Diary of a Word Nerd

Medicine for My Soul

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 9 Comments

For this month’s installment of the Who I Am project, Dana and Bev asked participants to write about Medicine for the Soul. This prompt couldn’t come at a better time.

I’ve just wrapped up a full season of fall sports: three kids running cross country and three kids playing soccer. Note, I only have four children; you figure out the math. I’ve also been fully enmeshed in coaching cross country – a thing I love and that definitely fills my soul – but all that time committed to snack requests and Milesplit means I’ve put off important, but less enjoyable, things, like balancing checkbooks and making appointments. Now I face a lengthy and intimidating to-do list that doesn’t even include Christmas tasks. Kinda makes me want to go for a run… and not come back.

Thank you, Dana and Bev, for forcing me to contemplate the things that fill my spirit and bring me joy just when I need them the most. Here are a few of them:

Being Creative It’s taken me until middle age to appreciate that my soul requires creative activity. Not just “likes” it, but requires it. In the past, that meant drawing with pencils and pastels or painting with acrylics. Now, with less time for cleaning brushes, my creativity takes the form of writing and photography. Stringing words together brings great pleasure, perhaps because I’m focusing on one thing for a while, but also because it feeds my creative need. When I make time to exercise and write in the morning, my whole day goes better. Really, I need to “take” creative time every day, like a vitamin.

Exercise Whatever form it is, I always feel better after, even if I didn’t want to go to the pool on a cold winter morning and swim laps (Getting wet in January? Yuck!) Endorphins, feeling strong, burning away unneeded calories- these physical benefits of exercise combine into a soothing elixir for my weary soul.

Service work When I’m spinning down a spiral of fatigue and irritation, nothing snaps me out of my self-pity better than service work. Reading with kids at the elementary school, delivering food, walking with a troubled friend who needs someone to listen – all these things expand my perspective and shift my focus from my own worries to the needs of someone else. Note: this does not include the everyday service work of cooking, cleaning and laundry that most mothers perform. I need something outside of the daily minutia to medicate my spirit.

Mantra Bands I’m not big on jewelry, but these simple bracelets remind me to put my heart in the right place – on the positive. There are tons of messages to choose from at Mantraband.com; I have the three pictured above. When I’m irritable or letting anxiety have too much sway in my day, the jangle of these silver bands prompts me to look down, read the words, and remember who I want to be.

Happier with Gretchen Rubin My friend Amy recommended this podcast, and what a great thing. Gretchen and her sister discuss little ways to make each day a little happier. Because of these ladies, I’m currently working on my “Personal Ten Commandments” which include

Assume positive intent
Connect before I correct
You get more of what you notice – so attend to the good stuff

Another great podcast for soul care: Michael Hyatt’s This is Your Life. Michael shares productivity tips and encourages his listeners to be their best self.

Laughter and Friends Cheesy and unoriginal, but good friends and a great belly laugh do much to calm my soul. One of the greatest gifts my husband brings to our marriage is the ability to make me smile in the midst of tense situations. And that emoji induced giggle I get via texts from a dear friend? Better than Valium, people.

The trick with all these “treatments”? Just like real life medications, they won’t work unless I take them. I’ve got to give myself permission to indulge, for the health of my soul. And so do you, my friend.

What do you do to take care of your soul? Do you do those things often enough?

I’m giving you permission today to treat your spirit and find your joy.

If you’d like to join the Who I Am project, visit Dana’s blog for details:

Favorite Characters/Improving vocabulary

NaNoWriMo Tip: Character Personality Types

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 5 Comments

It’s November, or NaNoWriMo for writerly types. What is NaNoWriMo? Although it sounds like a string of baby babble, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a writing challenge, inspiring people to write daily with the goal of a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month.

I’m participating for the first time this year, and while prepping for the challenge, I brainstormed about my characters using KM Weiland’s Crafting Unforgettable Characters e-book. (If you’re a writer, check out Weiland’s multiple writing resources, including her website and podcast. Extremely helpful! ) I had to chose a “personality type” for each of my characters:

Choleric
Sanguine
Phlegmatic
Melancholy

Since I didn’t know what these words meant, I had a hard time applying them to my characters. You too? Let’s break these words down for Wondrous Words Wednesday. (If you like learning about words, visit Kathy’s Blog today!)

