jodiet.com Blog

Apparently I took the summer off from blogging. I didn’t intend to, it just happened. It is sort of like dieting or exercising — once you fall off the wagon, it is soooooo hard to get back on. But here I am!

After a year plus owning this blog, I finally have a “subject”. My entries on Mondays — was going to say “or thereabouts” but I don’t want to give myself that option so — on Mondays I will post something related to the legal world; news about court decisions, interesting criminal happenings or just my personal opinion related to something related to the law. Fridays will feature my creative writing: simple little musings like this one, other creative nonfiction, fiction and probably a lot of poetry as I seem to have scads of poetry I’ve written over the years. All of this is to promote my business, Jodie Toohey Writing Innovations.

That’s right; my business no longer has a split personality. I’ve dropped the “Paralegal Innovations” leg to focus on the freelance writing part of my business. I still offer the same paralegal writing services but those services no longer have their own business identity. Please visit my website at www.jodiet.com to learn more. And stay tuned for another blog I am launching on Tuesday, October 5th, The Moms-On-Their-Way blog which will offer posts about my journey to create a fulfilling, integrated life and others’ journeys along with recipes, tips, advice and links to help moms on their way get there. Thanks for reading!

Please click on one of the page links at the top left of this page to explore my new Jodie Toohey Writing Innovations blog…

I’ve never personally gardened before. Back in 1997 when my husband and I rented our first stand-alone dwelling, I planted three cherry tomato plants in the yard next to the garage. I got pregnant in July, got tired and lost interest in the garden so my husband, like for many of our other household chores, took over faithfully watering and fertilizing the plants. By the time the tomatoes were ready to eat, the thought of eating them made me feel nauseous so they largely went to waste.

From then until 2009, I relied on the grocery store, farmers’ market or generous family and friends to quell my fresh vegetable cravings. Then in early 2009, my younger brother decided to put in a garden and like my brother usually tends to do, he jumped in head first. He brought in dirt, planned out a huge planting scheme, built a cucumber trellis and started all of his plants from seeds. He essentially had an entire farmers’ market growing in his back yard. Of course because he and his family could never eat all those vegetables, I, with others, got to enjoy his bounty. The tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and carrots were delicious; there really is nothing better than veggies right from the garden and this reminder inspired me to become a weekly patron at our local farmers market to supplement my supply (he lives ½ hour away). Plus he made THE BEST pickles I have ever eaten. I told people I think he finally found his calling.

Last winter, because I’d be working from home this summer and so I could have fresh vegetables even more available, I decided to put in my own garden. (I was inspired by my brother and did not decide to put in a garden because the first lady said so.) But I decided to start a little bit slower with herbs, radishes, green beans, carrots, tomatoes and peppers. I got a “Dummies” book, read up on vegetable gardening and started planning. My husband built a raised bed in a sunny spot next to our patio; we brought in at least three times more dirt than we needed; purchased seeds, tomato and pepper plants; and planted our first crops on April 11th. We were a little anxious and had to cover the plants up at night a couple of times but everything seems to be doing well. The green beans are thriving, carrots may be growing (or they could be grass), and we found a couple of cucumber plants to go in with those we started from seeds.

I’m a gadget-girl so I was excited to go out and buy the supplies I’d need to garden. I got a beautiful bright pink gardening kit with a bag, knee pads, hand rake, trowel and garden gloves. I also got a fancy telescoping watering wand with something like ten different settings I thought was a bargain on the clearance rack. Last week when water starting spraying out from the wand in all directions, I figured out why it was on clearance. So I bought a less fancy, hopefully better built wand from a well known garden tool manufacturer with just three settings. Last Wednesday morning after uncovering all of the plants we had tucked in the night before to protect them from the threatened frost, I decided to weed.

I got out my three pronged beautiful pink hand rake and carefully dragged it through the narrow space between the rows of radishes, green beans and carrots. Since the rake was of the hand variety and about six inches long, I had to lean over the chicken/rabbit wire fence to reach and then had to get into the garden, all while trying not to fall down and smash my tomatoes and peppers or rip my clothes on the sharp tomato cages. There is a lot more room between the last row of carrots, tomato and pepper plants so I got out my husband’s childhood hoe from the garage. Since it has a flat blade, the weeds cannot sneak between the tines and remain, though stripped of soil, still alive and well. But since the hoe was so wide, I could not use it between my radishes, green beans and carrots without tearing up the plants I wanted to be there. I wondered, “do they make a skinny hoe?”

