PCUSA Bloggers

Some friends and I recently started a new blog, PCUSA Bloggers (where blogging is decent and in order). (That last aside is an inside joke for Presbyterians.)

Our intent is for this to be a Presbyterian community with a wide diversity of viewpoints represented from both contributing writers and readers/commenters. Currently, we have two pastors, two elders, and one lay member as contributors, though I expect that number will grow and change over time.

And, of course, one does not need to be Presbyterian, or even Christian, to read and participate in the discussion!

This is still a start-up operation - and we're tweaking the template - so please check in periodically to see what we've added in the way of new features and content.

End note: There is another unofficial PCUSA Blog, but the administrator there is no longer active, the email link is dead, the site/template cannot be updated, and there's only one remaining active contributor. I've talked with that contributor regarding my concerns about the site's original intent and he's agreed to start posting others' material as well as his own. (I am excited about that development, because I've been suggesting discussion topics for quite a while, but would still like to build a community with more direct contributors.)

Friday Photo Blogging

We had an excellent Fourth of July last week. We took the girls to a parade in the morning:

Then headed home for lunch and naps. During the afternoon we cleaned up around the house:



Then we had a few friends over for a casual BBQ. After we'd eaten ourselves silly, we piled into cars and headed over to Kirkwood Park for an amazing fireworks display:

Sexism Sells -- But We're Not Buying It

Well, this isn't what I was planning to post tonight, but I couldn't watch this without sharing it.

Via the Sisters in Crime July newsletter.



Sexism Sells -- But We're Not Buying It

When You Grow Up What Will You Be?

I was right; today was hard. And it's not looking like I'll be perfectly well rested tomorrow, either. Alas.

But I'm going to choose to focus on the positive tonight, instead. This is going to be one of those posts where I catalog the wonderful things my children are up to (in this case, Ellie) probably interesting nobody but myself (preserving for future reference) and possibly others who know my children well and follow their lives from afar, like their grandparents.

Ellie's been obsessed with a book they read a couple of weeks ago during beach week in summer school, called There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell. I could not find this book anywhere, so I ordered it from Amazon.com and surprised her with it today. It was like Christmas in July! She carried that book around all afternoon and wanted it read over and over and over. It was the only bedtime story she wanted her daddy to read, tonight, too. So cute.

I love her developing preferences. I also love that she started independent swimming lessons this week and is doing great! She's going into the water without me and without complaint (all those trips to the pool in June really paid off) and is participating appropriately with her class. Yay!

And after a few weeks of accident after accident after accident until I thought I might go crazy, she surprised me today by taking care of a major potty need all by herself. With no mess! This has never really happened before. Although she usually manages her own potty schedule, she still needs help undressing, getting onto the toilet, wiping, washing hands, redressing, etc. And she didn't quite complete all those tasks on her own, today, but by the time I realized that she was in the bathroom, the critical bits were finished. Wheeeee!

We had the best discussion yesterday, by the way. She started singing a Dora the Explorer song about what you want to be when you grow up (for some crazy reason, I bought her the 44 tune soundtrack for her second birthday. "I'm the Map, I'm the Map, I'm the Map, I'm the Map, I'm the Map!") so naturally, I asked her about it.

"Ellie, what do you want to do when you grow up?"

I want to work!

And drive!

Drive to work!

In Daddy's car! By myself!

How cute is this? How perfectly preschool! This child has special needs? Where?

Tomorrow's Gonna Suck

I'm taking a class through the Gotham Writers Workshop this summer, and the course went live today. That means that midnight was the first time I could log on and view course materials, including workshop schedules and critique due dates.

At 11:48 pm, I got a "Gotham Class Late Notice" informing me that I'd been chosen to go first and my piece for workshop was due before July 8th (yes, the first day of class) so I was late. Sigh. Not an auspicious beginning.

I should not have been surprised, then, by what happened when I tried to post my first chapter.

I went through and carefully edited a file to upload, making sure that everything was exactly as I wanted it. This took over an hour. I saved the document several times, because I'm careful like that. Then I closed the document so that I could upload it.

And when I clicked "Browse" on the Gotham BlackBoard site to find my document, it was nowhere to be found. I checked my whole computer; there's no record of the file. I tried to wake Paul, but failed.

Well, I guess my plans for 2:30-3:30am, previously involving some sleep, have changed.

Fuck.

(Update: found it, buried in an invisible internet temp file. Everything else I'd planned to do tonight (like figure out who keeps trying to log on to one of my credit card accounts) will have to wait until tomorrow. Off to bed.)

Cold Sores

I don't get cold sores. Neither do Paul, either of our girls, or anyone else in my family (mom, dad, sisters).

Apparently, this is somewhat rare, as most Americans do get cold sores.

It's not the end of the world, but cold sores aren't great things to get (see below).

