My first novel, DeVante's Children, will be available as an e-book from Torquere Press February 11 2009.
I am so excited!
It's been a long journey from writing those first chapters to this day.
Writing a novel is tough, and despite that fact that Stephanie Meyer wrote, was solicited by an agent, and published Twilight in 6 months, it's typically not that simple.
Of course, writing fiction for publication is a losing battle - the most beautiful stories are the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we write because we just can't help doing it.
So look for me in February!
DeVante's Children
Gay people are perverts… at least in the minds of Daniel’s dad and step-mother. They didn’t want him around his younger half-sister so they kicked him out of the house. And even though Daniel knew they were being unreasonable, he had plenty of questions about being gay himself. Then he became enthralled by Roderick, ran away from his hometown, and discovered there are stranger things in the world than men who love men.
He didn’t know his first lover was a vampire until Roderick attacked him with such cruelty there could be no other explanation. Roderick insisted that he loved Daniel, but still wouldn’t change him, and Daniel learned his first lesson as an adult; where there is love there can also be pain.
Enter DeVante, Roderick’s creator. He is furious because his personal code of ethics doesn’t allow enslaving mortals for either love or blood. Roderick’s vampire blood is poison to Daniel’s humanity, and Daniel needs to be changed soon or he will die.
When Daniel’s half-sister gets kidnapped, he enlists the talents of his new blood-drinking friends to find her. When he brings her home he expects to become the family hero; instead he’s arrested and charged with the kidnapping. Sometimes you really can’t go home again.
Now Daniel must figure out who he is, what he wants, and if he’s willing to sacrifice another human life to ensure his own survival.
Torquere Press: http://www.torquerepress.com
Monday, December 8, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Sountrack of her life
02.18.08
Ode To My Daughter
I have a girl child.
She makes me tired.
The end.
It is unbelievable how one small being can turn a household upside down upon its right ear. Who would have ever imagined? Ach, but she’s loud. That’s maybe the number one thing I want you, my readers, to understand throughout the next few paragraphs. My child is boisterous and impish and exceptionally loud all the time. Loud when she’s happy. Loud when she’s unhappy. The days of peace are… well, I was going to say few and far between, but really, what days of peace?
Here is the soundtrack of my daughter’s life at this moment in time: “Stop climbing on the lamp and get your jacket on, stop waggling that sassy butt at me, because I’ll spank it, I will, I’m not kidding, stop kicking me and let me get your boots on, stop talking to me in that sassy voice, get out of there, leave my things alone, hey, that’s MINE, put the scissors down because we have to go, c’mon, now, get your jacket on, no, leave the scissors alone and get your jacket on, get your boots – no, your jacket, wait… aarrrrrgggghhhhhh!”
That’s before we ever leave the house.
Then at the grocery store it sounds like this: “No, we don’t need the little kid cart, last time you nearly broke someone’s ankle with it, I said no little cart, no, no, are you listening to me? I said no. We’re not buying Kool-aid, we’re never buying Kool-aid, no, we’re not buying it next time and we’re not buying it for next summer, do you know what’s in that stuff? Get over here. Get. Over. Here. Watch out for that cart, don’t get run over, get out of the way, get over here, not those cookies, they cost $6. Yes, apples are fine, pick out some apples, all right, fine, I’ll pick out the apples, what, watermelon? Ok, yes, you can have watermelon, no, not right this minute, we have to cut it up at home, no you can’t eat the bulk candy, no, I said no, and you didn’t eat the bananas the last time we bought them so we’re not buying any today, we have apples and watermelon, we’re good on fruit… yes, we need an onion, oh for god’s sake, stop screaming, I’m not going to make you eat it, I know you don’t like it but there are other people in this family who eat, you know. Yes, you can pick out the ice cream, yes, you can have one cupcake but you can’t eat it until after dinner. After dinner. No, not before dinner, after dinner. I don’t care that you haven’t had a snack, you’re not eating a cupcake before dinner. No, you don’t need a candy bar, you have a cupcake, yes, I know you can’t eat the cupcake until after dinner, but you won’t be able to eat a candy bar until after dinner either, no, you can’t have a candy bar, you’re getting a cupcake…aaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!”
“Get in the truck. Just get in the truck. Wait, there’s a car coming, okay, now get in the truck, don’t yank my ponytail out while I’m buckling your seat belt, I said don’t, when I say don’t what I mean is Do. Not. Do. That. I’m not crabby, you’re driving me crazy, can you stop talking for 5 minutes? Stop talking. Shhhhh. If we play the Quiet Game will you please stop talking? I can’t turn the radio down because you won’t stop talking and I’m losing my mind. What? How do babies get out of their mommies tummies? Oh good lord, I’m not prepared for this. Do we have to talk about this now, because I swearwe were playing the Quiet Game. Well, ok, the doctor helps them out. No, I can’t explain any more than that because it’s kind of involved, involved means it’s a long story. Oh thank god we’re home. No, you can’t have that cupcake until after dinner. No, after dinner.”
It continues, but I just can’t. I’m exhausted from recreating one snippet of one day. Her eyes sparkle with merriment, her quest for knowledge (as well as for her own way) knows no boundaries. She is infused with joy and intensity from morning until night. I love her madly, laugh at her frequently, and most assuredly cannot remember life before her.