1) choleric, from Middle English (in the sense ‘bilious’): from Old French cholerique, via Latin from Greek kholerikos, from kholera; made angry easily
2) sanguine, from Latin sanguis, blood: confident and hopeful
3) phlegmatic, from Greek flam, inflammation, phlegein to burn: not easily upset, excited, or angered
4) melancholy, from Greek melan + chole, bile: a sad, pensive mood or feeling

I’ve got experience in health care, so I knew sanguine meant bloody, but I wasn’t sure how we got from bloody to confident. Turns out, in ancient Greece, Hippocrates believed that a person’s temperament was influenced by his bodily fluids. He proposed that our bodily fluids contain humors, and when those humors are balanced, people experience good health. When they are unbalanced, disease and disability occur. This is called the Four Humors theory of temperament.

yellow bile -> choleric person
blood -> sanguine person
phlegm -> phlegmatic person
black bile -> melancholic person

So, according to Hippocrates, excess black bile led to a melancholic disposition, and so on. Although Western and Islamic cultures adopted the Four Humors theory, it was eventually disproved. However, it still influences psychological tests and theory today, including the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator. For more detailed information about the Four Humors, as well as links to personality tests, visit Lonerwolf.com. Weiland recommends dabbing in a bit of psychology to give characters more well-rounded development.

Word Nerd Workout

Try to think of a character from a book or movie to fit one of the personality types. Or, better yet, tell us what your personality type is!

Photo Credit: johnantoni via Flickr CC-BY-SA

I’ll illustrate each type for you:

Choleric – Strong willed, dominant, has a quick temper: Miss Piggy (The Muppets)
Sanguine – Sociable, charismatic, stimulation seeking; can be impulsive and frivolous: Pippen (The Lord of the Rings)
Phlegmatic- Loyal, trustworthy, stable “nice guys”: Ron Weasley (Harry Potter)
Melancholy – Thoughtful, introspective, and reserved: Halt the Ranger (Ranger’s Apprentice)

My son says I’m “choleric, all the way, worse than Miss Piggy”. Thanks, kid.

It was hard to classify myself, or my characters, as any one of these, a common struggle I have with personality tests. But they are kinda fun. How about you?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me, and if you’re doing NaNoWriMo too, good luck!

Who I Am

Believe and Achieve: How 5 Girls Grabbed Their Goal

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Yesterday, I watched determination turn into victory.

It’s been a long time since our little high school in our small town sent a full girls team to the state cross country meet. Our community is all about football – have you seen the show Friday Night Lights? That’s us. So, cross country doesn’t get much attention or many participants. But we’re a gritty group, running in the summer heat and the freezing wind, through mud puddles and up gravel hills. The football players mock us but we don’t care, because we know they probably couldn’t do what we do.

Six months ago, when we started training in the June humidity, the girls talked about state, but it seemed like a lofty goal. We had five girls – just enough to make a team. Our best runner had a two year old PR of 22 minutes and hadn’t seen times that fast in a while. The other girls were running 24 minutes and slower. When I looked up the results of last year’s regional meet, the girl who placed 20th had a time of 22:29. I wanted state just as much as the girls did, but the stats looked troubling.

I didn’t know what was in their hearts.

Let me tell you about these girls:

One is a senior and who keeps her teammates in line during warm ups and asks for hill repeats. She shows up to every. single. practice. She’s been to state and told me at the beginning of the season that it was her goal to get back.
One plays in the marching band and can’t make it to many team practices. All summer, she got up at 6 am to run by herself. Once school started, she ran on her own, after early morning classes at her church, a full day of school, and three hours of band practice.
One works long hours on Friday nights before our Saturday morning meets. She has pushed harder than I’ve ever seen before this season, vowing not to walk during practices. She has a mean finish line sprint.
One had never broken 29 minutes, but when I asked her to run up hills at practice, she always did. She, too, has worked hard this season, building up her endurance and speed.
One fell 30 feet out of a tree two years ago and has been battling pain and restrictions ever since. She can only run a few times a week, at a limited pace and for limited time, but she is a hard core competitor who hates to lose and won’t let pain stop her.

morning-run — Five girls got up early for a brisk morning run.