It freaks me out (and frustrates me) when people with cold sores put their mouths (and sores) close to my children. This weekend, we hung out with a good friend who had a cold sore. This friend is great with the girls, babysits them, etc. And kept kissing on them this weekend.

It really bothered me, but I couldn't think of a way to bring it up without sounding like an ass (though I kept washing their hands and wiping them down with antimicrobial wipes, probably uselessly). Since it still bothered me the next day, I sent a brief email, as light and jokey as I could make it, requesting that this friend not kiss my kids with a fever blister.

I mentioned the situation to another friend, who seemed nonplussed. "It just never would have occurred to me that cold sores would be a big deal," she said.

Huh. Maybe this is just me (and the rest of my family) who takes this seriously?

A little general information on cold sores:

• "Cold sores are caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV). There are two types of herpes simplex virus: HSV-1 and HSV-2. Both virus types can cause lip and mouth sores and genital herpes."
  
• They're very contagious, and can definitely be spread by kissing (and sharing cups and utensils).
  
• Symptoms can include pain, fever and malaise, sore throat, and swollen glands.
  
• The herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores cannot be cured. After you get infected, the virus stays in your body for the rest of your life.
  
• It can be worse in people who are immuno-compromised. Ellie doesn't have the best immune system in the world.
  
• Scientific American asks: Does Herpes Cause Brain Cancer? "The deadliest and most common type of brain cancer has a strange bedfellow: cytomegalovirus, a kind of herpes present in about 80 percent of the U.S. population."

I'd love to hear your opinion: was it rude of me to ask this of my friend? Am I completely nuts to not want this virus for myself and my kids?

Friday Photo Blogging

Last summer, all four of us went to the Missouri Botanical Garden once. There was a downpour and we got soaked. I mean really really soaked. Translucent clothes, saturated underwear, the works.


The girls and I went back a couple of times on our own and had no problems.

This summer, the four of us chanced the Gardens again, this time for a Niki night.

And, of course, it poured and we got soaked to the skin. It's a good thing we don't mind a little water!




And no, I don't watch What Not to Wear, why do you ask? I do have a sister and good friend who do, and they're both very happy to tell me that I should stop wearing ridiculously large, shapeless clothing. But I don't wanna!

Are They Better Mothers?

What am I doing wrong? Why am I so bad at this?

I used to ask myself those questions and wonder why other moms had everything so much more under control than I did. Scheduled children. Toys all picked up before Daddy came home. Sometimes, children fed and bathed and ready for bed when Daddy walked in the door in the evening to kiss them goodnight and maybe read a story or two.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that that's not the life I want, the way I want to raise my children, the relationship I want my children to have with their father.

How do they do it? I am frequently worn to a frazzle when Paul comes home from work (an event I'm often looking forward to by concentrating hard on the second hand, wondering if the battery is dying or something). Toys frequently carpet the house, dinner remains unmade, and children need to go potty or have their diapers changed.

At least that's how it used to be. Now I have more of the answers.

Did you know that it's actually easier to do all that routine stuff (straightening, cooking, eating, bathing) sometimes? Did you know that it can be harder to fill long, cranky afternoons with undesired free play or programmed activities? Unscheduled time leaves more room for potty accidents, sibling bickering, messy toy box explosions, and boredom to set in. And scheduling activities for late afternoon cranky kids can be even more of a problem.

In our house, mornings are for field trips and other fun activities. Post-nap-time is a time for whining and picking fights.

"Hey, kids, pipe down for a bit. I'm trying to write an email." I'd feel like a pretty rotten mama for saying that. It might be different if my kids were, say, 17 and 20.

But, "I need you to go play in the other room for a few minutes; I'm busy cooking and it's getting really hot and dangerous in here." Who could feel guilty about that? What can be more important than preparing a nutritious, delicious meal for the children?!

I'm not talking about 4-hour gourmet prep sessions, but cooking can actually translate to a few precious moments of alone time. Ahhhh.

And early eating forestalls late afternoon whining. Baths are just plain fun. Perhaps those other mamas don't have it more together; they're just keeping their shit together in a different way than I am.

I always cook dinner during the afternoon now, and I've moved snack time to 4:00 to push off our family meal until Paul gets home at 6:00. The girls and I also pick up toys together in the late afternoon when everyone's getting cranky. If they get bored with that and bail to play in their own rooms, I get a double bonus: the ability to pick up efficiently and in peace, plus the possibility of a few minutes to myself if I finish quickly!

I am not bad at this. It just took me a little while to find the strategies that work for us, both for the natural rhythms of our lives and for the time we like to spend together as a family, eating dinner and playing before bed.

It also gets a bit easier as the children become older and more self-sufficient.

I (Briefly) Lost Ellie Today

A couple of months ago, we had trouble with Ellie running out into the street when she was supposed to be loading into the car. We coped with that using a variety of techniques, most effectively praising her for stopping at the end of the driveway to look both directions, which made her so happy that she'd come back when we asked her to do so.

I thought we were through with all that.

