usual “up in Michigan” activities—climbing the Big Dune, biking around the bay. But in between heat waves, car repairs, and mysterious illnesses, my aunt collapsed and died.

My mom rushed to Nebraska help her niece and nephew manage the details, and we took care of the pets and otherwise held down the fort at the house their grandfather built. My mom had left behind a photo album, and I told my kids stories about being at the lake with my grandparents and showed them pictures—these in black and white of different sand babies on the same shore, kids bundled up after swimming on the same front porch (now with big trees!) hamming the same ham for whatever relative was holding the camera.

These trips were not entirely easy. The overlapping households were run by smart women whose only venue for the exercise of power was the house, and their ideas of appropriate behavior–on vacation or otherwise–and effective management often clashed. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 1st, 2012  |  Posted in Genealogy, Parenting, Travel  |  No Comments »

A Great Idea in Theory


One of the fearless adventurers got an underwater camera for Christmas. We’ve been seeing pictures like this and this around, and we go to a lake every summer, so we thought we’d come up with some tableaus of our own.

The fearless adventurers on their way to the lake bottom

So color me utterly impressed by everything those guys could do. File under “great in theory, extremely difficult in practice.” Read the rest of this entry »

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July 4th, 2012  |  Posted in Creativity, Play  |  3 Comments »

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