Hard Knock Cats

On August 25, 2015August 25, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I’ve owned four cats in my adult life, and have developed a reputation with my vet. I feel like my cat carrier should display a plaque with these words from The New Colossus,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Our first cat, Neko, was two when we adopted her. She was a skinny wisp of a thing who loved to fetch.

When she was ten she was diagnosed with diabetes. She was wasting away to nothing and we took her to the vet. Only two shots of insulin a day would keep her fit and healthy the vet assured us, the parents of a newborn baby. Really, the one thing missing from our sleep deprived spit-up stained life was two insulin shots a day. She died of a stroke when she was thirteen after three years of twice daily shots.

We adopted Boo when he was somewhere between five and fifteen years old. He came into our life as a sweet stray who sneaked into my great-aunt’s house and took up dominion under her dining room table. I loved him from the moment we met. When my great-aunt died my mom asked if we would take him, and we brought him home. A few years later, he developed glaucoma. Two pet ophthalmologist and two different opinions later, we opted to not have his eyes surgically removed. He lived out his days blind with great big creepy eyes swelling out of his head. Kidney failure claimed him, somewhere between ten and twenty years old.

After Boo died, but before Neko died, we adopted Hazel. I’ve written about him before, and sadly he passed away this summer. When we adopted Hazel from the shelter he had a bald spot on the top of his head from having a benign growth removed. My husband accused me of taking him home just because of his head wound, and asked if we didn’t want to adopt the three legged cat instead. (To be fair, the three legged cat was in quarantine and I couldn’t adopt him.) Hazel was the sweetest cat I’ve ever owned, and the head wound healed over beautifully, but we only had three years with him before he wasted away from kidney failure, even with a round of dialysis.

After Neko we adopted sweet Katie. A teeny kitten who loved Hazel and who was loved by Hazel. The only creature she loved more was me. I remember, less then fondly, her early days where every night she curled on my chest, waking me numerous times with her tiny disgusting kitten sneezes from the respiratory virus she picked up in the shelter. She still falls asleep every night nestled in my hair bathing my neck and cheek.

Katie desperately misses her best friend Hazel. She was a fostered cat before we adopted her, and I’ve decided that I need to pay it forward and try to foster a few cats before we find a new “forever” cat. I figure I have experience. I can give shots; I can hand feed; I can deal with knowledge that some of the sick kitties may not make it, and hard decisions might have to be made. Today I took Katie to the vet to get her immunizations up to date and make sure she’s healthy before we foster. Turns out she has this cat syndrome which causes her gums to reject her teeth. She’s already lost four adult teeth, at the age of two, and the rest of her teeth are filled with holes. Her gums are red and bleeding, and she is in pain. I have an appointment for next week to have all her teeth removed, the only way to solve this problem.

I love my vet. She and I talked through Katie’s options and agreed that this was the only choice we had. We laughed about my horrible cat health luck, and we bored the vet tech to tears with all the medical woes we’ve been through together. She assured me that I am not her only client that attracts a mix of sweet cats with horrible health. She predicts I’ll make it one round of fostering before I fail and adopt one of the cats. She tried to shorten that cycle by offering me a stray cat that was left outside her clinic last week. I think I’ll hold out for a three-legged cat, or a deaf cat, or whatever foster kitty is the next best friend to Katie, the toothless wonder.

The Liebster Award – Socrates Edition

On August 13, 2015August 13, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized6 Comments

Thank you so much to Tracey Rains for nominating me for the Liebster Award. If you don’t know her blog, check it out at http://socratesunderground.com/. She is a high school English teacher, like my mom, so I automatically feel kinship to her. Her blog has insightful posts on today’s education mixed with personal tidbits about her life. If you have any interest in education her stuff is worth reading. (She also called me quirky and inspirational, so I adore her.) So now, onto her questions!

If you could travel anywhere tomorrow, where would it be? I am itching to go to London, because my husband just returned there from work, and I haven’t been to the United Kingdom since he and I got married in Scotland ten years ago.

What do you like about your hometown? I grew up just outside of Denver, Colorado. I love the mix of city life and outdoor life in Denver. When I was a kid we used to go to the theater downtown, and if you wanted dessert after a play you had to drive to a Village Inn or Perkins in the suburbs. Now we have a vibrant downtown less than 20 minutes from my favorite hiking trail.