She did it again today, while I was bringing a load of library books and diaper bag out to the car. Moreover, she encouraged her little sister to come out into the street with her.

Naturally, I dropped the bags and snatched up Ada. We live on a very quiet street, and as there was no traffic anywhere around, I strapped Ada into her car seat before going after her Ellie, who had continued on down the block. She is 4-1/2, after all. She does know how to look for traffic and she was wearing a bright red shirt so she was hard to miss.

Before I started kindergarten, on the advice of her parenting books my mom had me walk to the grocery store, buy a gallon of milk, and carry it home (that was heavy!). But times are different now. And Ellie is . . . Ellie.

Less than a minute later, I was looking for her. Up the street: no Ellie. Down the street: no Ellie. Into the T-intersection 100 feet or so from our driveway: no Ellie in either direction.

She doesn't move very fast. Down the storm drains: no Ellie. I wasn't very concerned, honestly. I know our neighbors, no cars had come by, she had to be near.

She was. She had gone up to a neighbor's house and was peering through the front door, but she had not responded to my calls.

I considering not letting her go into the library as part of her punishment, but decided that would be more of a punishment for Ada and me. So she lost access to her dolls for the rest of the day (in addition to a 5-minute time out and NPR on the way to the library). Those who know Ellie know that this was a serious consequence, indeed. No dolls! All day!

We've been having some serious defiance issues lately. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

I Have a Cold

Saturday night found me curled up in bed with my laptop, reading an erotica e-book. It was research, I swear. No, really, it was. And here's how you know. My cold is stuck at that obnoxious nose-running-like-a-faucet stage, which prompted me, once all witnesses were safely asleep, to shove Kleenex up my nostrils. What's less sexy than that?!

I am so tired right now, but before I can post this and go to bed, apparently I need to reinstall Internet Explorer. I am seriously considering getting a Mac next time.

While I'm drifting hazily on exhaustion and thinking about technology and how much it can suck, I'll mention that it's absolutely not comfortable to curl up on my side in bed while reading my laptop's screen. And this is why I don't think that e-books - while they serve a valuable role in the market and can be quite convenient - are going to completely replace books anytime soon.

Sure, there are e-readers that are less cumbersome than laptops or PCs. But those are expensive little devices that require occasional recharging and internet connectivity. And they're a lot more costly to replace than a $6.99 paperback left in an airplane. They're also a little harder to share. So, sorry, I can't slip you the erotica e-book that I just finished, or at least not legally.

To recap, I'm tired and I have a cold. G'night.

'Tis the Never-Ending Season

Things younger than Republican Presidential candidate (oh, and did I forget to mention war hero?) John McCain

"Am I being 'age-ist'? Maybe. But maybe not. The world is a pretty complicated place right now and I’m thinking that it’s not such a great time to elect our oldest President ever. So sue me."

Back in 2000, I had some favorable impressions of John McCain. The whole "Straight Talk Express" approach was one I found refreshing. I got really really angry by what Bush's campaign did to McCain in South Carolina.

I got even angrier when McCain turned around, let Bush put an arm around his shoulders, and stood by that President for the next 8 years.

And now I know that he is willing to say and do just about anything to get elected. I have no idea what McCain really does stand for, let alone what he'd actually do while in office. I used to think he was a moderate, but after perusing his voting record I realize that was just more pretty packaging.

I'm rather left with the impression that he just wants to be President.

Witness:


And that doesn't even touch on his anger management issues.

Emailing and Blogging

How many email accounts do you use? (Check out the handy poll to the right.)

I have 5 different email accounts that I use. These are all current accounts and none forwards to another; if I want to see what email has arrived at, say, the account I use for friends and family only, or the one I use for online ordering, etc. I have to log in and check that account individually.

In addition to all the other usernames, accounts, and passwords I have scattered about the various computers, subscriptions, and internets of the world, it's a bit much, really. But it can be so very helpful to see who's got what information about me and how they're using it.

I've not got much else to say tonight, because I want to go to bed and I've been busy elsewhere.

I'm a big believer in truth, especially in writing. As you're all aware, I share some pretty naked stuff here and, if you've read them, in my personal essays. I respond to real, soul-baring truth in others' writing and strive to achieve it in my own. And while I don't publish my home address at the top of each post, I don't really blog anonymously, either. Friends, church members, and my mother-in-law read my blog, amongst others.

So I've been experimenting with a little anonymous blog-like public writing elsewhere, and that's been a little fun.

Because while I'm comfortable standing naked before you, a gal's got to keep a few secrets, dontcha know. And in today's world, it's possible to keep secrets while sharing them openly. Brilliant! How perfect for the modern inhibited exhibitionist.

I Don't Like Bugs

I loved almost everything about my first apartment after college. Before college and during school breaks, I lived in my parents' house. During college, I lived in the dorms. So in mid-May 1997, I moved into my first place, with one of my college roommates. (That part was a mistake, although a roommate was necessary.)