I asked my husband if he ever had a skinny hoe or knew if there was such a thing as a skinny hoe. He claimed he didn’t know so the next day, I went to my local big-box store with a gardening center to look for a skinny hoe. Not finding one, I asked an employee for help:

“Excuse me. I’m looking for a skinny hoe.”

Employee: “Our hoes are all lined up over there, ma’am.”

Me: “Yes, I know. But those are too fat. I already have a fat hoe. I need a skinny hoe.”

Employee: “How skinny do you need your hoe to be?”

Me: I picked up a fat hoe to demonstrate. “You see, I have a fat hoe like this. But it doesn’t work for all situations so I need a skinny hoe about half this size to squeeze in. I need my skinny hoe to be tall because the short ones make my back hurt”

Employee: “I’m sorry ma’am; these are all the hoes we have. No one’s ever requested a tall skinny hoe before; the tall fat hoes seem to work just fine for them.”

Me: “Well, I can’t be the only person who can’t bend with their hoe without back pain. Maybe I should invent a skinny hoe.”

I thanked the employee, continued my shopping and brainstormed marketing ideas for my skinny hoe invention:

“A skinny hoe to go where no other hoe has gone before.”

“Don’t settle for a fat hoe when only a skinny hoe will do.”

“Hoe, Hoe, Hoe. Get a skinny hoe for everyone in your family.”

“Complete your hoe collection with the new skinny hoe.”

“The tall skinny hoe—because size DOES matter.”

“Don’t let your fat hoe chew up all of your vegetables; use the skinny hoe instead.”

“A skinny hoe is better for your back.”

“A fat hoe is better in some situations but when you’ve got a hard small space, you need a skinny hoe to get the job done.”

Then I went to the local home improvement store and found my tall skinny hoe right away. It was less than $10 and has the best of both worlds with a skinny hoe blade on one side and a two prong rake on the other side. Guess I’ll have to abandon my skinny hoe gold mine…

Last Monday, my kids were out of school for in-service day so we went to Maquoketa, Iowa to spend the day. First we stopped by the Lilac Garden in Duck Creek Park in Davenport. Then we drove the half hour to Maquoketa Caves State Park. The park was nearly deserted and the bathrooms were still locked so it was (ahemm)…interesting. We had a picnic lunch and hiked. Before heading home we stopped at the Hurstville Interpetive Center and Hurstville Lime Kilns just down the street from the park. The best part is I got to play with my Christmas gift and got some good shots I thought I’d share. Feel free to use them and pass them on but please give me (Jodie Toohey) the credit. Enjoy!

So here I am—month four into my self-employed business endeavor workin’ hard but makin’ no money. The door that slammed shut on me shortly after the beginning of February is locked down and sealed tight with no hint of opening at any time in the near future. My kids know my cash in-flow is nearly nonexistent but they see me sitting staring at my computer screen for hours and lacking the tact or willpower, they ask what I do all day. I’m busy; the days seem to be flying by so I’m working hard but I don’t seem to have anything to show for it — so what AM I doing all day?

I do a lot of thinking. And I give myself numerous internal pep talks. I tell myself I have not inadvertently become a stay at home mother; I just haven’t hit the correct vein yet. My main goal every day is to keep myself from sinking into depression by dwelling on the concept I left a pretty good paying job to do what I love, potentially thrusting my family into poverty. Other than that concern over the all-mighty dollar, I love what I am doing. I have several projects in the air and numerous others floating around my brain so every week I sit down with a weekly calendar printed from Outlook to schedule my time. It usually goes something like this:

Sunday is the only day of the week I allow myself to sleep in really late then I get up and read the Sunday newspaper. I usually try to spend about an hour on my bills and budget sometime on Sunday because my income more closely matches my outgo so I want to ensure I don’t bounce my checks. After that I don’t do much: spend time with the family, clean the house a little, play computer games, go for a walk, etc. As the weather warms I look forward to hiking with my family on Sunday afternoons.