Can't stop laughing
02.12.08
My 4 year old said something today that has me dissolving into giggles every time I hit the rewind button in my mind. I even started shaking with laughter during cuddle time, which is quiet, low key, relax the child into sleep time, but remembering her exact words cracked me up all over again.
I had no idea I was raising a proper little DFL-er, and the moment was just hysterical.
On the way to McDonald’s Playland, my daughter announces that she has to "go really, really bad."
We had left the house, gone to the gas station, and gone back to the house, all within the last 10 minutes, but she only realized she has to "go really, really bad" once we got on the bridge that carries us from one state to another across a lot of water.
Daddy's shop is the next closest bathroom. Her opinion of stopping at the shop to go potty is something like this... "I don't like the bathroom at Daddy's shop. I only like the office. And the workers."
I park next to a tow truck that has my husband’s name and logo across the door.
My little girl calls out, "That's my daddy," in a song-song voice, and then adds, in a public service announcement type of monotone, "Dave's Towing, where the workers come first."
I died. I laughed so hard I was having bladder spasms myself. I was still laughing as we walked into the shop. Where on earth did she hear such a thing? Wait, I mean, not that the guys (and the secretary) aren’t appreciated. They work hard, and being on call 24/7 is not exactly a joy. I know from experience that the phone can be quiet right up until the minute you sit down at a restaurant and order food. Then DPD needs you in 20 minutes or less.
Of course, compared to the boss in the book I’m reading (The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger) my husband is a jewel of a boss. Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s what the workers were thinking when they hired my 4 year old to organize their union. This has something to do with last week’s staff meeting, right?
As we head to the bathroom one of those prize workers calls out, "You don't want to go in there right now."
Oops, there I go giggling again. The daughter is finally tired of not getting the joke, and says, “Why are you laughing, Mom?” and that almost makes it worse. We’re both going to wet ourselves.
“Where did you hear ‘the workers come first’?” I ask her. Usually I have a pretty good clue where she picks this stuff up, but this time I was clueless. I can’t imagine that she’s somehow gotten involved with the Teamsters.
“From Dr. Suzi,” she says, “Only she says ‘where the patients come first.’ I changed it.”
Flash back to this morning when she said, “Kiss my ring,” – I think that was a Rugrats episode, as well. Whew. I thought she’d been watching something wildly inappropriate. Remembering how just yesterday she asked, “Mom, are gown up shows on all night?” which gave me a panic moment of wondering exactly what late-night channel she might have caught a glimpse of.
It’s funny how you like to think you know everything they are exposed to and exactly what goes on in their little heads. But as they get older and learn more you lose track of what they know. And eventually you realize that you probably will never know what goes on inside their heads. For now, she’s perfectly happy to tell me, thank goodness, because otherwise I’d be perpetually confused. And I imagine there will come a time (about ten years from now) when she won’t share what she’s thinking quite so easily. But I hope not.
I suppose my chances will be better if I figure out how to stop laughing, but she’s so funny I’m not sure I’ll ever manage it. Among all the challenges of being a mom there certainly are some powerful gems. The gift of supreme amusement and laughter not the least of them.
Sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.
Dinosaur Logic
01.18.08
She says, “Mom, I can’t go to sleep because I’m scared.”
I’m more aggravated than sympathetic, because this just has the feel of a ploy to stay up past bedtime. Or at least to get me to snuggle in her bed for awhile longer, even though the alarm signaling the end of cuddle time just went off. “What are you afraid of?”
“Bears and dragons and dinosaurs.”
Well, okay, I’m thinking this is easy enough to fix. “It’s winter time and all the bears are hibernating.”
“Every one of them?” she asks.
“Every one. So there’s no reason to be afraid of bears. And there’s no reason to be afraid of dragons because dragons aren’t real.”
“But dinosaurs are real!” she exclaims.
“Ah, well, dinosaurs used to be real. But dinosaurs are extinct, which means they all died long, long before there were ever people on the earth. God made the dinosaurs first, and then they all died, and maybe God thought people were a better idea.”
“But Mom, how come dinosaurs and people never lived on earth together?”
“Because the dinosaurs would have eaten all the people, and God wanted people to live on the earth for thousands and thousands of years.”
“But Papa didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I retrace my words in my head trying to figure out what she’s telling me. It’s funny how we get to know our children so well that we can do that, isn’t it? Like she’ll start telling me a story that started silently in her head a few sentences back, and after a couple more sentences I’ll have caught on to her logic, or realized what movie she’s talking about. We have conversations that would sound so random to a passerby they might think we’re speaking in code.
So after rethinking how I’d just explained God and people and dinosaurs, I figured it out. “No, Papa didn’t live for thousands of years. Maybe God needed Papa more than we did.”
“But we need our Papa!” She’s very definite on this point.
I had no idea my dinosaur explanation would lead to a discussion on why people have to die. But I’ve been expecting these questions, so I’ve had some time to think of answers. And I know my daughter will never settle for just one answer. “I guess we had our turn with Papa and now it’s God’s turn.” That sounds pretty good – she does a lot of taking turns in preschool.
“Do we get another turn?”
I was doing fairly well until this point, but the answer to this question slays me. I feel that squeezing cringe in my nose and behind my eyes, and here comes the sniffles. “No,” I tell her, hardly able to speak, “we don’t.”
“That’s not fair!” she says in her angry little girl voice.