The one thing I didn't love about my new apartment - from the day we moved in - were the roaches. I'd never really encountered these before, but I definitely knew them when I saw them, and I complained to management repeatedly. And they sent over exterminators. Repeatedly. Eventually, the roaches were gone and indeed for the rest of the year I lived in that apartment, we'd find dead bugs on the windowsills and near our front door, but never in our apartment. Yikes.

Until, towards the end, we got moths. These were those little bitty moths that come home, sometimes, in larvae form, hidden in some sort of grain - like imported rice, for instance - from the grocery store. Nothing worked to get rid of these moths.

We moved.

Our new place was amazing. Because I'm comfortable repeating my mistakes, I had the same roommate for the first year I lived in what I called The Home of the Gods. Paul and another college friend lived right downstairs. There were no bugs.

Until.

One day I noticed a bad smell in my kitchen. At the time, I was bored to tears with my job and had a boss who lived and worked in Philadelphia, as did her boss, so there was really no big rush for me to get to work in the mornings. So I went back to bed after Paul left for work, I'd take my shower and putter around the place in a state of undress (by this time, my roommate had given way to a much better roommate, who had in turn given way to Paul). I often delayed going to work by cleaning, especially the kitchen.

The kitchen was clean, yet it still stank. I took everything out of the pantry; no culprits there. Over the next few weeks, the stink got worse and worse. Then I started seeing fruit flies, lots of them. I do the grocery shopping and I don't like fruit, so we rarely had any. We didn't at that point. No fruit, nothing open and organic on the counters or in the pantry, yet still, the reek, and still the ever-increasing plague of gnats.

Then, one morning, I followed the stench - which was, by then, strong enough to make my eyes water (and we were eating out a lot) - to the empty drawer below the silverware drawer. Which, at some point, I'd apparently decided would make a great storage place for a bag of potatoes.

I could explain what I saw and smelled when I opened that drawer, but The Cranky Librarian has already done a wonderful job describing a similar scene. I'll leave you with the words maggots, mush, and ohmygod. I slammed the drawer shut and went to work.

Later that evening, Paul and I tackled it together, and when I say that we tackled it together, I mainly mean that I stood nearby offering a combination of moral support, unneeded advice, and a steady supply of cleaning products.

And the gnats went away, but we soon discovered a tiny, brown, vaguely ant-like bug in our pantry, floating in our cereal bowls, burrowing into our wooden pantry doorjamb. We took to storing food on the kitchen table or in the frig, all tightly sealed of course, but nothing worked and we could not get rid of those little bugs.

We moved.

Actually, we'd been married a few months at that point, and we bought our first house. We had a pest guy come check it out before we closed on the house, and that was helpful but he had a different idea of acceptable pest levels than I do

"You have baby brown recluse spiders living in that tree in the living room, but don't worry. There's some sort of bigger spider in there too that's eating them before they grow up."

Naturally, I had him treat the tree - which had come with the house and now I knew why - then made Paul chop it up and remove it to the curb, along with the drapes. We repainted and had the carpet steam cleaned. And now we have a fabulous pest guy - with whom I'm on a first name basis - come by regularly to make sure that we continue to have no problems.

And we haven't moved for 7 years.

Rollin' Down the River

We don't live near the river, any river, so the current flooding isn't affecting us directly. But we do enjoy watching the high water, so we headed downtown last week before leaving for Chicago. We had a lovely drive over the Poplar Street Bridge, through East St. Louis, and back over the MLK bridge, past the new Lumière Place, through The Landing, and as close to The Arch as we could get via the roads (which wasn't very close). Of course, we forgot our camera.

As the river got closer to cresting here, we crossed the Mississippi again on Sunday afternoon. This time, I stuck my right arm out the window and took a few pictures:

Looking north, showing the east (Illinois) bank. Um, the water isn't supposed to come right up to the railroad tracks like that. And this is the Mighty Mississippi; it's deep and it's fast and it's huge.




Looking west at Missouri. Here's a shot of downtown St. Louis. There's supposed to be a road and a parking lot between those steps in front of the arch and the water.




Here are the road and parking lot.


The flood is very impressive here in the city, but it's not nearly as big as the great flood of 1993, which, incidentally, was when I moved to St. Louis. 15 years ago. Little wow.

Wee Bonny Lassies at Play

We spent the weekend in Chicago (technically, Oak Brook) for the Illinois St. Andrews Society annual Scottish Festival and Highland Games.

It was a reunion, of sorts, for my whole family (my parents, my sisters, our husbands, and the three grandkids) on the anniversary of our trip to Scotland last summer.

Oak Brook is a lovely area, the Games were fun, and we had a wonderful time. It was great getting tipsy with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law in the hotel bar after the girls had gone to bed. It was great having the whole family together. (*more below)

Sleeping in a single hotel room is not great, though. Ada doesn't sleep as well as she does at home, and when she wakes I'm too quick to go get her - not allowing her as much time to soothe herself back to sleep as I would here - because I'm worried about her waking her sister and all the neighbors.