The time I get up in the morning is an area in which I’ve really slipped. I was doing good getting up at 6:30 every morning but since there has been no rush on work needing to get done and I’ve had some stomach issues restricting me from coffee drinking the past several weeks, I’ve allowed myself to sleep in a little. I set my alarm for @7 a.m. and am in front of my computer by 7:30 a.m. First things first so I tend to my Farmtown and Farmville farms. Then I peruse freelance writing job posting boards to find projects for which I may be qualified and send e-mails to apply. This usually takes about an hour. After that my day varies but I try to work an hour, two or more on each of several projects. I identify publishers and agents to pitch my young adult novel, “Melody Madson – May It Please the Court”, and send out a handful of submissions. I work on my in-progress historical young adult fiction novel centered around early 1990s Croatia. I’m also working on a book proposal for a nonfiction organization book for girls and I try to post to my blog every week or every other week.

I have spent a significant portion of time identifying clients. I compiled a list of hundreds of attorneys; local advertising, marketing, printing and publishing companies; magazines; publishers and agents who I hope may benefit from my services or to whom I can pitch ideas. I’ve also compiled a list of companies who likely do not use freelance writers but who do have web-sites with writing which could be improved. I just completed entering this data into a spreadsheet and am drafting letters to introduce my business and offer my services. Where applicable, I am including a sample of how the writing on their web-site could be improved. I am about ready to mail out my first batch of letters then will continue sending batches each week until I exhaust my list. Because the information on my list was obtained via the yellow pages and one of the local chambers of commerce, I can start all over when that is completed with other information sources. My marketing philosophy is akin to hurling hundreds of darts at a dartboard hoping at least some of them will stick.

I submit article ideas or filler material to outlets I’ve identified. Currently I am concentrating on non-paying bits in order to amass some published clips. Freelance writing is like any other job: you need experience to get the job and you need the job to get experience. I submitted an article response piece in Writer’s Digest’s “Reader Mail”; I did get a response asking my permission to print it because they were considering using it in the next issue so I’m crossing my fingers hoping it will be in my next issue. My other “professional” tasks involve browsing magazines at the book stores and library to identify potential markets and generate ideas. I also try to read, free write and attempt to brainstorm or develop other ideas. I sold a couple of items on eBay and submitted a couple of articles and photographs to pay-per-view web-sites to try to generate some cash with no success yet. Oh, and I spend a ton of time chewing my fingernails.

My kids and I go to the library on Wednesdays, I do my grocery shopping Thursday mornings when the stores are less busy (which didn’t hold true today), and since I figure I should contribute something to my household, I do laundry on Fridays and try to empty and refill the dishwasher daily. I go for walks when the weather cooperates and try to swim laps at the YMCA during the adult only noon hour or attend aquatics classes at least once weekly. Then there is making dinner and all those other tedious, every day grown-up duties which need to be done but offer very little personal satisfaction. So I work hard and for many things but money is not one of them…yet!!

The authors of the following songs give me inspiration and hope. These songs are impossible to find on iTunes or CD. The only reason I am able to listen to them today is because I recorded them from vinyl to cassette tape, cassette tape to CD, and CD to MP3 player. I love both of these songs; they are definitely in my top 10 favorites list. So I’m thinking if there is someone out there someday who loves something I’ve written so much they go to such extremes to preserve it, I will consider myself a successful writer. And so I am inspired to keep writing.

OLD FRIENDS:

It’s like when you’re making conversation and you’re trying not to scream and you’re trying not to tell them that you don’t care what they mean. And you’re really feeling fragile and you really can’t get home and you really feel abandoned but you want to be alone. Old friends, they shine like diamonds. Old friends, you can always call. Old friends, Lord, you can’t buy ‘em. It’s old friends after all; old friends after all.

When the house is empty and the light begins to fade and there’s nothing to protect you except the window shade. And it’s hard to put your finger on the thing that scares you most and you can’t tell the difference between an angel and a ghost. Old friends, they shine like diamonds. Old friends, you can always call. Old friends, Lord, you can’t buy ‘em. It’s old friends after all; old friends after all. Yeah.