I have to agree. It doesn’t feel fair, not one little bit. I’m not talking anymore because trying not to sob out loud. Partly I’m crying for me, and I know that. But mostly I’m crying for her. I have thirty-six years of memories of my father in my head. Thirty-six years of lessons in right and wrong and honesty and dignity and humor and goodness. She only has four. How much will she remember for herself?
And then I think of my nieces and how they got less time with my dad than I did. And my great niece. She lost her great-grandpa who she knew and loved - how do you explain that to a two year old? I cry some more.
And my mom, oh, my mom, who’s lived every marriage vow written. Who’s been strong, and scared, and sad, and hopeful and everything in between. She’s been his nurse and his cheerleader, his sweetheart, and his partner. And here she is, cut loose to find a new life. It surely isn’t fair.
I’m really on a crying roll now.
But then I realize that we’re lucky, in a way. My dad was only one half of a great set of parents. We still have one half of greatness here on earth to love. I feel a little better when I remind myself of that.
Now that my crying jag is under control, I still need to get my daughter to sleep. “Hey,” I tell her, “we’ll get another turn when we see Papa in Heaven, okay? And we’ll see Grandma tomorrow, so that’s all right.”
She was still awake a few minutes later when I was talking to my mom on the phone. One “good-night, sleep tight” from Grandma, and she snuggled right in.
Yeah, we’ll be okay.
Requiem for my father
12.25.07
When I was a little girl, my daddy was a fireman. I felt so proud that my daddy had such an important job. Other kids were in awe of firefighters, and trucks, and hats, and fire stations – and I was a kid who visited the firehouse regularly. My dad showed me all the equipment, let me check out the inside of the truck, and pointed way, way, way up in the hose closet so I could see the hoses hanging to dry. They looked like huge jungle pythons to me. I think he loved his job, because I can’t think of a single instance that he ever complained about it.
How do you explain to a 4 year old at Christmas time that her Papa is dying? She has waited so long for Christmas. She loved decorating the tree and played for hours with the figures in the nativity scene. She begged for pretty lights outside our house like on the houses we drive past every day.
She understands dying, kind of. Well, at least in the sense that the goldfish that no longer swam or breathed was fun to flush down the toilet. She has a vague concept of Heaven, and God, but not a very clear idea. In that respect she’s like a lot of people. She understands that we’re sad about Papa being sick, and that these days Mommy cries an awful lot. “I’m not worried about Papa,” she told me, “4 year olds don’t worry about things.”
I wasn’t worried about Papa, either. If you knew my father you understand, and if you didn’t know him… ah, well, mere words will never do him justice. He was a man of honor, and dignity, and humor, with a concrete sense of right and wrong. During this sad time of good-byes, my brother told me, “I could call him about anything and he always had the answers.” No kidding, I thought, how much easier our lives might have been if we had understood that when we were younger.
As my brother and I grew up and made mistakes, our father bailed us out from time to time. But the help wasn’t offered, it was something we had to ask for. It dashed our pride a little bit to ask, because we were raised to believe that grown-ups are expected to take care of themselves. And yet… there was the safety net, only one request away.
He was the kind of man to whom you apply the words, “fine” and “upstanding” without hesitation. He would regularly wash my mom’s car, and then top off her gas tank so she’d never run low. He always knew where to get the best deal on anything. When I was 13 he took me to a Motley Crue concert because I was too young to go with friends. Talk about self-sacrifice!
He was the man you could say anything to, talk to about anything, spark a rousing debate, and then agree to disagree. We didn’t have to worry about reconciliation or apologies here at the end. We didn’t have unresolved personal issues. We loved him and he loved us, without reservation.
Let it be a tribute to Solvay Hospice House that my busy, often high-energy, little girl loved it there. Something about the environment calmed her immensely, and gave her amazingly good control over her behavior. I spent a lot of time with my dad during his last days, and my daughter did, too. The last time my little girl saw him, my dad raised his hand and said, “Gimme five,” and she did. How’s that for a fabulous goodbye?
My goodbye was a bit more emotional. I told him I was so sad he had to go, and that I would miss him so much, and he said he was so sad to leave us. But he knew he was going to a wonderful place, a place without pain or suffering or cancer.
And my daddy died the way he lived, with honor, with dignity, and without fear.
The Force
12.09.07
Sometimes I feel sorry for the world, for the force I have unleashed upon it.
Who knew?
Who knew that I would create a creature of such monstrous determination, such whirling, stomping, dancing, leaping, forward momentum that heaven help anyone or anything that blocks her path?
Take grocery shopping, for instance. Simple enough, we need food, we go to the food store to get some. It’s a fairly regular occurrence, and one that generally holds no real surprises.
I have no idea why it went so badly last time. I had a list. Usually, “Whoops, that’s not on the list,” works like a charm. It’s a neutral third party. It’s clear cut – it’s not on the list, therefore we aren’t buying it. Simple.
The list works because I let her brainstorm with me what to put on it. Oreos? Hmm, well, we haven’t had Oreos for a while, so sure. Let’s put Oreos on the list. Microwave popcorn? Mmm, yup, it goes on the list. Apples? No problem. Apples are on the list. Macaroni & Cheese – hell yeah, that’s on the list in four different varieties.