So the first night we got up at 2:30 (!!) and the second night at 4:30 (!) Both sucked, of course. I'm tired, and bedtime with Ellie was a bit rough tonight. But hopefully we'll be back on what passes for our regular schedule tomorrow.

(*this is below) It was especially great to see my niece, Arria, and to watch her interacting with my kids. Arria was born the day after Adelaide, so they'll always have that special bond. And, in surprising news (to all!) my sister is due again early next year, around the time that Arria and Adelaide turn 2.

I should mention that this was not the sister with whom I was getting tipsy at the bar.

And that I am not pregnant along with her this time.

Kissing cousins


Sisters


More sisters

Friday Photo Blogging

We've been at the pool every day this week so far. Ada has swimming lessons 4 mornings a week for 2 weeks, and we've made that into a whole morning's entertainment. Twice a week, Ellie is in summer school and I go river walking against the current in the lazy river after Ada's lesson, with the baby serving as extra resistance/arm toning. The other two mornings, Ellie waits nicely on the pool deck, then we break for snack, then all play together in the water for a while before heading home for lunch.

This morning, something unpleasant happened to me during the break portion of the morning swim session. An old man asked if my girls were my grandchildren. Seriously! Ellie is 4-1/2 and I am 33! I suppose that if I'd gotten pregnant at 14 and my fictional daughter had done the same, it would be possible. Hardly likely, but possible. Sheesh.

Moving away from that and back to the pretty pictures of young girls not aged beyond their years by motherhood.

Hats and rash guards (and, yes, that is a freakishly large pool bag)


Ada starts out shy of the water, but warms up after a while:


Stop. Shower Time!

Mystery Writer?

It has been a long time since I've talked about my current novel. Let me assure you that's not because it's going so smoothly.

I know my characters well, and I like them. (Even the not-so-nice ones.) I know my plot, and I like it, too.

But I hate what I'm writing and how I'm writing it.

I don't know if this is "writer's block" because I have an outline and I can force myself to sit down and choke out the appropriate number of words to complete the scenes I anticipated writing with excitement when I plotted out the novel (which I didn't do in too much detail, because I wanted to leave open the possibility of surprise and excitement, even for me).

But I'm certainly stuck in the doldrums. I am bored to tears with what I'm writing, though I think the story and characters are viable. I wonder if a writer's workshop would help.

Which leads me to wonder more deeply: Can I write a mystery? Can I even write at all? Have I just been deluding myself? Perhaps I'll forever be an almost-writer: pretty good, not good enough.

P-U

When we got rid of our gargantuan coffee table and replaced it with . . . nothing (more room for children to play! less temptation to have snacks within arm's reach!) that left me with quite a bit of homeless stuff. Stuff like: notecards and stamps, pens and checkbooks, chapsticks and nail buffers. What to do?

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a few decorative storage boxes to slide underneath an end table. I found some really cute ones, on sale, that look like an aged, rubbed dark brown leather/suede.

In fact, I think they're covered with real leather.

That maybe came from a dead skunk. Like, roadkill dead.

Because, in the olfactory quiet of my own home, these boxes stink. And they're getting worse with age (I've had them for a couple of months, now).

Have any of you ever run into a household item that reeks when it shouldn't and can't be submerged in hot, soapy water?

Do you have any advice for me?

We're reevaluating our budget right now, in light of our unexpected new car payment (gulp) so I'm thinking that "buy new boxes!" isn't going to be the solution.

What the Girls Are Saying

Ellie: That's cool.
Ada: Sure. (You'll have to imagine the accompanying emphatic head nod.)

When they say these things, I don't hear myself coming out of their mouths. It's later, when I use one of my most frequent stock responses (see above) that I hear myself echoing them, though I know it's technically the other way around.

This leads to me saying my own phrases slightly differently, as I inevitably mimic their unique inflections. It's a bit disconcerting and stereophonic, sort of a house of mirrors with simple words.

But even more often than they mimic me, each girl has a plaintive cry that she uses dozens of times a day and that is uniquely hers.

Ellie: Can't do it!
Ada: I stuck!

Both mean the same thing: Dearest mother, your immediate attention and assistance are requested here.

Ada's in the 1-year-old climbing monkey stage, which is fun to watch. And she still talks a lot. For example, she runs out to see me after her bath, dripping wet and trailing her towel behind her. "Bath!" she says. "Daddy! Splash! Ducky!" With few words, she's managed to paint a very clear picture of one of her day's most enjoyable interludes.

But her biggest developmental explosion right now is in fine motor. Ada drinks unassisted (and one-handed) from an open cup. A week ago, I couldn't hand her a bowl of crackers in the kitchen for her to carry to her little snack table or she'd tip the bowl and spill them all for Lizzi pug along her way. This week, it's no problem. And her stacking/nesting boxes are hugely fun right now. She stacks seven boxes on her own before the stack gets too high and it's more fun to knock them down than try to figure out a way to be taller and continue stacking.