Written by Guy Clark & Richard Dobson, Performed by Lacy J. Dalton

SHE’S OUT THERE DANCIN’ ALONE:

The lights are turned low, she stands all alone on the floor. She’s had too much beer and her mind’s not too clear anymore. She throws back her head; she’s sure she heard, “I’ll take you home.” But while the band starts in playing, she’s out there dancin’ alone. She comes in on weekends and sits in a booth by the band. She’s got a favorite; she wonders will they play it again. Some whisper she’s crazy but tonight, she’s sure that he’ll come. But when the band starts in playing, she’s out there dancing alone. She smiles and holds out her arms like there’s somebody there. She closes her eyes when they laugh and when they stare; she doesn’t care. Now the band’s packin’ up and the bartender’s sweepin’ the floor. He says, “It’s past two” and soon he’ll be lockin’ the door. But she’s still smilin’ waitin’ in a world of her own. They all watch for a moment; she’s out there dancin’ alone. Yes, she’s out there dancin’ alone.

Written by Geoffrey Morgan, Performed by Barbara Mandrell

Purse. Handbag. Tote. Satchel. Bag. Whatever you call it; men don’t seem to understand it. A question I hear every now and then from my husband is, “Why do you need another purse?” My answer is always some variation of I needed a new one because I didn’t like my old one. Then he asks, “I thought you really liked that purse when you got it.” Well, I did think I was going to like it when I got it and now – it is just not right. Men carry few essential items including identification, credit cards, cash and perhaps a photo or two. They have just a couple of options for carrying them: the money clip and the tri-fold or the bi-fold wallets. So sorry, dear, if your argument you use your wallet until the leather wears away isn’t relevant to me.

Here is what I have to carry with me at all times in addition to the identification, credit cards, and cash (I don’t even take up space with any photographs): reward/club cards, YMCA cards, library cards, notepads and pens for when you need to write a note, band aids for when you cut your finger, ibuprofen for when you have a headache, nail clippers, coupons, hand sanitizer, toothpicks, lotion, and a cell phone (because unless it is essential due to the nature of your job or job uniform, cell phones just don’t look right clipped to a girl’s waistband). So we need something a little more substantial to carry our things. Because we have never found the purse which meets all of our needs we are always on the lookout trying to find it. Somettimes we think we have then we get it home, we try to load it and find out it is too small. Or we use it awhile and find out the straps are too short or too long or too wide, etc. We know what we need in a purse but nobody can get it quite right.

I have yet to find the perfect purse. It can’t be too big or too small. It has to fit what I need but not allow too much extra space to allow for lazily throwing in unnecessary items because then it gets too heavy and makes my back ache. If the straps are not just the right length and width, it will constantly slip off my shoulders which is just annoying. And I’ve yet to find the correct combination for alleviating that problem. If it is not slipping off of my shoulder it is yanking my hair out by its roots. There are either too many pockets are not enough – or they are not the right sizes or in the right locations. It is too wide, too tall, not wide enough or not tall enough. If it gets close to being the right size with the right pockets and compartments, it is ugly – it is a hideous color, made out of plastic looking material or has odd ornaments hanging from it.

I think maybe I should go into the purse designing business. Whenever I have had enough with my current purse and decided the dozen or so purses in my closet just will not work and I browse the purse sections of my local stores, I always see women just like me. They search through the racks of purses, sometimes more than once in hopes their super-purse is hiding in the back somewhere. They pick them up, open them, run their hands through the insides and into the pockets to see if their cell phones fit, and sling it over their shoulders to check out the straps. Then they usually put them back looking rightfully annoyed and disgusted. Even if they do keep the bag they’ve inspected, they still do not look happy. The disappointment is transparent in their faces; you can tell this is not really their dream purse but it is the closest they can find so they are going to make the most of it, settle and try to make it work.

The funny thing about purses is price doesn’t seem to matter. There have been a few times I’ve decided money is no object, if I’ve got to sacrifice two weeks of groceries for a purse, it will be worth it to have the purse I’ve always wanted. However, I’ve not even been able to find an expensive purse with everything I need. As a matter of fact, it seems the more expensive the purse, the more impractical it is. It’s just a big hole in fancy material.

