Karen Sandler

Category: Introduction

  • Can You Be TOO Honest?

    To say I am a lousy liar is an understatement. I find it nearly impossible to even fudge the truth. In fact, sometimes I bore people to tears (or thoroughly confuse them) with my compulsion to include every detail when I’m telling a story. I’ve had to work hard to “edit” myself in conversations so that I cut to the chase, particularly when I’m chatting up complete strangers at a party or while on line at the store.

    I used to be alarmingly frank as a youngster. I’d open a birthday or Christmas present and if it was something I truly didn’t like, my face would tell all. I’d try to smile and say thank you, but my expression would have already spilled the beans with the gift giver. I’m more tactful now (thank God) and can screen my gut reaction. In fact, many times the gift that didn’t appeal when I first opened it becomes a favorite, so it’s just as well I hide my disappointment.

    I can also be rather annoying if I realize I haven’t paid for an item properly at the store. I’ve brought cashiers to towering rages because they gave me a penny too much in change and I insisted on giving it back. Sorry, ma’am, just trying to be honest.

    I didn’t make anybody mad, but I did complicate things today at WalMart. I had loaded my cart with cat food for my ravenous feline horde. You know how fussy cats are. I had to carefully hand-select the 24 individual cans of Fancy Feast to make sure they were all varieties Casper and Zak would eat. (Go ahead, dog lovers, laugh. The cat lovers understand.) When I got to the register, the clerk didn’t want to ring up the 54 cents times 24. He had to account for each of the 6 varieties I’d chosen.

    He finished ringing everything up and I paid, but the total didn’t seem like quite enough. I stepped just outside and counted the cans of Fancy Feast on the receipt. I re-counted a couple times. Sigh. I’d only paid for 21 cans.

    A lot of people (maybe most) would have just walked on, headed to their cars and forgotten about it. Actually, it’s likely none of those people would have bothered to count how many cans they’d paid for in the first place. But I did count and once I knew I’d underpaid, I had to go back and tell someone.

    First the clerk said, “Boy, you must really want to go to heaven,” then she suggested they just give me the cans. I would have been okay with that, but I was also perfectly fine with paying for them. In the end, someone rang up the three cans and I forked over the additional money.

    So, am I too honest? Is this more a compulsion to get everything to total up correctly or is it that I don’t want to cheat someone out of what’s their due (yes, even WalMart)? I doubt that I’m going to change anytime soon. It’s just something I’ve accepted about myself. But I do wonder sometimes if there’s something a little hinky about my impulse for extreme honesty.

    So, what do you think? Is it time I learned the art of the little white lie?

  • The Popular Girls (a confession)

    I was most decidedly not one of the popular girls in high school. I was nerdy before anyone knew what a nerd was, and before being a nerd became a kind of popular of its own. I was smart but socially so inept, I never gave even the nice popular kids a chance to be my friend.

    My yearbook photo from Hawthorne High School

    Cosmetics completely baffled me so I went without. It took my mom whispering in my ear, “Go put on some deodorant,” to save me from stinking (I showered, and washed my hair, once a week).  I even went to school one day with only one leg shaved. It was my first try at shaving, but I ran out of time and had to run for the bus before I could shave the other.

    No surprise my favorite people at school were teachers. There was my English teacher, Mrs. Luckensmeyer, who loved my writing and Mrs. Mark who called me a genius. The geometry teacher who was thrilled by my A’s and the very patient algebra teacher who nudged me along when quadratic equations seemed impossible to understand.

    Most of the popular girls just ignored me (although as I mentioned above, I didn’t give them much opportunity to get to know me). Some of them were plain mean, relishing in their hurtful words, spoken loud enough for everyone to hear. I sometimes wonder what happened to those girls. I hope they found a little compassion in their lives.

    Me (on the left) and my sister, Linda, all decked out for a Creedence Clearwater Revival concert at the fabulous Forum in Inglewood, CA

    Here’s where the confession comes in–because of a few mean girls, I have this judgement still lodged in my heart that casts a negative light on all popular girls. I don’t trust them. I’m suspicious of their success. It can carry over into my writing career when I resent authors who are bigger names than me.