Ellie's suddenly a big girl, and I totally didn't see that happening. She can go wash her hands by herself, and climb up into her own booster seat at dinner. Our conversations all have a heavy subtext involving control (more on discipline later) and she's spontaneously answering questions with complete sentences more than she ever has before.

I was so afraid of summer, thinking that I'd be so bored and we'd go stir crazy here. I still dislike late afternoons (after "nap" and before dinner) but that window is relatively short because no matter what we have for a snack as late as 4:00, they're both starving and whimpering for dinner by 6:00. We're going out to do interesting things in the mornings (swimming lessons, park, zoo, Magic House, shopping, library, and the museum of transportation, just in the last two weeks!) and I am absolutely, totally not bored.

Most of the time.

Restaurant Review

I'm not an expert on Spanish food or tapas. I am, however, an expert on family dining. One parent hastily packing up food and waving for the check while another parent hurries misbehaving/sick/cranky/tired children out to the car. Both parents hastily shoveling comfort food into their mouths in the hopes of finishing soon after the children. Desperate parent distracting other diners with simulated gasps of horror while singing, "There's a spider on the floor, on the floor." Trust me, the terrible signing is better than terrible whining.

So even though my previous experiences with Spanish food have been . . . uninspiring so far, I was so excited to go to Modesto on the Hill on Saturday night that I prepared by eating a slice of pizza at 3:00 pm, just so that in case it sucked and no one else wanted dessert, at least I wouldn't starve.

I'd eaten at Modesto once before, you see. But it was for work and the paella dishes took forever (though perhaps that was just my perception of the passage of time) and I don't think I actually ever even saw a menu. Nor could I quite hear the server, way down at the end of the long table where I was seated, unfortunately far away from my boss.

This weekend's experience couldn't have been further from that one. First of all, I had quite a different frame of reference. THERE WERE NO CHILDREN. Not at my table, and not at any table near mine - though I was sitting near a pregnant woman, so you might quibble with my previous statement.

My kids are so fabulous. I love being a mom, and the girls have never been as much fun as they are right now.

But it's still fun to go out without them occasionally. To an adult place. Not that kind of adult place.

Our friends brought their two kids (almost 6 and almost 4) over to our house, and a fully grown up and dependable babysitter both families know and love came over to feed the kids pizza, put Ada to bed, and supervise the 3, 4, and 5 year-old. All that went great, and that's enough about that because this is about me!

I was out in our new grown-up car - at that time still without car seats - with other grown-ups, eating grown-up food and drinking grown-up drinks.

The food was almost indescribably delicious, especially the Aceitunas a la Sevillana, Dátiles Rellenos, and Queso de Cabra al Horno. The hands-down table favorite tapas dish was the Pinchos Morunos. OK, almost everything was perfectly fabulous. The only dishes I didn't love were the Bienmesabe (so environmentally evil and so fishy-tasting) and a rib dish whose name I don't remember.

And they made a delicious cappuccino, and everyone wanted dessert!

I think parents complain about being parents a lot and I've been trying to focus more on the positive. I chose to have a family, I wanted these children, and I love them with all of my heart. Sure, it's hard work sometimes. But it's much easier and better when I focus on the fun of it rather than thinking of my life as what happens after the babies go to sleep.

Still . . . going out with other adults and doing adult-type things - no, not those adult-type things. Though it might be fun to do those without one ear cocked for nearby children too -

I digress.

It's good to have some balance.

Friday Photo Blogging

From our house to The Magic House:

Meet the Houdini Family

Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

Also, check out my new Agents and Editors Blogroll down at the bottom of the sidebar. Woo-hoo, high praises for Google Blogger and Reader compatibility!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Although I might now be a spoiled rich girl, I have not forgotten my roots. (You do notice the tongue stuck firmly in my cheek, right? Whatever else I might do, I tend to take myself lightly.) Tonight I drove a hybrid car for the first time, and I enjoyed it very much.

The part where the engine stops (apparently) running when the car is stopped, however, kept freaking me out. I'm sure I'll get used to this, but my history with cars that die when they stop is not one that involves vehicles functioning well. I used to drive an old VW Rabbit that died whenever you hit the clutch unless you gave it a little gas simultaneously. This made approaching 4-way stops and driving in rush hour traffic especially challenging as I had to pretend that I had three feet. Ah, the good old days. When I leased my first new car, a standard, entry-level Saturn SC2, I thought I was living in the lap of luxury. And I was, for an editorial assistant with student loans and no independent wealth!

I was out on my own tonight, in the new car, because it was Greater St. Louis Sisters in Crime "Get Your (Right) Gun" night at Top Gun Shooting Range in Imperial, Missouri.

