Dear Sunday Letter Readers,
How are you? Fine I hope. When I was a kid, I started letters to friends in this way with six words, six syllables. The opposite of compelling. Flat as a flitter. Really grabs you and makes you want to keep reading, doesn’t it?
Makes you say, “Boy, I bet she’ll be a writer someday.”
?
The important thing to remember is that we all start somewhere whether we’re learning to walk or read, learning to write code for our blogs, learning to clean the p-trap so the bathroom sink will drain in good time.
Bottom line. We don’t get anywhere if we don’t start somewhere. This goes double for writers.
Question: Do you come from a place where flat as a flitter is/was a common phrase? If not, here’s all you need to know==> A flitter is flatter than a pancake. Flatter than a delta field. The flattest thing ever.
Free White Milk:
I’m starting this week’s Sunday Letter with exciting news! I won SECOND PLACE in the Writer’s Digest Short Short Fiction Contest (1,500 words or less) with my piece entitled Free White Milk. Results haven’t been posted online yet, but I read the congratulatory email about thirty-two times because I couldn’t believe it.
Only hours before the email hit my inbox, I quit writing.
Threw in the towel.
Not really. I simply took a two day rest which I recommend from time to time. (This writing thing can be all consuming, sometimes discouraging, brain depleting work.)
And then! Good news arrives from someone I don’t know. And like a pat on the back delivered at just the right time, I’m diving deep again.
Not to take away from second place, but the first place winner gets a paid trip to New York. The idea that my story was THAT close to first place astounds me.
Writers, it’s true—you can’t win if you don’t submit. And you can’t submit if you don’t write.
See the conundrum?
Whew. I’m not a Neanderthal!
For Christmas, Momma got me a 23andMe Kit. I spit in a tube, mailed it off, and received my results a few days ago. The results are fascinating! It’s like having your palm read by God.
Things I learned: I am 99.4% European (60% British/Irish with a small slice of French/German thrown in) and .3% Native American. My maternal DNA lineage has a Silk Road connection to a chieftain named Yu Hong, who was buried about 200 miles southwest of Beijing in 592 AD. I’m happy to report I have less Neanderthal DNA than the average person. For whatever reason, this delights me.
I am not a carrier for any of the 42 horrible diseases tested, but I am at slight increased risk for blood clots and possible macular degeneration. I am predisposed to weigh more than average (RUDE). And I sleep deeply yet move 16 times per hour. (Seems mutually exclusive doesn’t it?)
Results are specific. For instance, I now know that no matter how long I wait to pluck my eyebrows, I’ll never have a unibrow. Or back hair. A cleft chin was never in the cards for me.
After scanning through pages and pages of reports, I had aha thoughts like, “So that’s why I drink too much coffee.” Or “No wonder my hair gets frizzy in humidity.” 23 and Me answers questions for problems you didn’t know you had. It provides excuses for quirks you thought were bad habits.
Do it! Go get your kit and let’s see if we belong to the same DNA family. (#notsponsored)
Calls in the Dark:
Something I recently learned without aid of DNA testing…
Commonplace items I grew up with are now so strange they are displayed as historical educational artifacts in MUSEUMS. And if that isn’t enough to jolt the membrane of your mitochondrion, instructions to use said obsolete items are also on display.
Take, for instance, this rotary telephone, part of a permanent exhibit on Ozark history at the Shiloh Museum in Springdale. When I saw this I laughed out loud and cried a little inside.
Isn’t it odd how one day something is ordinary and then—poof—it’s gone. And, even though it’s gone, it takes a while for the total disappearance of the actual thing to sink in, if it ever does.
In case you’ve forgotten or were born in the mid-80s or 90s or yesterday…
To call in the dark, pick up the receiver, wait for the “dial tone,” place your finger in the first hole below the finger stop (this is the “0”) and pull dial around until you strike the finger stop. Let the dial return uninterrupted. The operator will answer. Giver her the number you want. She will assist you.
In all seriousness, I highly recommend a visit to the Shiloh Museum when you’re in Northwest Arkansas.
First Buttercup:
I made a promise to my daffodils. “The first to bloom will get your picture published on the blog,” I said.
Not that we’re having a race, but someone has to be first. Competition isn’t all bad.