    Very unfair of me, I know. I try to tell that to the teenager still inside me, but her feelings are still hurt. Which is crazy, considering how many years ago all those slights happened. And there were plenty of wonderful times in high school, too. Why focus on the negative?

    So mea culpa to all the popular girls (and boys) I might have judged. If you happen to stumble across this blog and remember me (I was Karen Stier then), let me know how you’re doing now, whether you were one of the popular kids or amongst the not-so-popular. In fact, I’d love to hear from anyone, both those in high school now and those for whom high school is a distant memory. Were you the popular kid? One of the not-so-popular? How was it then? How is it now? Let me know.

  • Mystery of Spring

    When I lived in Los Angeles, I never really experienced spring. It was generally cool in winter and warm in summer, but there wasn’t that explosion of newness in April like there is here in Northern California. In L.A., there were peculiarities like 100 degrees in January that confused the heck out of my peach tree and the annual June gloom (day after day of overcast) before summer really kicked into gear. But no definitive seasons.

    But other than the false spring in February that tends to fool us every year, we do have real seasons here in the foothills. Plenty of rain, hail, frost and the occasional snowfall in winter, blistering hot dry days in summer and wonderful green springs and red-gold autumns.

    The coolest part of spring is seeing my garden come to life.In particular, I am utterly enamored of tulips. I’ve never had tulips growing in my very own garden. When we pulled out our lawn and replaced it with gravel pathways that meander through flowerbeds filled with hardy water-stingy plants, tulips were included in the design. The colors are just so amazing and the flowers are so long-lasting, seeing them outside my window lifts my spirits. They are such a wonderful messenger of spring.

    Another delight this spring was the appearance of a mystery flower in my front yard. I’m used to volunteers popping up. Red pyracantha berries are a favorite of birds and their droppings sprout those prickly shrubs all over the yard. I even have a 25+ foot tall valley oak tree in the back yard that wasn’t here when we moved in. According to the local Master Gardeners mystery plant is a Harlequin flower from a sparaxis bulb.

    In addition to tulips, it’s always exciting to see the redbud bloom. A native shrub around here, it’s often the first color I see, its magenta flower a beautiful contrast to the dull green surrounding it. Then there’s the massive wall of wisteria that covers my backyard pergola. Our wisteria is monstrously large, its whip-like runners sometimes reaching twenty feet or more up into our redwoods. I sometimes wonder if that wisteria will be knocking on the door someday, demanding entrance.

    A few more pretty photos:

  • I Fib Not, Fibonacci

    I can be a real glutton for punishment. For instance, in college, I majored in math with a physics minor. Then I went on to earn an MS in computer science. I avoided continuing on to a PhD because it alarmed me how much gray hair the doctoral candidates had.

    All along, I also indulged my writing obsession. I wrote plenty of science fiction short stories (my first baby steps along the path to writing my YA novel, TANKBORN). I also enjoyed writing sonnets (yes, really). My preferred form was Shakespearean, fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g rhyme scheme.

    Then I discovered acrostic sonnets. Azimov’s Science Fiction magazine had a contest for best acrostic sonnet and although I’d missed the deadline for entry, I got hooked on writing the devilish things.

    So, what’s an acrostic sonnet? Start with a 14-letter word, phrase, proper name, then use the letters of the word/phrase/name to start each line of the sonnet. The sonnet itself should have something to do with the word/phrase/name.

    So, what did I write about? The nerdy stuff I was studying in school. QUEUEING THEORY and QUANTUM PHYSICS. Also a couple of Trek-related tries.