They worked hard all season, and as championship meets approached, I reviewed the stats and told them they had a decent shot of making it to regions and state, but they would have to do it as a team. The chances of any one making it on her own were seriously slim.

They huddled. Schemed. Asked what else they could do get better. Cut sugar and carbs and fat out of their diets. Angrily ate carrots while their siblings ate chicken nuggets. Posted inspirational quotes and pictures on social media. Built each other up.

Last week, at the conference meet, they all PR’d (that means ran a personal record), some by more than two minutes. (That’s huge, people.) They finished second in their conference and carried a trophy home that night, riding a high of pure joy, knowing they’d advanced as a team to the regional meet.

Yesterday was the final hurdle. The team had to finish in the top six to qualify for state. The race was tough. We had targets from other teams to pass. A pack of opponents was ahead of one of our girls. Coach told her to catch up. “No problem,” she said. Another one fell twice; pushed one time, tripped the other. “It’s okay,” she said after the race, cleaning the dirt off her knee “I pulled through!”

We had to wait for over an hour for the results. They had done so much, but would it be enough to advance to state? They wanted to know; I couldn’t tell them.

Finally, the meet director announced the results. Sixth place. Our girls. Screams erupted. They huddled again. Don’t ask me what was said after that; I couldn’t hear a thing.

They are going to state.

If there is a goal you’re striving for, and it seems so hard to reach, remember this group of girls who pulled together with hard work and determination.

Thanks ladies.

Do you have an inspiring story you can share?

Awesome Young Adult Books/Book reviews

Book Reviews for Fans of YA and Non-fiction

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 6 Comments

If you want to become a better writer, you’re supposed to read a lot, specifically in the genre that fits your writing fancy. So, over the past few months I’ve consumed a fair amount of YA Contemporary. Here’s a micro review of each book, plus a nod to the non-fiction piece chosen by my book club (non-fiction is NOT one of my writing or reading fancies, but this one was pretty good, so I’ll share…)

Story of a Girl, by Sara Zarr

***National Book Award Finalist

When she was 13 years old, Deanna Lambert spent a lot of time in the back seat of her brother’s friend’s car — until the night her father found her. Three years later, stories about Deanna “the slut” still haunt her daily life. Her father won’t look at her, her brother likes to keep her close and “out of trouble”, and her mother just wants to solve everything with ice cream. Deanna takes a job at a local pizza joint before she realizes that her brother’s friend, and her former backseat companion, works there. But being near Tommy again forces Deanna to face her past and rewrite her story.

I liked this novel the best of the three Sara Zarr books I read because it touches on a topic faced by nearly every teen. The characters and family dynamics are real, flawed, and heartbreaking. Deanna aches for love and affection, to feel “chosen”, which leads her to make poor choices, with dramatic ramifications. This is a great book for teens, especially girls, as it tactfully and honestly explores how sex can impact your life.

I listened to the audio book of Story of a Girl, which is performed by Sara Zarr. Her reading was somewhat flat, and I think I would have preferred to read the novel myself.

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

As kids, Jennifer and Cameron were social outcasts who found comfort in each other until Cameron mysteriously disappeared. Years later, Jennifer has transformed herself into “Jenna”- skinny, popular, and dating. When Cameron comes back into the picture, Jennifer must revisit her past and the bittersweet memories that link her to Cameron.

I read this book the fastest, as Zarr does a nice job of keeping up the pace and intrigue by switching back and forth between past and present narratives. Sweethearts does a great job of exploring the difference between who people think we are and who we feel like inside. Jennifer’s relationship with Cameron is complicated and ultimately unfinished, leaving me feeling unsatisfied at the end. Zarr in general seems big on ambiguous endings, which can be frustrating, but is also very realistic.