Here she is. She outdid herself.
School Kitchen Tip #2:
A few days ago, I bought a new broom at Home Depot. Right off I managed to sweep my entire downstairs without following any of the official tips from The School Kitchen Textbook (c. 1915). This brings me to today’s Sunday Letter school kitchen tip (Chapter II, Sweeping and Dusting):
“The dress for home kitchen work should be comfortable in style and of washable material. The skirt should be plain and short, and the sleeves large enough to be easy over the elbow. Protect the hair with a sweeping-cap of thin material. Put away or cover all food before beginning to sweep the kitchen or pantry. It makes needless work and confusion through the house to remove the furniture into other rooms before sweeping. If you learn how to sweep without raising much dust and how to take up and hold dust, you can sweep a room without disarranging furniture. Brush the dirt into a dust pan and burn it at once, if possible, opening the pipe damper that the odor may go up the chimney.”
THIS deserves a spot in the Shiloh Museum.
***
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Letter.
Your friend 4ever,
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
If you’re new to my Sunday Letters (this is only #4), read past installments by clicking the links below.
[tweetthis]My Sunday Letter today: Free White Milk | Neanderthals | Calls in the Dark @23andMe @WritersDigest #SundayMorning [/tweetthis]
Musical Pairing:
The Foundations, Build Me Up
I am so glad that you did not quit. i look forward to your Sunday letters. What a charming gesture. Though I know that it is not addressed directly to me, but it just seems so much more personal than some of the other things that I read. I have a small vase of beautiful daffodils in my kitchen window. Those are the ones that have the misfortune to have been planted behind the huge planter of some unknown dead looking plant that will soon revive and be gorgeous this whole summer. It is funny that you wrote about emptying your kitchen to sweep. My hubby and I will have been married 52 next month and have had a standing lunch date for years now. Now that he is retired he tries to fix my little world that has taken me 52years to create. His job was to fix things and mine is to try to keep patience when he tries to make me do things the way he thinks it should be done. When we got home Friday, we found that we had lost power for almost 2 hours,so in order to get the fridge back on, we had to pull it out of the enclosure that the cabinet maker built for it. The filter had not been cleaned in just over 2 years so we pulled it out into the center of the kitchen and got it all cleaned. For every cuss word he sputtered, he loved actually having a challenge. He was happy and I, his fetcher of tools and “stuff”, got to clean those forgotten places like that vent.
Thank you so much for this comment. I appreciate that it feels personal to you. That’s my intent, after all, what’s the point if not to build relationships? I’m glad your power was restored. I hope you didn’t lose anything in your freezer!
Congratulations on your placing 2nd in the contest! That is wonderful. We received fresh snowfall today so I enjoyed the first daffodil of spring photo!
Last year we received snow mid-March. I have pictures of my tulips covered in snow. I hope that doesn’t happen this year! Thanks.
Congratulations, Talya! I have almost pulled the trigger on 23andMe several times to find out more about my health issues, but I’m scared of whose hands that information may end up in! Did you use your real name? Haha. Can you tell I’m paranoid??
Thanks, Julianne! I know what you mean about being paranoid. I didn’t worry too much about doing the testing. There are other health surveys included that are optional. And once your results are available, you choose whether or not to make your information available to DNA matches. The information provided really is interesting!
Congratulations, my friend! May your diligence and talent continue to bring rewards, especially firsts, but seconds aren’t shabby at all. You are a great writer, and I’m certain we’ll continue to read and hear great things about you and your work. I’m working my way back to regular writing. I submitted a couple of essays to Chicken Soup this month and have done some journaling, but I need to get back to my blog. You challenge me to do just that. We’re going to Navarre in a couple of weeks. That will be my deadline–post while there.
Thank you Dorothy. I’ve always appreciated your constant support! I’m thrilled with second place. I never expect anything when I enter these contests. Chicken Soup is a great fit for your writing. I know you’ll be happy to get back to inspirational Navarre.
Congrats on 2nd place! That is awesome. I’ve wanted to do 23Nme forever. Geneaology intrigues me and my mother ran into several brick walls. Who knows what I will discover!!
Thank you! It’s probably the biggest award I’ve received since I started writing. You should definitely do 23andme. It is cool!