Over-priced watermelon - not on the list. Chocolate oranges – the fancy ones you bang on the counter that split into neat little slices of chocolate with a hint of orange flavor – not on the list. No, not on the list. No, that doesn’t mean scream for grandma and see if she’ll put it on her list, it means, “NO, it’s NOT on the list and we are NOT buying it.”
When my daughter is not happy she is not quiet about it. Especially when she can run from mom to grandma and back not being happy.
You know how at the grocery store you tend to sort of browse the same aisles with the same people? You meet up in produce or juice, and sort of keep passing and saying excuse me to the same few people pretty much the whole time you’re in the store. Well, by aisle 8 I was feeling pretty sorry for those people.
By the time we reached the meat department and I said “excuse me” to those same people for the 64859628th time since I aisle 1, I was fried. Ok, fine, we’re just going to check out and wait for grandma in the truck. I studied the check-out lines. Could I wait, check-out, bag my groceries, AND leave the store with a living, breathing heathen?
No. I could not.
The whole way out to the truck I’m thinking, is it too much to ask to want to buy FOOD? I mean, really. Bless the Salvation Army bell-ringer who wished us a Happy Holiday and tried to get my daughter to smile. My daughter who was freaking out because there was a stuffed animal in the abandoned cart. Screaming, crying, twisting, feet-dragging kind of freaking out.
Now I ask you why are there stuffed animals at the grocery store? Do we poor benighted parents not have enough objects of desire to navigate in our retail lives as it is? The grocery store used to be a fairly safe zone – huge bags of M&M’s (not on the list), one aisle of cookies (easily avoided), and cheap happy child-lottery machines lined up in a row at the end. Except that suddenly there are stuffed animals in aisle 1. Thanks a lot.
Anyway. We went to the truck, where we had an attitude adjustment. Promises were made and deals were struck, and we decided perhaps we could retrieve the abandoned cart, grab some milk, and survive the check-out line.
I like to think that my quiet, snuffling, well-behaved child received some smirks or at least wan smiles from the people we’d completely annoyed throughout half of the grocery store, the ones who were no doubt thinking, if that were my kid we’d be going outside for an attitude adjustment. But no, we’d lost our place and made our selections amid a new group of co-shoppers, shoppers who probably thought Mommy is a big meanie. Especially the grandmotherly woman my daughter was talking to while I was picking out cheese. The part of the conversation I overheard was in regards to the recent attitude adjustment, and it would not get me nominated for mommy of the year.
She is a force, I tell you. I cannot imagine what sort of an adult she will be, but I expect her to be a mover and a shaker. I used to think she’d be a movie-star, based on her penchant for drama, but these days I’m thinking more along the lines of director or producer. More than anything she loves to be the boss. Demands to be the boss. The boss with a voice that will be heard. And by golly, if she’s not happy, you will hear it.
The world has my sympathy, but hopefully by the time the world has to contend with her, my job will be done. And if the world comes knocking at my door, I’ll just give a toast with my martini glass and say, “May the Force be with you, because heaven knows you’ll never win if it’s against you.”
Musing the muse
11.25.07
Five and a half days and 14,700 words to go. I want to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. I really do. Now, there’s no way my story will be told in 50,000 words, and I recognize that. My characters are seeming like real people, with jobs, and histories, and speech impediments. But all the ways they are interconnected and the means with which they will resolve their issues remain a mystery – even to me.
Floating around my head are the scene-by-scene bits and pieces, the “today everybody’s in the psych unit, but where will they be tomorrow?” kind of stuff. Baby steps that get my people together and get them moving in the direction of the big finish.
I don’t have a clue as to what that big finish is yet.
Meanwhile. Life intervenes. Children need baths, everybody needs clean clothes, there’s a Thanksgiving meal to cook, and a house to clean up so we can welcome guests. There are friends to see, and a job to go to, a column to write, and sniffles, coughs, cramps and aches. Carpel Tunnel flares up and it’s hard for me to lift anything heavier than a full coffee mug (thank the stars I can still lift a full coffee mug). And I dream of making a living at this?
Yes. Yes I do. And this is why…
Because there comes a point around page 100 where the story I’m telling ceases to be my own, and begins to belong to the characters. I am just a vessel now, the not-so-arrogant creator who’s only true responsibility is to make sure the sentences hit the page in the right order while making some kind of sense. My job is to write without using the word “really” in every sentence.
Did I know that Olivia had twin daughters who died shortly after their birth? No, I did not. Olivia told Jaxx every detail and I cried my eyes out while transcribing the conversation. The control-freak in my head was screaming, “What? Where did this come from? This background makes Olivia important to the novel, but you can’t introduce someone important on page 100, are you crazy?”
That night I went to bed stunned and emotionally exhausted. As I fell asleep… I realized that Jaxx’s boyfriend was the father of those twins, the boy-villain in Olivia’s story who was unable to step up to the plate and be a man in the face of tragedy. How does a teen-ager who runs away when he’s needed most become a man who, ten years later, embraces life to the fullest with a “no regrets” policy?
Well. All will eventually be revealed.
Because that’s what my writer’s brain does. It holds all characters in the subconscious, turning them this way and that, examining emotion, motivation, and human nature. It adds more and more dimension to each person, and each story problem, until clarity bursts forth with all the subtly of fireworks.
And there am I, the vessel, the center of everything, God of the world I have created. I am ready to sit back and watch the events unfold.