I had a great time and learned a lot (though a nice chunk of the material was familiar to me thanks to Lori L. Lake's guest blogging at The Graveyard Shift) but I'll include just the personal injury report for now.

By the end of my time at the range, I was flinching badly with each shot. The instructor assumed it was because of the recoil, and that was partly true. (I'd moved up from a .22 semi-automatic pistol to the same model 9mm that the St. Louis County Police carry.) But mostly it was because the casings kept attacking me.

Several of them landed on my head or on my arm. One somehow got behind both my glasses and safety glasses, and others must have have hit my forehead, because it's streaked with soot. My (formerly favorite) white shirt is a bit charred in front. And, worst of all, two fresh casings went straight down my neckline, burning my chest! I have a couple of painful little blisters to show for this, though they just look like blemishes from afar. The weird thing is that I chose the shirt because it does NOT have a stretched out neckline and fits up above the collarbone, as I prefer. My shooting partner wasn't having the same problem, but the instructor said that the issue was with the gun, not with my stance.

Anyway, it was a GREAT program and I had a wonderful time, malicious casings notwithstanding. And then I got to drive home in the fabulous "new" car, which is especially great because we haven't had to start paying for it yet (with the exception of the check that passed from Geico to the dealership via our checking account).

It wasn't just the shiny hybrid car in the parking lot that probably stood out at the range. I wore khakis and black Danskos, carried a canvas bag that says, "Fall Into A Good Book!" and walked in carrying a latte from Starbucks. (Ah, latte. Is there any more wonderful food on this earth? I think it's better than pizza.) And so we end with a reprisal of the spoiled rich girl image.

The big surprise, of course, was that none of these things really stood out, at all. Because, though we on the left love stereotypes at least as much as our friends on the right, gun lovers don't fit into neatly categorized little boxes, either. And there was a clearly marked recycling box right behind the firing stalls for empty ammo boxes.

Well, New to Us

Cool-cool-car, meet the new-new-car!



As we spent hours today on the car issue, I started keeping a mental list of how car accidents are inconvenient.

1. Bodily and emotional injury
   
2. Time and anxiety of dealing with police, police reports, and insurance companies
   
3. Inconvenience of dealing with lack of vehicle and rental car companies
   
4. Car shopping
   
5. Car buying
   
6. Registering the new vehicle

I haven't been to the DMV yet, but each of the others has taken - literally - hours.

For example, the insurance company was only responsible for 5 days of rental car use after handing over the check for the totalled Passatt. Today was the last day for the rental car, and today we bought the new car. Great timing! But. The rental car place was near Paul's work, not near our home. And we couldn't get there before closing time, because we were busy buying the new car. So we had to drive nearly 20 miles round trip to drop off the rental car after dinner. Except. There was no after-hours drop-box, the keys have to be returned before 9:00 am, and both Paul and I have 8:00 am appointments elsewhere. So we drove to another Enterprise location. Again, no drop box. We quickly realized that the company has changed their policy and removed the boxes. Still, we drove to yet a third location, this one near Paul's am off-site meeting, so that we could leave the car tonight and he can drop off keys in the morning.

Total time spent? Nearly 2 hours on driving around alone. We won't get into the gas that cost. Oh, cost.

Cost is another huge inconvenience of having a car accident. Cost of gas for car shopping (and rental car returning), of car buying and tax-paying and registering, of meals eaten out while car shopping and buying, of new extended warantees and service plans, of interest rates and finance charges.

All when we were quite happy with our other car. That Passatt was still all shiny sliver and black inside. The leather looked just like it did when it was new. Ah, well.

We like the New New Car an awful lot, and the mileage is suburb - better than expected. (Also, unlike the VW, it doesn't drink premium.) Plus it's got some extra fancy features like the 6-cylinder engine, the wood-grain detailing, and the navigational system.

This is the third car Paul (as the unfortunate driver each time, though we do share driving time) has totaled in the last 8 years (though only one was his fault, and that one involved ice). Here's hoping for a prolonged hiatus from this sort of inconvenience.

Pacing

In interesting fiction, characters usually have schedules that would wear a normal person right out. I mean, "and then I went home and laid on the couch for two hours before pouring myself a bowl of cereal and attacking my laundry" isn't exactly page-turning excitement, flat prose aside. Since I'm about to detail my entire weekend for you, it's a good thing that this one was paced more like commercial fiction than like, say, my idea of a good time.

Friday was a day of exciting storms, followed by dinner with a friend and his new girlfriend. They stayed late, which was fun, except . . . well, I was starting to feel a little off.

Immediately after they left I realized that I was unpleasantly ill, presumably with whatever felled Paul last weekend. The problem with that was that I was planning to leave the house around 6:30 on Saturday morning to drive down to Cape Girardeau for the Heartland Writers' Guild Conference. After setting out some things for our neighborhood yard sale.