What is the simplest thing that makes you smile? My seven year old and her glorious sense of humor. Only she could make me smile by noting my haircut and telling me, “Well mom, I’m glad you didn’t get doll hair this time.” Doll hair?

What is your favorite meal? Beef stew with dumplings on a snowy day. The whole house smells good all day and I enjoy the anticipation of the meal as much as the meal itself. Also, it’s even better the next day and I love leftovers.

What’s your least favorite chore to do at home? I really, really dislike taking out the trash.

What’s your favorite book? This is a question I feel the need to cheat on. I love so many books. I love paper books and audiobooks. I have a shelf where I keep my all time favorite paper books, other than Harry Potter. In the interest of answering the question, I’ll give you my favorite book I’ve read this year: The Bees by Laline Paull. It’s an amazing tale told from the perspective of a honey bee. It’s unique and a great story. Now I’ll cheat and say that the book that I recommend the most is The Martian by Andy Weir. If you have a geeky scientist non-reader in your life buy them this book. I am surrounded by geeky scientists and this book is a winner every single time.

What is your most unusual or unexpected talent? I am a spreadsheet whiz. I even named my daughter using a 13 factor algorithm I built to analyze our name options.

What’s your favorite animal and why? Cats. Until people can purr, like in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, then maybe I’ll switch to people. (See what I did there? Snuck in another favorite book!)

Who is your greatest hero or inspirational figure? My mom. She has taught me that it is never too late to make a drastic change in your life and do something you’ve never tried before. When she went back to school to become a teacher she was told she was too old to ever get a job. She didn’t think she could handle the math, but she proved herself wrong. It took a long time, but she finished her degree and went on to become a high school English teacher. I might think I was a crazy person for starting a writing career at 40, were it not for her example.

What was your favorite game or toy as a child? Pink blankie, but I also loved pink baby and pink bear. I’m so grateful that my descriptive language capabilities have matured since childhood.

What’s your favorite beverage? Diet Dr Pepper.

Now to pass the nomination forward. I nominate the following bloggers:

Amie Writes – An aspiring writer who will consistently cheer up your weekend with her “Casual Friday” posts, which may appear any day from Friday to Sunday. I love the casual nature of her timing. When she’s not in a life transition, she’ll post some fiction from time to time too.

Duck and Cover – A knitting blogger who will throw out great book recommendations if you ask her.

Say Yes to the Mess – A brand new blog that is about a foster mom. I like what she’s done so far and love her topic. I hope she publishes more!

Writing Blissfully – I’m addicted to the Between Breath and Suffocation series here. The characters are raw and the story is captivating.

The Totally Serious Absolutely Professional Blog – If I am quirky Ditrie is quirky cubed. Go check out her beautiful new site layout and best ever tagline.

Kwoted by K E Garland – Wait. She has 209 followers now? Nice work! Well she’s not eligible, but check her out. She’ll inspire you with pictures and quotes, and she’ll make you think about the world in a way you might not expect. She has a series of gut wrenching posts on the honest realities of conflict and healing in families that I recommend.

Another non-eligible nominee (over 300 followers!) that I beg you to go read is A Funny Thing Happened when I was Learning Myself – She will make you laugh. I love her.

And I ask these bloggers the following questions all centered around your personal process of writing. How do you do it, why do you do it, and what keeps you from doing it the best you could? (Tracey, I’d love to hear from you too!) Feel free to just use this as a prompt or ignore me as you wish.

Why do you blog?
When is your favorite time of the day to write?
Where is your favorite place to write?
What device do you prefer to write on or with?
What is your favorite blog post you have ever written?
What is your writing dream?
What keeps you from realizing that dream?
If you could have an hour with any author, who would you spend it with?

Now for the rules stuff. I didn’t follow them all. Eleven questions is a lot, and I mentioned a few of my favorites with over 200 followers. I’m a blogging scofflaw!

Rules

Once you are nominated, make a post thanking and linking the person who nominated you.
Include the Liebster Award sticker in the post too.
Nominate 5 -10 other bloggers who you feel are worthy of this award. Let them know they have been nominated by commenting on one of their posts. You can also nominate the person who nominated you.
Ensure all of these bloggers have less than 200 followers.
Answer the eleven questions asked to you by the person who nominated you, and make eleven questions of your own for your nominees or you may use the same questions.
Lastly, COPY these rules in the post.