    I bring this up because I learned over the weekend from fellow writer Greg Pincus about Fibonacci poems. They’re based on Fibonacci numbers, which start with 0 & 1, then proceed from there with subsequent numbers equal to the sum of the two previous. Therefore, after 0 & 1 come 1 (=0+1), 2 (=1+1), 3 (=1+2), 5 (=2+3), 8(=3+5), 13(=5+8), 21(=8+13), etc. The poems are written using 1 syllable in the first line, 1 in the second, two in the third, three in the fourth line, five in the sixth line and on and on. I guess if the poem goes on long enough, you’ll get some pretty long lines.

    So, I could have just written some Fibonacci poems, right? I’ve written plenty of decent, self-respecting poetry. This would be a fun, new form.

    But no-o-o. I had to notice that “Fibonacci Poems” has 14 letters. The exact number needed for an acrostic sonnet.

    I was doomed. My obsession took over.

    So, here it is. My newest acrostic sonnet. My apologies to Greg and fans of Fibonacci poetry everywhere.

    First, I should say I studied math in school.
    In fact, I’m what you’d likely call a nerd
    Because I think that calculus is cool.
    Oh, I can integrate x to the 3rd.
    Now, though, I write. Equations have become
    A sentence on the page. And x and y
    Combine to make a word, and not a sum,
    Creating stories, no more graphing lines.
    I’ve heard there is a certain kind of verse
    Prepared by counting syllables from one
    One, two, then three, then five…it’s somewhat terse,
    Embracing sequences and number fun.
    Most people may not like to do their math,
    So poetry can trick them down that path.

  • If Only They Pooped $$$

    Owning a horse has been a glorious dream of mine since I was a wee thing. More than one Christmas I asked my parents for a pony. Christmas morning, with a heart full of hope, I’d race out to the back yard and search for that beautiful steed I longed for. No dice. The closest I got to my dream was a collection of Breyer horses.

    It was decades before I could buy that equine o’ mine. I had to grow up and marry a really nice guy who not only earns a decent living, but actually is okay with me spending so much of his hard earned cash on a hobby he has no interest in pursuing himself. We also had to move away from L.A. to an area where facilities to keep a horse were plentiful and merely rather expensive as opposed to heart-stoppingly outrageous.

    Financially, I would have been much better off if I’d kept the Breyers (which have increased in value) and skipped the full-size, live-action equivalent (which sucks up lucre faster than a shop-vac). How expensive is it to keep a horse? Take the money you have in your bank account. Multiply by two. Add in whatever take home pay the government lets you keep. Throw in those quarters you just found in the sofa cushions. You’re half-way there.

    Buying the horse itself is the cheap part, and in some ways the easiest. You can always find someone’s back yard “pet” they’re willing to part with for only a couple thousand. Of course, there’s a reason they’re selling so cheap, and I learned the hard way a whole textbook full of reasons.

    My first horse was a supposed “beginner friendly” mare who reared (with me riding). It took a lot of work and a huge loss to sell her on down the road. I lucked out with couple of nice geldings next (Rudy and Ben), although Ben was probably ten years older than advertised. I took a chance on another mare next (the fearsome Georgie), who took off like a bat-outta-hell at every opportunity. Bye-bye Georgie.

    Next came Indy, a wonderful Morgan gelding who put the fun back into riding for me. I swore off mares forever. Then Indy got a little hitch in his git-along and I had to retire him. And wouldn’t you know it–the next horse I fell in love with was a mare. Beautiful Belle, who occasionally takes off like a much more lackadaisical, less committed bat-outta-hell. What is it with mares and running off?

    I do enjoy her, but just standing around in her stall, she costs me bucks (the paper folding type, not the kick up her heels kind). Besides the obvious room and board, there are feet to trim and shoe, maintenance items like wormer, vaccinations and bi-monthly Legend shots (which keep her joints moving). There’s the expense of tack (the cost of saddles alone is enough to make you swoon), fly masks in summer and horse blankets in winter. There are treats (Belle loves her treats). Then of course, when I do finally climb on, there are the weekly riding lessons during which I valiantly strive to counteract age and gravity to look graceful in the saddle.

    All to fulfill a dream. Yes, I love it. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to own and ride a horse. But if only once in a while I could find a twenty or two in those steaming piles of manure.