I need organization. I need to be able to keep my purse neat and tidy without looking like I’m ninety years old. I want it stylish but I don’t want to have to switch everything out every day because my purse doesn’t match my clothes. I need pockets on the outside and on the inside. They need to be big enough to hold my PDA. I need two or three purses which have almost hit the target to be combined into one super purse. My current purse is short but long with two side pockets and one flat zip pocket on the front. It has three interior compartments and the strap is medium length. My last purse was taller but shorter with two good sized pouch pockets on the front and a zip pocket on the back with three interior compartments. The strap was a little bit long for me. So if I could get a purse about as wide as my current one and as tall as my previous one with two side pockets, two front pouch pockets, a back zip pocket, three interior compartments and a medium length strap, I’d be set. Or would I?

I understand suicide. I know people who understand suicide. I know people who have been touched by suicide but do not understand it. They are unable to fathom anything could be so bad as to cause someone to end their life. What they don’t understand is rational thought does not apply. When you are in that place and when you are that depressed, there is no rationality – there is only the need to end the pain and find peace. It consumes you and eats at you from the inside out. I don’t think people really commit suicide because they want to die – more likely they want desperately to live but feel like they ARE dying.

I believe in choice. I believe in people’s right to make the ultimate choice to live or to die. I believe 90 year old grandmothers diagnosed with terminal cancer should be allowed to end their life when they choose (probably the most rational and logical reason for suicide). Even if someone chooses to end their life as a foolish permanent end to a temporary problem, I still respect their right to make that choice.

My cousin committed suicide slightly over eight years ago. I was in a meeting at work when I was interrupted by the emergency call from my mother. She told me he’d done it, put a gun under his chin and fired. His fiancé returned home from work in the morning to find him in his bed, dead. She didn’t know why; no one knows why and he left no hint as to why. Some think it would have had to have been something so bad, worse than anything they could ever even imagine. I think it could’ve been something much simpler. It could have been any number of things – it could’ve been he had everything he thought he’d always wanted but still was not happy. It is devastating to think you SHOULD be happy but no matter how hard you try you just can’t feel it. And maybe it was no reason at all – maybe he didn’t even realize what he was doing; maybe he was acting in his sleep. His decision, if it was a conscious decision, was a mistake. It was stupid and cowardly. But when you love someone you support them when they make mistakes – you stand behind their bad decisions. And I do. I respect his decision even though I do not agree.

When someone dies in this way, you futilely search the smallest corners of your memory looking for a clue. You look for a reason and you look for a sign you missed. For awhile, you feel guilty. Was it something I did? Something I didn’t do? Did I ignore the warning signs? It is hard to accept never knowing why and it is harder to accept there was nothing you could have done to prevent what happened. Whatever the reason, his method of dealing with it was his decision alone. He decided; I had no control over that decision. I think at least part of the trigger for these guilty, questioning feelings is misdirected anger. The person who deserves your anger is no longer there to take it; there is no one to slap and tell, “What were you thinking!?! Idiot!” You are just left with an empty void for which you cannot explain the cause definitively no matter how hard you try. The only thing to do is try to learn from his mistake so his death was not in vain; to realize it is eight years later, I am still here, my heart is still beating, I am still breathing and even though I’ve had some hard times, I have had many blessings. All I can do is LIVE.

Most everyone has a culinary dish or two passed down from generation to generation; most of the time there are no recipes for these dishes. People learned to make them by watching their parents and grandparents who learned to make them by watching their parents and grandparents. One dish my mother and her siblings grew up eating was Chop Suey. My grandmother made it occasionally without a recipe adding some of this and some of that until she got it where she wanted it. Sometimes it was a little sweeter than others but the basics were the same: soy sauce, beef, Chinese vegetables, water chestnuts, brown sugar and a generous pile of crunchy chow mein noodles on top. Fortunately my mom had the forethought to watch my grandmother cook her Chop Suey and write down everything she did one day before she passed away sixteen years ago. A couple of weeks ago my mom made Chop Suey for a birthday dinner for my aunt.