Except my child is begging me to play with her. My husband is lamenting the pile of whites that is growing ever larger next to the washing machine. The dog is whining at the door because all the other dogs in the neighborhood get to go for walks. I am scheduled to work 4 of the next 5 and a half days.
The Muse will have to wait. It will sit and stew on what’s supposed to happen next. It will reveal itself in brilliant flashes of brilliant dialogue while I’m driving the car, and will disappear by the time I have paper and pen in hand.
Sometimes I will sit and type words that don’t seem to be going anywhere. I will write less-than-brilliant dialogue as I search my memory in vain for those sneaky flashes of good stuff. None of that is the Muse, however; that all happens when I pretend I’m showing up to write but all I really want to do is browse the internet.
NaNoWriMo: 50,000 Words or Bust will have at least given me a 50,000 word head-start on a new story. Fortunately for me, the Muse will keep the story going all by itself until I show up at the keyboard ready to type. I will discover a detail that has to be added to an early chapter so that a later chapter makes sense. My characters will infiltrate my waking hours, and run around doing mad things in my dreams. They will love each other and I will love them. And that’s really all that matters. Really.
Suspicion
11.12.07
As I sit down to write this, the dog is grounded to Outside. I don’t know when she can come back in. I just have to wonder… why is everybody around here so darn naughty?
I had a lovely “girls’ night in” last weekend. One friend brought pizza. One brought chocolate. Dark chocolate. Ghiradelli chocolate. With raspberry. We hauled our winter scrap-booking projects out and worked and gabbed the night away.
What remains is chocolate. Two bowls on my dining room table filled with rich, dark, sensual chocolate.
Except that all of a sudden I realize the bowls are empty. The table cloth is torn and scratched. And the dog is acting down-right psychotic.
Oh no.
Did I hear somewhere that chocolate is fatal to dogs? Hmm. That would be two problems solved – waistline and constant aggravation. Whoops, did I say that out loud? Nah, no matter how aggravating the dog is, my child’s devastation would be worse to deal with. At least I think it would be, although… she didn’t have any issues with flushing the goldfish…
Anyway. Before I got distracted by the Case of the Missing Chocolate I was going to talk about counting bears.
Funny how you can tell there’s something up with your kid even though you can’t nail down exactly why you think there’s something up. Is it body language? Facial expression? That creepy sixth sense that mothers just seem to have?
A few days ago when I picked my daughter up from school I could tell there was something going on. Maybe it was the way she peeked into her jacket pocket and then wanted to go home immediately. This, the child who never wants to go home.
“Hey, what’s your hurry today, Miss?”
“Nothing. I don’t have nothing.”
Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll bite. “What do you have?”
“Nothing. I didn’t find nothing.”
“What did you find?”
"It’s a secret."
I’m definitely intrigued now. Last year when she didn’t have anything, I found 20 plastic character rings in her backpack. The kind you might find on the top of cupcakes. My daughter insisted she “found” them. When I asked the teacher if my child should have so many rings, she cracked up. All the kids had been looking for their rings all day long. “But I found them, Mom. I did.” Upon further questioning it was determined that whenever another child set their ring down somewhere, MY child scooped it up and tucked it into her backpack. Finders keepers and all that.
This time her secret was a tiny red plastic teddy bear. Small enough to easily enclose in her fist. “Can I take it home, Mommy?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “Let’s show it to the afternoon teacher and you can ask her.”
The afternoon teacher shrugged. She didn’t know where it came from. It was okay for my girl to take it home.
But the mystery of the bear grew a little more at home. “This is my counting bear, Mom.”
“Why is it a counting bear? Does it belong to a game at school?”
“No, no,” she insists, “It wasn’t part of a game.”
“How many counting bears are there?” I ask.
“Lots,” she says, “But this bear was nowhere. I found it.”
Two days later when I picked her up from school I found EIGHT little counting bears in assorted colors piled next to her mailbox. I am now eight times suspicious of one little red plastic bear. I gathered them up and showed them to the daytime teacher. “Do these belong somewhere?”
“They belong in the math center,” she said.
I looked pointedly at my girl, “They belong in the math center,” I repeated, “and they need to stay at school.”
I could see she was agreeable, but I suspected it was mostly an attempt to keep me quiet about the little red counting bear that was already at home. “I can keep the bear at home, right?” she whispered.
I made a compromise. “Yes,” I said, “until you’re done playing with it, or until you feel bad about having it home. Then it can come back here.”
I’d like to tell you how it all worked out, but I ungrounded the dog 5 minutes too soon, and now I have figure out if the room-sized rug can be saved.
Sometimes a mess can turn your stomach. Sometimes it just smells likechocolate.
CafeMom and other stuff
10.30.07
There is a place on the internet called Cafemom, if you mothers out there aren’t already spending way too much time on the internet. One can spend hours there writing journals, reading journals, venting, ranting, giving advice, and arguing Christianity versus Atheism. Mostly the last one, and whether that is good or bad depends upon how much you like impossible arguments. Me? Well, I get enough of those at home, thanks.
“It’s too cold to wear shorts today. Yes, I realize the sun is shining, but it’s still too cold to wear shorts. Trust me, it’s too cold to wear shorts. Ok, let’s put on your shoes so we can go. No, it’s too cold to wear sandals.”
And on and on and on, world without end, amen.