“The End” Part 3 – The Next Beginning

On August 8, 2015June 1, 2017 By aftheadIn Uncategorized11 Comments

I am so grateful that I am a process person and not a product person, because now that the first draft of my book is written, I don’t feel done. I’m excited about the next part. As far as I know right now, these are my immediate next plans:

1. Print the book out. Done! Look how gigantic big it is. I love it.

2. Let the gigantic book sit a bit. I really enjoy Stephen King’s book On Writing (except the grammar bit because he makes me feel like a nincompoop). He recommends that you write the first draft “with the door shut”. There is just you and your story. No input from anyone. When you are done with your first draft, you let the book “rest…a minimum of six weeks.” Then you take the book out and read it, ideally in one sitting, and work on fixing the dumb basic mistakes and the enormous plot holes. That’s what you do in the front of your brain. In the back of your brain you are looking for theme, character development, and how to make the story coherent. You take notes on all of this as you read. When you have read all your glorious words, you go back and make the revisions you noted. Draft two will be done at that point, and you open the door, meaning it will be time to get those friends and family who asked to read my book to read my book. I’m hoping it will be my Halloween present to everyone.

3. Finalize who my readers will be. Reader one is my mom for sure. She was an English teacher and loves books as much as I do so she’s a double whammy reader. She’ll find my glaring grammar and verb tense errors, but also be able to tell me where the plot goes astray. I probably won’t let anyone else read it until I get it back from her with a stamp of approval. She reads fast, so even if it’s a brick, it won’t take much of her life away. Then it will probably go to 2 or 3 other people. My husband for sure, but I’m not certain who the others are. I’ll spend the next six weeks feeling people out. If they are still interested in my project when I’m ready for them, I’ll hand them a copy.

4. Start work on a new project. As much as I want to start pouring over this book, I really believe what King says, and I love how he says it: “It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darling that it is to kill your own.” The 6 weeks gives me distance and perspective from the work, but only if I find something else to occupy my time. So I’m going to polish up my short story, The Fisherman and see how I go about getting that out there. I’m going to dust off the first novel I started and see how I feel about working on that. I am not going to start working on the sequel to this book, but I might make some notes about where I think it’s going. I’m going to blog and enjoy the last few weeks of the summer with my family. Oh, and I’ve got a sweater on the needles that is going to be done by fall! (It was supposed to be done by last fall. Ugh.)

5. Find an agent. I want to at least try for conventional publishing of this book, and everyone I’ve talked to who has any connection to the publishing world says the only way to do this is through an agent. So, I’m going to get a Writer’s Digest. I’m going to surf the web. I’m going to read blogs. I’m going to get coworkers and friends to introduce me to their coworkers and friends who have published or who know someone who published. I’m going to work my network and my network’s network.

6. Figure out what genre this thing is. I think I need that to find an agent.

7. Develop my elevator pitch. When someone asks me what my book is about I sound like a bumbling idiot. I want to be able to tell someone in less than a minute a tidbit that will excite them about my story. Also helpful in the agent hunt.

8. Put together a CV and letter of introduction to agents. For fiction, I have a pretty pathetic track record, but I am published in my career field. I have a book chapter out there, journal articles, and scientific papers. I need to figure out how to tell a my story of techie-geek turned fiction-maven in a coherent way.

9. Fill out dumb bureaucratic paperwork, because I can’t go any farther in this without approval from my job. I can’t find an agent. I can’t publish. I can’t tie my real identity to afthead until I get work’s blessing. (This will surprise you, but I don’t want to publish my book as Afthead. I’m not Prince or Madonna.) For those of you working in real jobs it probably behooves you to find out if your company has any conflict of interest or copyright restrictions that might be a problem if you ever want to publish.

That’s it. My list for what I need to do over the next 6-8 weeks. I don’t think I’ll be bored. With regards to #5, if any of you glorious readers have any ideas on how to find an agent, let me know. If any of you have read awesome blogs or books about this phase, I’d love to hear your experiences. I’m going to try to have a regular weekend blog to discuss where I am in my first draft to second draft to publication process. (See, look at me working #4 already!)