On the day of the dinner, I started thinking about Chop Suey and wondered how my grandmother came to make it. Chinese food wasn’t as common as it is now; it was just within the past few years in my life I was able to find Chinese food recipes other than the common fried rice. She didn’t have any friends of Chinese or Asian descent that I knew about. I asked my mom and aunt if they knew how she got the recipe and why she started to cook Chop Suey but they didn’t know. So I got on-line and did some research. Apparently I’m not the first to be intrigued by this dish because I found an informative article published in the Journal of Transnational American Studies just last year on 2/18/2009 by author, Haiming Liu, at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bc4k55r.

Liu’s article traces the history of Chop Suey in America. He stated most Chinese restaurants in America from the turn of the 20th century until the 1960s were named Chop Suey House. During that time, people equated Chop Suey with Chinese Food. As with a lot of ethnic food in this country, Chop Suey as it was made here was not the same as it was in China if even there was such a dish in China which seems to be debated pursuant to what I could find on the subject on the web. This doesn’t surprise me as I learned long ago fortune cookies were invented here, not in China.

According to Liu’s article, Chop Suey had no standard recipe. A reference to a dish called Chow Chop Suey in 1888 translated into “to stir fry animal intestines”. Chop Suey was a homemade “humble” dish made from extra livestock parts among other ingredients which explains the lack of a standard recipe. In the ensuing decades, Chop Suey transformed substituting more ingredients more palatable to Americans like pork or chicken, became more popular and the namesake of restaurants which began to spring up throughout the country. Americans thought they were consuming an authentic ethnic dish when in reality they were eating something America essentially invented. Chop Suey as they were enjoying didn’t exist in China and in fact America’s Chop Suey was “introduced” to China in the 1940s. Surely the U.S. Army thought it was doing something special when it served Chop Suey to our troops as an “ethnic” dish in that time period as well. Chop Suey recipes were printed in newspapers from the 1910s to the 1950s. So this is how I imagine the dish’s birth in my family:

It was a random Tuesday in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It was late February; the winter was getting old, it was wearing on my grandparents and my young aunts and uncles who were running amuck through the house infected with cabin fever. My grandmother was tired of cooking meatloaf and was in the mood for something different. After packing my grandfather’s lunch, she sat down with a cup of lukewarm coffee to read the paper. In the home section, she saw a recipe for Chop Suey. She’d heard of Chop Suey, drove by the couple of Chop Suey houses in town but never stopped because she was afraid she wouldn’t like it and didn’t have the funds to waste on such a luxury. She saw the recipe called for beef, soy sauce and brown sugar; items she had on hand. It didn’t sound too bad so she thought she’d make it for dinner that night. She went to the local grocer’s or maybe ethnic food store to purchase the Chinese vegetables needed. She followed the recipe in the newspaper for the most part leaving out those ingredients she knew she or her family did not find appetizing. My grandpa was disappointed to not see his usual meat and potatoes upon returning from work but his relatively new bride seemed pleased with herself so he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The kids ate it, picking out the vegetables. As the children grew they began to request the dish, enjoying it more and those who didn’t simply skimmed the sweet beefy gravy off the top to eat with the chow mein noodles. Perhaps my grandma used the recipe an additional time or two but after that, maybe she lost it but found she didn’t need it any longer. So she went on making the Chop Suey from memory occasionally throughout the rest of her life. Then one day in her late 50s her daughter asked to observe the Chop Suey making process; the daughter now holds that legacy to share and pass on to her children and grandchildren.

The history of food intrigues me; I remember my mom and aunt talking about the first time they had tacos. I believe my aunt bought the ingredients and announced they were “going to try something different called tacos”. Now, tacos are common with numerous other Mexican dishes and salsa is bigger than ketchup in the condiment race. The foods invented in my lifetime to this point have got to be those cooked by microwave. Who knows what foods will surface in this century – maybe something cooked with solar energy or something where you just push a button to heat without a stove or microwave like those coffee drink and soup products I’ve seen occasionally. Whatever it is, it is likely to add to my bottom line. Or maybe it will be a candy bar with the calories and nutrition of broccoli—now THAT is something I could eat up!!!

(To read the article referenced in this post, got to http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bc4k55r. All historical facts came from the article written by Hiaming Liu entitled Chop Suey as Imagined Authentic Chinese Food: The Culinary Identity of Chinese Restaurants in the United States, published in the Journal of Transnational American Studies, 1(1) on 2/18/2009.)