But here’s something cool: I joined a group of people on Cafemom who have 4 year olds. Which means I’m not the only person in the world arguing daily about the weather. I’m also not the only person in the world who has a kid who can wipe the front but still can’t reach the back. I have to tell you, this makes me feel great! I can always findsomeone else living with the exact same weirdness that I live with. And that is a cool thing.
The downside is I can always find people who are happy to let me in on the little secret that my soul will burn in hell for all eternity because I think church is boring.
I guess you can’t win them all, can you?
Once in a while I find cute little messages in my inbox that say, “I will pray for you.” This is meant to insult me, which I find amusing because I’m okay with people praying for me. I pray sometimes, too, although I don’t go around bragging about it. Go ahead and pray for me, especially if you think your prayers are going to hurt me, because I don’t think it works that way. And if you think it does, then perhaps you need to re-examine your definition of what it means to be Christ-like (definition number 4 of “Christian” at dictionary.com).
Anyway. That wasn’t my point. My point was that my beautiful daughter is quite normal, as much as a 4 year old can be considered normal. She can be the sweetest, most well-mannered child in the world, and an hour later the most horrid little brat ever. She argues, she dawdles, she races. She doesn’t want to hold my hand in parking lots. She doesn’t want to wear her seat belt. She gives me a hundred kisses, but she loves Daddy more. Until she skins her knee, and then only Mommy can make it better. Until Mommy says she can’t have a 3rd bowl of ice cream, then she only wants Daddy.
I think her grasp of the English language is phenomenal. The other day she said with perfect diction, “Yes, yes, indeed, indeed.” The same day she was laying on the landing at the bottom of the stairs and said, “You can’t expect me to walk up all of those stairs – I’m just a little baby!” The same day the printer was disconnected from the computer and she screamed, “Now I can NEVER print any pictures EVER AGAIN!” The same day she watched the movie Narnia in it’s entirety without falling asleep even for a minute (wow, I can’t even pull that one off).
Every day she says or does something that knocks my socks off. She navigates the pbskids.org website like a pro. And the telephone – she suddenly loves talking on the phone. A friend called me the other day, and his son wanted to say hello to my daughter, and the next thing you know a playdate has been scheduled. At THEIR convenience. I had to wrestle the phone away from Little Miss Grown-Up.
In fact, she acts so grown-up that now and again I make an error in judgment. She’s been talking about a “Spooky Walk” at school, so I figured a li’l haunted garage would be right up her alley. I even called it a spooky walk for her benefit. But the pale silent child that came out of that garage was not the same spunky costumed fairy that went in. Um, whoops. She recovered, however, when she remembered the warning that had been called into the garage as she entered, “Take it easy, there’s a 2 year old coming through.”
Nothing offends her sensibilities more than being called a 2 year old. Not even a scary guy in a glowing skull mask that appears out of thin air. Whew. Saved, once again, by the indomitable spirit of a 4 year old.
NaNoWriMo
10.15.07
Countdown: 18 days. As in, “How long until that challenge-thingy you signed up for starts?” 18 days. As in, “How long before you can start writing that novel?” 18 days.
I mentioned in a September column that I planned to challenge myself and sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). Well I’m all signed up and ready to go. Thank goodness I have a column and can write something, because plot and character development have been spinning ‘round my brain for so long now that NOT writing it all down is excruciating. Nobody mentioned what an exercise in self-control this is. Or maybe they did and I didn’t pay attention.
So here I am calling on anyone who’s ever said, “I should write a novel.” Now’s your big chance! Signing up is easy – just log onto nanowrimo.org and click the button that says “sign up.” You create a profile that mostly consists of a large empty progress bar that measures word count. Then you can browse forums on the site, add writing buddies to your profile, and even (so they say) find regional and local people who will be working on the same challenge.
In these last weeks until November 1st you can daydream and brainstorm about plot and character and motivation. Do some research, post messages in the forums, and mostly get yourself psyched up and excited to write.
I already warned my husband that there would be no cooking or cleaning in the month of November. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “So what else is new?” I would take offense at that reaction, only then I’d have to cook and clean to make the point that I am perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning, and that seems like a trap I don’t want to get caught in, so I’m going to let it slide. Which, I think, might have been his point. But whatever.
Lookie there! The above paragraph contains 89 words. A word count of 50,000 is all you need to “win” NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words is about 200 double-spaced word processor pages. Heck, that’s no problem. My 2nd novel was 90,000 words, and that one only took me a year an a half to complete. Fifty thousand in a month shouldn’t be awful. 1666 words a day. I usually try to get 800 words into a column, which takes me about an hour, so double that daily – it’s do-able. Heck, break it down like that and it’s not even all that scary.
Hmm, let me think what else you need to know to join NaNo. It’s free, but participants are welcome to donate money to help cover administrative costs. You’re supposed to write a fictional story of 50,000 words or more from scratch. No bringing an already-started, stalled, or half-completed project to NaNo. Some of the beauty of the contest is that it encourages free writing and discourages editing. Pound out the words. Put some flesh on an idea that until now has only been a skeleton. Fiction, fiction, fiction! No biographies, autobiographies or memoirs – unless it’s a biography of your fictional character. Any genre – literary, historical, mystery, mainstream, young adult. Heck, a whole bunch of people out there don’t even know yet what genre they’re writing, and probably won’t know until they find out what kind of trouble their main characters get into.