With that, my string of book blogs is complete! Tomorrow it’s back to more normal stuff. I’ve got a yarn lady obituary to write, a work conflict to chat about, and a post on web statistics in my drafts. So much good stuff that I can dive into now that my orange covered “First Draft” is tucked away and aging. I love it so much.

“The End” Part 2 – The Heartstrings

On August 7, 2015August 7, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized9 Comments

I’ve often thought that there is a magical moment when something really good happens in my life and I’m the only person who knows. It’s a special time, when the good news is all mine. No one has reacted in a way I didn’t expect. No one has said anything weird, or worse, mean. The good news is a flickering glow that is all mine.

That was how I felt on Sunday night when I finished my book. I started crying as the last words were typed. Not a big sobbing cry, but just tears welling up. A happy cry. A sigh of relief cry. A quiet amazement cry. These people and their story that had been rattling around in my afthead for so long were out. Their story was done, or at least the first part of their story was done. I knew what happened. They knew what happened.

I wrote “The End.” I saved the story. I backed it up, twice. I calculated how long it took for me to write the book, and wrote down how many pages and words a little piece of paper. I’m bad at remembering numbers, and if someone cared enough to ask how long my book was I wanted to have that information at hand.

I imagined how I would tell my family and friends the big news. Who to tell first? What will I say? Should I be dramatic or off-hand? Will they hug me and spin me around in excitement, or will they cry themselves? My husband is on a different continent. How will I craft the text that will be the first thing he sees when he wakes up in England? Subtle or over-the-top? I imagine the happiness each person will express. Everyone will be as proud and elated as I am.

However, I am not the center of the universe and the real world doesn’t work like the little movie in my head, so before I started telling I turned towards reality. I knew everyone would be happy for me, but in the way you are happy for someone else’s good news.

So I started. Some people were distracted by their own life and their own situation. Some reactions were weird. Maybe they always wanted to write a book, but have never managed to get the words down on paper. Maybe they just had a friend die. Maybe they are hurt that I’ve been writing this book for two years and never mentioned it to them. For whatever reason, they are a different happy than I imagined.

There is a flip side. Some friends and family were happy in cool brave ways. They said things I don’t experience outside of my deepest darkest center. They joke about when my book will be made into a movie, like The Martian. Of course I harbor such ridiculous dreams. Heck! I even have a song picked out to play during the opening scene, but I would never say that out-loud. I want to shush them, lest they attract the attention of fate who wants to squash my hubris. They offer knowledge and information to move me onto the next phase: sites, magazines, friends and family who can help me publish. They want to read my book. They tell me I inspire them. These will be my first readers. They are the ones I will hand a huge pile of paper and say, “Tell me what you think.”

My favorite was my daughter. She told people, “My mom finished her book. She read me a part once. It was about the Wizard of Oz. It was really good.” I love that she understands that this is a big deal and that she knows it is special that she got a sneak peek. Only she and my husband have glimpsed the pages of the book. My kiddo is proud of me. Who doesn’t want that?

Once I told all the people I walk around with in the real world, it was time to tell my blogging friends. Really, I held out telling you because I’ve enjoyed my few days of imagining how I would tell you and how you would react. You are in the arena with me. You are all writers and whether it’s your quotes, your own novels, fiction, stories, or humor you are putting out there, you putting it out there too. You are the ones who read my short story and were so wonderful and generous with your likes and your comments. You made me brave about being willing to make something up in my head and share it. You are the ones who will read the bits of my book that I will scalpel out in a few weeks. The good bits that aren’t quite right for the final product.

I turn to you, just like my in-person friends, and ask, do you know what I do next? It’s time to move to the next beginning! Thank you for coming this far with me. I finished my book!!! Eeeek!!!

Sob! My kid doesn’t need crayons?

On August 4, 2015August 4, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized17 Comments

Okay, a slightly misleading title there, but I was looking at the third grade school supply list (my daughter is headed for second grade) and I scrolled to the end. No crayons. There I was being a good working mom friend to a coworker whose child is starting kindergarten at our neighborhood school. She doesn’t have the supply list yet, so I sent it to her. Yay me. I got curious about what other grades need, was scanning along, and sob! I’m crying. Literally crying at work because next year my daughter won’t need crayons. How is that possible? Where did the crayon years go? How can they almost be over?
I love crayons. Here’s a picture of the shelf above my desk:

See crayons! I’m the age equivalent of 36th grade and I still use crayons at work.