How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Jill MacSweeney is grieving the loss of her loving father and trying to figure out who she is, now that he’s gone. Mandy Kalinowki has never known love and wants to find it for her baby, as well as for herself. Jill’s mother brings these two extremely different girls together when she agrees to adopt Mandy’s yet unborn child, no strings attached.

The set up for this book is unusual, and slightly far-fetched, but the emotions explored – wanting love, losing love, learning to let go – are realistic. All of the main characters need saving, and it’s interesting to watch how each of them finds happiness. This ending was the least ambiguous and the closest thing to happy for me.

Along for the Ride, Sarah Dessen

Perfect daughter Auden hasn’t slept at night for years, ever since her parents started fighting. She blames herself for their divorce. Needing a break from her overbearing mother, she decides to spend the summer living with her father, his wife, and their new baby at their beach house. But even with a change of environment, she can’t shake her insomnia, and that’s how she meets Eli, a fellow loner who shows her around the beach town in the wee hours of the night. Eli helps Auden experience the carefree teenage life she never had, and Auden helps Eli release the guilt he feels over a friend’s death.

This is the ultimate beach book, best read in the sand. (Sadly, it’s October and that’s a slim possibility for most of us.) I could relate to Auden’s need to unwind and expand her comfort zone, and I loved the beach setting. Use this one to escape the winter blahs or put it on your TBR for next June.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

This non-fiction book tells the story of the nine University of Washington crew members who beat the odds to qualify for, and win, the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin.

At the beginning, Boys in the Boat includes lots of extraneous details about the crew members and their families, and I struggled a bit. As it progresses, the book narrows its focus to one amazing crew member, Joe Rantz, and his triumphant rise over poverty and neglect. It also includes snippets about the rise of Hitler in Germany and his impact upon the 1936 Olympics. This is a feel good story about hard work and perseverance, and ultimately, I liked it. I listened to the audio book, which is performed with enthusiasm by Edward Herrman.

I never choose to read non-fiction on my own, so it’s a good thing my book club prompts me to do it at least once a year.

Have you read any good YA or non-fiction lately? Share a bit and help us choose our next book!

Thanks for adding to the discussion!

Who I Am

Who I Am: Traditions

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Why do so many traditions revolve around food? Or is that just me? Birthday cake, birthday chocolate chip pancakes, cherry cheese pie at Thanksgiving, rum cake at Christmas. You can see why I ~~love~~ need to run. My traditions will shoot me up three sizes if I’m not careful.

Of all my foodie traditions, I cling to roll-out sugar cookies the tightest. Sure they’re yummy, but they also remind me of my Oma. As a child, I only had one living grandparent, my mother’s mother. I called her Oma since my father is Dutch and that’s the Dutch word for grandma.

I didn’t get to see Oma much while I was growing up. She lived in Wisconsin while we, because of my Dad’s career with the US Army, hit several locations in the US and finally settled in Virginia. However, she came to visit every Christmas, and her presence, along with her off key singing of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” signaled the holiday.

By the time I was in junior high (aka “middle school”) a neurological disease had confined my mother to a wheelchair. I learned to cook at a young age, and Oma tutored me in a challenging, but indispensable skill: rolling out sugar cookies.

She taught me several important aspects of a successful sugar cookie, including:

the right recipe (We liked the one from Mrs. Beatty, my kindergarten teacher. I believe Oma tracked her down in a grocery store to get it.)
the chill factor (the dough needs at least an hour in the fridge)
proper rolling technique (don’t push to hard, roll in several directions, flour the rolling pin, keep the dough about a quarter inch thick)
keep cookies of similar size on each baking sheet (don’t mix big Christmas trees with tiny bells- no one wants to smell burning bells)

Every year I looked forward to picking out cookie cutters and baking with her. Decorating them evolved into an art form similar to painting. Oma + cookies = Christmas.

Getting the dough the right thickness is key. — Um, how many cutters are you going to use there, son?