I discovered all kinds of things I didn’t know when I wrote my first novel. I was charmed and amazed that once the story gained momentum I, personally, had very little control over what happened. Story logic picks up a flow of its own once you’ve created people who live and breathe on the page. Give them passion, intensity, and motivation, and it can be difficult to micro-manage the story process from intolerable problem at point A to happily ever after solution at point B. There are times you need to brainstorm what’s going to happen next, but writing feels phenomenal when characters do and say things the writer never expected, but it’s right and true even if it changes the direction of the whole blessed story.
I’m going to write about a girl who’s hired as a bounty hunter to – ahh, well, never mind. There are 18 days left before even I will begin to find out if thegirl has a screw loose or what. Inthe meantime I’m going to keep all this story pressure building up inside in hopes that it’ll flow out effortlessly come November 1st.
Sometimes the only way it’s going to get done is to just sit down and do it.
NaNoWriMo.org. Or nanowrimo.org. Caps or no caps, either way is fine. Now come join me and write a novel in November.
Home-School?
10.02.07
Quite a while back I received an email from someone I had met once, very briefly, in a casual setting. The letter exhorted the beauty and potential of my daughter and begged me to think about home-schooling. This person knew nothing about me, my life, or my values and beliefs, and yet here was a letter telling me that God wants me to educate my child at home.
Now, I am one of those people who believe that if there is a God, He knows all our hearts. Therefore I’m pretty sure He created 4K just for me. He knew I was struggling with my smart and busy daughter who has the attention span of a butterfly, and that the day sometimes has more hours than I have patience.
Introduce the Kindergarten Readiness program known as 4K. Five days a week my darling gets up, gets dressed, and goes to school, and I have a blessed 3 hours alone.
Home-schooling might very well be the most attractive option for some families. When I picture it in my head for our family, however, I can feel my blood pressure rising. For one thing, if she won’t let me teach her how to put her pants on, how on earth am I supposed to teach her how to read and write? We love each other to the moon and back, but we get frustrated with one another on a regular basis. And I already find it exhausting to keep her busy for a whole day – I can’t imagine that schooling her at home would be an improvement.
By the time she was 2 and a half I was doing the countdown to school. And by the time she was 3 she was counting down with me. “When can I go on the school bus with the big kids? Mom, can’t I go to school? I’m big enough, see? I’m THIS big!”
All the way around this 4K program is a beautiful thing.
And this is where I have to say… thank goodness for people who love to hang out with little kids and can teach them stuff. Because lord knows, I’m not very good at it. For me it goes like… “Oh, you want to have a picnic? Cool, let’s make a picnic lunch and eat it on the picnic blanket!” My daughter is all for the idea, go mom, you came up with a great idea, yay!
Sure. Only while I’m making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and slicing and peeling apples she gets impatient. “Mom, can I have my sandwich and start without you?” “Mom, I’m taking the apples, please can you put some apple dip in a bowl for me?”
By the time I’m ready to eat, half of the meal has been removed from the tray and consumed.
I carry the tray to the picnic blanket in the dining room and set it down. She says, “I’m done eating. Picnic’s over,” and she’s off to find a new activity. I can’t keep up. I eat by myself. Then I clean up the mess I left in the kitchen because I was trying to hurry. I’m not designed to switch gears at full throttle 35 times a day. It makes me tired.
Daycare provider is so far down on my list of career choices that it’s not even on the list, which is why I am so thankful that it’s much higher on other people’s lists. If it wasn’t for the wonderful, caring, and accommodating staff at my daughter’s school, I would be a basket case. I’d also be living with a little person who has terrible table manners. And worse, I’m sure. As it is now I just give her the “mom eye” and ask, “What happens at school when kids eat like Cookie Monster?” That’s all I have to say because the power of the naughty chair follows her home.
I’ve learned other tricks, too. Like, do you know how important it is for a kid to be the line-leader? All I have to do to get my daughter moving from point A to point B is to say in a song-song voice, “I’m gonna be the line-leader,” and bam! There she is racing past me screaming, “NO! I get to be the line-leader! Me, it’s me!”
Some people probably should home school and are very good at it. For the rest of us, the school district could make it a threat to ensure we carry out good discipline techniques in the after school hours. Think about it.
Hoppers
09.17.07
I generally don’t give much though to grasshoppers. I mean, I vaguely remember finding one now and then as a kid, catching it, having it spit on me, saying, “Ew, gross,” and letting it go again. I don’t have a particular childhood memory centered on grasshoppers. I don’t remember them being in my pool, in the car, or sunning themselves by the hundreds on the slide of my swing set. Maybe because I had a metal slide. (Fried grasshoppers, anyone?)
I definitely don’t remember anything quite like the “Grasshopper Run.”
What is the Grasshopper Run, you ask?
I’ll tell you.
First let me set the scene.
A black-topped driveway leads to a peaceful 2-story white house with blue shutters and a wind-chime on the back door that tinkles. A nice large yard has mostly green grass and a swing set with swings, a slide, and a climbing rope. There’s a pool in the yard covered with a tarp. Beyond the pool is a field of high grass and wild flowers. Idyllic, really.
A child stands poised at the edge of the driveway, her merry eyes so blue they glitter like sapphires when she laughs. They’re glittering now as she grins with anticipation and delight. “Say, ‘ready, set, go’ Mom! Say it, say it!”
“Ready… set… are you ready?”
“Yes!” she shrieks.