Children’s lives go by so fast. Everyone tells you to enjoy the moment or it will slip away. Well let me tell you, I’m going to enjoy the heck out of the crayon moments from now on! Off to get some new paper and coloring books. We’ve got just over a year.
<sniff>

The Trash and Dish Fairy is out of Town

On August 2, 2015August 2, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized8 Comments

A year ago Mr. Afthead was just coming through the second major depressive episode of our marriage. Two years ago he was a shell of his normal self, both physically and mentally, and our family was in a pit of trying to survive. Today he is in England on a work trip he found out about on Thursday when he was on another work trip in San Diego. I wish I had some kind of time telephone so I could call two-years-ago me. I’d tell her that not only would my husband get better, but that he didn’t have to quit his job, that they actually ended up being great to him through his depression and recovery, and today they had enough faith in him to send him on a huge business development trip to another country. Two years ago me would have liked to hear that news. It would have helped.

I’m so grateful we weathered that storm. All that said, right now me is aggravated because my husband is the person in our family who does the dishes and takes out the trash, and he’s been gone for a week and just left for another week. I have been patiently stacking dishes in the sink and responsibly sorting trash into recycling, compost, and trash. (We Aftheads are very trash savvy.) Imagine my annoyance when I went to go balance one more empty box in the recycle bin. I’d already left a trail of cereal boxes to the recycling bin so the trash fairy could easily find the problem and resolve it for me.

Then, you go around the corner and the dish fairy is also completely shirking his responsibility. Gross dirty dishes fill the sink. The dishwasher is full of clean dishes that the dish fairy has not yet put away. I ask you, what’s a person to do? Let me tell you, this person may or may not have thrown all her dishes away in college because they got too gross in the sink. To be fair, that may or may not have happened twice.

Then it hits me. The trash and dish fairy was out of town. He was home for less than 48 hours, and he left again. While home he took out the compost, thank you very much Mr. Afthead, but that was all. If I didn’t take personable responsibility for the recycle mountain, trash mountain and dish mountain they were going to grow to epic proportions. And if trash mountain kept growing and dish mountain got gross enough I would have no nuclear option.

“Oh no honey, I have no idea where the plates and silverware went. Guess we’ll just have to buy new ones.” Little shrug and grin as the trash bag jingles and clanks on it’s way to the curb.

So this morning I took action and took out the mountain of recycling. Of course the recycling bin outside was almost full so I had to touch a bunch of gross trashy stuff to get it all to fit. (The trash fairy never complains about all the trashy bits sticking to him and sometimes doesn’t even wash his hands after.) Then I unloaded the dishwasher, bleached the straw that had a dead earwig on it – GROSS – and loaded the dishwasher, for the first of many loads. Little Afthead and I will unload the washer together tonight and then I’ll load it back up. I’d have her help me do the dishes, but you never know what kind of creatures are lurking in a sink of dishes left for a week (LIKE SAY AN EARWIGS). I’ll get it all taken care of this weekend, so the mountain can start growing. That way when the gloriously sane Mr. Afthead returns from England on Friday he’ll have something to do. I mean, other than being jet-lagged. He’ll probably be missing those trash bits anyway.

Spellcheck (I Mean Spell Check or Spell-check) fail.

On July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Well, well. Guess what. You can’t trust spell check. After my excited post yesterday on the glories of spellcheck, I received a comment from my new friend Tracey. She said,

“You know, I love spellcheck (I got red squiggles here?!), too; although, I think as an English teacher, I am supposed to decry it as the devil’s invention. You know writers still have to be careful with homophones, word choice, style, and everything else. So, I’m willing to let a neat tool like spellcheck help out on spelling. You noted one of the neatest things about it: If you’re actually paying attention, you learn something, re the S on the end of Brussels sprouts, which can lead to a deeper understanding of a word.”