Oma died before my first child was born, but I kept up the tradition with my kids; we’ve rolled dough from early ages. I’m not going to pretend I’ve never snapped over spilled flour or dough dropped on the floor, but overall, we’ve had a good time. I finally figured out that it worked best to operate in shifts, one child at a time. Each child gets a ball of dough to roll out and cut, and he or she uses the remnants that can’t be rolled to form the first letter of his or her name. The oldest two are losing interest in cutting, although eating is still a passion. (This year we’ll have to find a vegan recipe for daughter.)

You are never too young to appreciate a good sugar cookie. Christmas 2008

After all the cookies are baked, we sit down with frosting of multiple colors to decorate. Even my dad, who the kids call “Opa” (you guessed it, the Dutch word for Grandpa) pitches in … on the adorning and the eating. I still need to remind everyone not to lick their fingers while handling the cookies!

cookie-one — Cookie decorating- a holiday art

Do traditions in your family revolve around food as well? Tell us about one!

One more pic, because it’s just so adorable:

Once upon a time... Christmas 2005 — Once upon a time… Christmas 2005

Thanks for stopping by!

If you’d like to participate in the Who I Am project, visit Dana’s blog for details.

How to encourage reading/News from book business

A New Way to Read Cheap: Amazon Prime Reading

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments

The setting for this weekend’s amazing discovery: I bounced along in a school bus in the pre-dawn hours of a wet Saturday morning. My middle school aged companions played music (can I tell you how much I hate “Turn Down for What?”) and their latest digital gaming obsession, something about cards and clans.

I wanted something to do.

A quick clean up of my inbox brought me to Word Nerd heaven (thank you Amy Lynn Andrews): Amazon just launched Prime Reading! Prime members now have unlimited access to over 1,000 titles, including fiction, non-fiction, and my favorite, magazines. I downloaded the latest issue of Runner’s World and read about Steve Prefontaine to inspire me on the way to our cross country meet.

I needed something to read and had it within 60 seconds. My goodness, we live in a golden age. Just another reason why the $99 annual Prime fee is worth it.

Prime Reading Details

It’s pretty simple. If you have a Prime membership, you can access over 1,000 books, Kindle singles, and periodicals, as many as you want. You don’t need a Kindle, just the Kindle app so you can read what you download on pretty much any device.

We’ve had Kindles for years and have sometimes used the Kindle Lending Library. With that program, you can borrow one free Kindle book per month. The selection isn’t stellar, but we read The Hunger Games series through that program. Prime Reading should be even better.

The options in Prime Reading look decent. Here are some examples.

In Teens:

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, fantasy, 2015.
Half Way Home by Hugh Howey, science fiction, 2014.
Ella’s Twisted Senior Year by Amy Sparling, contemporary realistic, 2016.

In Popular:

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, self-help, 2014.
Travel Guides for multiple countries by The Lonely Planet
The Monster That Ate My Socks by A.J. Cosmo, children’s, 2012

In Magazines, all the most recent issues of:

People
Sports Illustrated
Entertainment Weekly
Runner’s World
Shape

I’m definitely going to use this in the future – even if it’s just for the magazines. It will come in handy when my kids say, “Mom, I need something to read… now!”

Another Prime benefit…

As an aside, Prime Music has also been a big hit in our house the past few months. Daughter, a music fanatic, used to spend a ton at the iTunes store. Thank goodness her cousin introduced her to Prime Music. Since summer, she’s downloaded over 200 songs, all costs included in our annual fee. We can’t use the streaming part of the Amazon music app – that would kill our data, and we’ve got serious data issues – but the downloads aren’t too data costly, and Daughter often uses public wifi to get her tunes.

With Prime Music, and the Amazon music app, you can make playlists and even import other music (like iTunes songs) into Amazon music. I use bluetooth to play it in the van. Last week I downloaded Jesse’s Girl by Rick Springfield. Remember that one?

Like the books and movies available through Prime, you won’t be able to find everything, especially not recent releases (I had to suck it up and buy the new Shawn Mendes album), but you can still find a lot that meets your fancy.

Have you tried Prime Reading? What do you think? How about any of the other Prime benefits?

Perhaps my kids should pay part of the annual Prime fee… 😉

Thanks for adding to the discussion.