“Are you reeeaally ready?”
“Yes! I’m ready, I’m ready! Say it, Mom!”
“Ready… set… GO!”
She leaps into the grass and runs toward the field, grasshoppers popping up by the hundreds with every step, until she’s almost engulfed in a cloud of hoppers. Her arms flail and giggles and squeals fill the yard. When she reaches the edge of the field she turns back and hollers, “Did you see that, Mom? Did you see it? There’s a million grasshoppers!”
There is only one rule for the Grasshopper Run. And if you think about it for a minute it’s fairly obvious.
Keep your mouth closed.
I stand on the driveway laughing, every now and again shaking hoppers out of my hair and brushing them off my clothes. The driveway isn’t exactly a safe zone. There is no safe zone. The hoppers are everywhere. They leap into the house, hitch rides with me in the car, and float in the pool awaiting rescue. And rescue them we do, several times a day, and finally tarp the pool because we don’t want to be responsible for any drowning grasshoppers.
I haven’t had one spit on me yet, which I think is odd, because when I think of the hoppers from my childhood what I remember is weird brownish-orange spit. They hop. You catch them. They spit. They hop again. That’s it.
I don’t remember clouds of grasshoppers. Grasshoppers on the house, in the house, on the car, in the car, on my clothes, in my car, leaping, hopping, popping, pooping. But no spitting.
There are more revolting swarms of bugs than grasshoppers, that’s for sure. Army or Tent Worms – those are gross. Actually, they are so gross that I think we’ll just be moving right along and not talking about them. And let’s not talk about the moths they turn into either.
At least hoppers don’t turn into something equally nasty or worse than their original form. And we do get breaks from them because every few days a crowd of blackbirds descends upon our lawn. A hundred birds – two hundred – it’s hard to count them as they march across the yard in an oddly organized formation, filling their bellies with hoppers and ruining, for a few days at least, the game of Grasshopper Run.
Sometimes plagues of insects are really yucky. But sometimes they make for an awfully fun race across the lawn.
School's... in?
09.02.07
Whoa. Kids are going back to school, and for the first time so is mine. It feels kind of exciting, to tell you the truth. I hear these weepy “put the kid on the bus for the first time” stories from other moms and I have to say… I don’t get it. I’m not crying, I’m plotting and planning all the things I can get accomplished knowing my girl will be in school for 15 hours a week.
FIFTEEN weekday hours. I can get my hair cut. I can go to the dentist. I can go to the optical shop and pick out glasses. I can do household shopping all by myself. Let me repeat that – I can do household shopping all by myself.
Do you have any idea how fast I can buy toilet paper and laundry soap and groceries without a 4 year old alternately dragging her heels and running wild in the aisles? Without the constant pleas of, “Mommy? Can we get this? Mommy! I need this! Please please please?”
Weepy stories? Not me. I’m doing the happy dance.
Now granted, I am not putting my child on a bus. Even I probably am not ready for that one. But her daycare is offering a 4K program this year, which is a lot equal to half-day kindergarten for 4 year olds, and she’s expected to be there from 8:30 to 11:30 Monday through Friday even when I don’t need childcare. And it’s free. Hey, works for me.
I bet you can guess that I don’t consider home-schooling an option, hmm? Yeah, let’s run right out and NOT get involved in that. A lot of people are doing it. Quite a few people have expressed outright horror that I might allow the government to educate my child. I’m not horrified at all. Like anything in life, I expect we, as a family, will be filling in gaps and expressing our views to our daughter on a daily basis. If we need to learn more or learn another viewpoint about something, we have the internet. We also have a library card. There’s a lot more to education than what happens inside a classroom.
I’m not sure I’m smart enough to home-school my child even if I wanted to, although proponents of this type of education tell me that intelligence on my part (the part of the teacher) isn’t anything to be concerned about. Um, ok. That seems a little not quite right, but whatever.
One huge barrier to home-schooling (besides the fact that I don’t want to do it) is that my active, bright, busy little girl doesn’t behave all that great for me. In fact, sometimes we don’t get along at all. But I went on a big field trip this summer with her daycare and witnessed, with my own surprised eyes, that the girl I deal with at home is not the same girl they have at school. She loves the kids, she loves the teachers, she listens, and she follows the rules. Unbelievable.
I love my daughter. I think she is the most amazing human being I have ever met. I really do. But I was a grown-up without a child for many years before I was a mom, and I love being alone with the thoughts inside my head. I’ve missed having that kind of time. So I really am looking forward to school days.
And my Little Miss is looking forward to it, also. Almost every day she asks with a sigh, “Oh Mommy, why does it take so long to grow up?” She’s hoping to learn how to write her name this year. And because she wants to know everything about everything, learning to read is another item on her agenda.
I’m going to challenge myself this fall. September and October will be months of organizing my house and my life. I’m going to go through closets and get rid of stuff, which is one of my favorite things to do. This house is reaching maximum overload with toys that are not played with and “that’s my favorite” clothes that are too small. But just try to get go through a kid’s closet when she’s prancing behind you, screaming, “I need that! Hey, that’s MINE!”
In November the fun begins. I am signing up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer’s Month). My fingers will be clicking the keyboard every spare moment as I make an attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in just four weeks. I have an idea that has my imagination spinning and my fingers itching, and I’m raring to go.
Some people home-school to avoid public education. I say… bring it on!
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