I was flabbergasted by many things in this comment: Tracey’s amazing use of quotes, parentheses, semicolons, commas, an apostrophe and a period in one sentence; her use of the word “homophones”; and her appreciation that devil’s inventions can lead to deeper understanding of trendy vegetables. However, the thing that really floored me and sent me off on a research tirade was that SHE GOT RED SQUIGGLES ON SPELLCHECK!!! I double checked my post and found no red squiggles. I had to get to the bottom of this mystery.

In my real job, I am an internet geek. I immediately sensed the problem here. It is the thing that drives me and my team crazy at work. That thing is browser incompatibility. What does that mean? Well, it turns out that Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer are not the same. Yes, they will all show you my blog and other wonders of the internet, but they will each show them to you in a different way. (Insert gasp of surprise from reader.) Quick as a wink I replied to Tracey to determine her browser and low and behold, she was using Firefox to type her reply to my blog and I was using Chrome. Could this be the difference?!?!

Viola! Below I present to you the visual evidence from my post yesterday.

Red squiggles in Chrome. Note that spellcheck is a-okay. No problems here.

Ah, the travesty! Spellcheck has red squiggles in Firefox, and it suggests spell check (two words) or spell-check! My Chrome spellcheck has failed me for Firefox readers!

So, I am crushed. If I’m writing for the blog, should I check my writing in all browsers looking for inconsistent red squiggles or can I find some trend? I turned to my least favorite browser, Internet Explorer 11, for a tiebreak.

Oh for goodness sake. IE is just horrible. I have no red squiggles at all, my buttons and images are all missing and there is a weird dark blue area where my “post” button should be.

First lesson? If you are using Internet Explorer to access WordPress just do yourself a favor and stop.

I had one last hope. I turned to the “Proofread Writing” button in WordPress. (You know the one with a checkmark and ABC that looks a lot like a spell check button?) I clicked on it in Chrome.

Yay! Success! Spellcheck is correct because WordPress says it is.

Red squiggles are replaced by red underlines, but spellcheck is the correct spelling according to WordPress. Hooray! I am right! Unless…well, I have to check. What if WordPress somehow uses the browser dictionary to proofread my writing? What happens when you press the WordPress button in Firefox? Is spellcheck still okay?

Vindicated! Spellcheck is okay according to WordPress on two different browsers.

Yes! Spellcheck is one word. Both WordPress and Chrome agree, while Firefox disagrees. Tiebreak goes to spellcheck. (I made the type super big and put explanations on the final picture to show you the difference.) Except, wait a second. Wiggly is misspelled? What? Well, that’s a lesson for another day, but let’s review what we’ve learned shall we?

All spellcheck (spell check) results are not the same. Depending on what browser you use different words may or may not be misspelled. If this really bothers you, check your post using the browser spell check and the WordPress “Proofread Writing” and address inconsistencies.
Internet Explorer 11 is bad. Let me tell you from experience, all Internet Explorers before 11 are bad. Just stay away until Spartan, the new Microsoft browser, comes out.
Brussels sprouts is spelled with a big B at the beginning and a little s at the end. Like the country. (This is from yesterday’s post.)
The plural of eucalyptus is eucalypti. (Also from yesterday’s post.)

Whoa. My head is all full of new learny stuff. I’m full for now. I hope you found this all as enlightening as I have. (Yes, learny has a red squiggle. I know.)

A Quiet Frustrated Rant

On July 27, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Open any news site today and you’ll see reports on two different theater shootings. The Holmes trial is in the sentencing phase, just miles from where I live. The Houser shooting happened less than a week ago. These two events have me ranting in a quiet anguished way. Three factors make these events personal to me: proximity, gun control, and mental health.

Proximity:

July 19, 2012 I flew home from a work trip. It was late. I drove home, and from the highway I could see the Aurora movie theater where less than three hours later James Holmes would open fire during The Dark Knight Rises. I was right there. Holmes could have passed me on the road as he made his way to start killing.

This February my family and I stopped at a great restaurant in Lafayette, GA while driving from New Orleans to Houston on Mardi Gras Day. I made the mistake of ordering barbecued shrimp, forgetting that they come with the heads still intact. After beheading my lunch I enjoyed my meal just blocks from where John Houser opened fire in a movie theater and killed two women and himself on July 23, 2015.

There is something about proximity that makes horror real. I was there. I can picture both of these places. I have swam in meets at Arapahoe High School and have friends who went to Columbine. It makes me wonder, are each of us one step away from knowing a victim or knowing a shooter?

Gun Control:

I want there to be an easy solution to this problem. I want some politician to stand up and say, “That’s it! No more guns in this country, at all, ever.” Except I don’t. I am solidly torn on gun control. I grew up with guns in my house. I learned how to shoot, I learned to respect guns, and I fondly remember the hours I spent watching my dad and grandpa reload after target practice. I enjoyed target practice. If I walked into a gun shop today the smell of it would bring back happy memories.

My dad hunted. As a child hunting put meat on his family’s table. I don’t hunt and never have, but I can tell you that nothing will teach you to respect a weapon like watching your uncle and dad gut and skin a deer they have killed. I have never questioned what a gun can do to a living creature. I don’t like play guns. We weren’t allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games as kids. We were taught to respect guns to the point that I still feel a little weird pointing a Nerf water gun at my daughter and spraying her.

There are people who believe they need guns for personal protection. There are so many guns out there already that we can’t make them go away. I can’t round up every kid in the country and teach them the power of a gun, install new morals, and make them respect weapons. The problem seems insurmountable especially when there seems to be no middle ground.

Mental Illness:

The other thing Holmes and Houser had in common was a history of mental illness. So there should be an easy solution there. We just need to take care of the mentally ill in this country and we won’t have anymore mass shootings. Well, let me tell that it is not an easy problem to solve either. I’ve got close personal experience with mental illness in my family: depression and bipolar disorder have wreaked havoc on the Aftheads and extended Aftheads. I can tell you that even when mentally ill people want help it can be next to impossible for them to get it, or for their families to get it for them. There aren’t enough doctors, there is horrible stigma, the meds are expensive and can make people worse instead of better.

I’m obsessed with the news filtering in about Houser because it is all so true. I’m not surprised by the loophole in the law that allowed him to buy a gun. The rights of mentally ill people are slippery. Even if someone is a danger to themselves and others, there is a limit to what you can do to get them help. In the end, they are people and you can’t just go around limiting people’s rights, even if the people who love them are begging for help. I’m not surprised by his brother’s comments that the shooting wasn’t a surprise, and his words resonate with a truth that only some unlucky families get to experience. The kind of sick his brother was will rip apart families for a lifetime. I’ve seen it happen. Eventually you have to pick between your own life, your own family, your own safety and caring for the guy who just might end up being a shooter. With little to no help, no support, and no power what is a family to do? The problem is so big it seems hopeless.

The Solution:

This is a hard problem, and you do not make hard problems go away by ignoring them or doing nothing. I know that. We all know that. So, we have to start a conversation that’s going to make everyone uncomfortable. We are going to have to talk about guns killing people and we might slip up and talk about crazy people and we might end up with a solution that limits some rights. This will all piss people off, but isn’t it okay to piss people off to make sure that there is never again a room of dead first graders? (I’ll admit, as the mom of a daughter who just graduated first grade Sandy Hook is a horror story has a closer proximity than I can even comprehend.)

My favorite article about this topic is from one of my favorite authors, Stephen King. It’s called Guns, and it’s worth the $0.99 to read it on your Kindle or $2.99 to listen to on Audible. I have both versions. Know that if you buy it you are supporting the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. You might not be into such a charity, or Stephen King, so I’ll highlight his three measures to curb gun violence:

“Comprehensive and universal background checks.

Ban the sale of clips and magazines containing more than ten rounds.

Ban the sale of assault weapons.”

These seem so reasonable to me, and such a good start. Yes, people can still die if you have a gun that has a clip that holds ten rounds, but Holmes couldn’t have done what he did without assault weapons. Sure, people can still steal guns or buy guns for their family members, but Houser couldn’t have bought a gun with stricter background checks. King doesn’t provide a road-map for solving the mental health issues in this country, but he does ensure that when someone has a history of going to dark places they can’t buy weapons. That’s a start and we need a start. If there is a chance that someone is going to use a gun to kill another human being, isn’t it worth it to limit that freedom to make sure that we don’t end up being a country where every single person either knows a shooter or a victim? Can we start taking some steps to solve the hard problem before the next tragedy?