Paul woke me at 6:15, whereupon I nursed Ada and went straight back to sleep. In the house with my family. It was restless sleep. Paul took a couple of the yard sale things down, and left them out with honor-system envelopes. After listening to Ada crying for a while - she was upset that she wasn't getting her morning nap - I gave up on my own sleep goal and snuggled Ada into her crib.

While she napped, Ellie and Paul went to go get a babysitter while I readied a few things around the house, tried to rest some more, then showered and got dressed when Ellie and Paul left for gymnastics and the sitter was having trouble keeping Ada happy. My precious younger child knew that I was in the house, and naturally wanted my attention.

So I plopped into our rental Hyundai and headed for the conference. By myself. The car was full of old Starbucks detritus, but sadly bereft of fuel, as I noticed as I headed south of I-55 with the dashboard's orange warning light staring at me accusatorily. I pulled off at Festus/Crystal City, and learned that the whole community was completely out of power. Next services, 13 miles. Gulp. Fortunately, the under-powered Elantra sipped fuel slowly enough to coast into the gas station under its own power, though the driving experience didn't impress me enough to want to petition Enterprise to let us purchase the car rather than returning it on Monday.

I still felt like crap, but I really enjoyed the conference and am very glad I went. The Guild includes some really friendly people and I got a lot out of all three "workshops" I attended (really speaker sessions with Q&A at the end). A couple of the authors were painfully bitter, but I learned from them, too. Overall, a very positive experience despite my ailment and the fact that the sole women's restroom on our floor was out of commission all afternoon.

The trip back was uneventful, including my next stop in Festus/Crystal City for some desperately needed Sarahlynn-fuel. Sadly, despite a complete lack of obvious storm damage under the day's bright blue skies, power was still out and no caffeine was to be had.

I made it home safely and got Ada to bed before collapsing on the couch to car shop online for a few hours before stumbling to my own pillow.

On Sunday morning, Paul was very solicitous, taking the girls to get Starbucks while I slept in a little. I was feeling much, much better, but appreciated the slow start to my day, especially knowing what was coming.

Mid-morning, we all loaded into the van and went to Forest Park for the Down Syndrome Association's annual Buddy Walk fundraiser, where Ellie enjoyed a bouncy house and 2-story inflatable slide (though she burned her face on the hot vinyl) and both girls played in the Discovery Toys booth. They were ready for solid naps when we got home, since 90-plus degree heat doesn't agree with any of us.

After naps, we headed the opposite direction, out to Wentzville for The Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire, which Paul really wanted to attend. No, no, I enjoy it also. And the girls had a good time, too. Their big favorite was the petting zoo (goats! llamas! a bunny! a donkey! dogs! ducks!) and Ellie had fun on her "warhorse" pony ride. Paul delights in bad pirate humor and bawdy singalongs.

By closing time, when we piled back into the van, we were all overheated and exhausted again. it was really really hot in St. Louis today. By 6:30, on the way home, the temperature had dropped down to 90 again.

Dinner, baths, Ada to bed . . . I passed out for a while, waking up to watch Law and Order CI with Paul and write this. Soon, I hope to head to bed for an uninterrupted stretch. Best laid plans and all that.

Interspersed throughout all this, of course, was car shopping and car talking. The rental goes back tomorrow, and we're still chasing our tails. Paul's planning to go in a little late tomorrow so that we can take a candidate car to our mechanic bright and early. Here's hoping we have a little more debt soon. And maybe a pre-loved hybrid Accord.

Suspense Night

Tonight I attended a really cool event at the county library headquarters.

Although the reading/signing/socializing was at the library, the event was sponsored by Borders and Starbucks. That meant that Borders had a table in the back, selling books by the authors on the panel, and Borders supplied complimentary treats and coffee afterwards. How cool is that?

The readings were great; I got to listen to 3 authors I'd never heard of before, all of whom were fantastic. Megan Abbott, in particular, is someone I'd never pick up off a bookstore shelf - early-to-mid 20th Century mob/noir not really being my thing - but WOW. Her prose sings and she's obviously worth reading, no matter what she's writing.

Scott Phillips was a fascinating mix of disgusting, very smart, and funny, a combination I found very appealing.

Susan McBride was who I went to see, and she delivered all I'd hoped (and more). Plus, I got to talk to her husband, who's an old friend of mine, or at least someone I played hockey with a long time ago. (I'm awkward in social situations - and OK with that, generally).

Paul Harris did a very good job hosting. Ridley Pearson and Michael Kahn didn't attend (bummer, since I really wanted to hear both of them).

Reed Coleman initially tried to talk over Susan too much, but she held her own and he turned out to be a really great guy. Also, the most useful advice of the evening came from him.

In response to several people asking the usual questions like, "where do you get your inspiration?" and, "What it you tell the story and it's only 120 pages?" he said: New writers tend to fall in love with what they write. More experienced writers learn to fall in love with the writing itself.

Beautiful advice. (And very true for me as a beginning writer.)

The answer to the first question, by the way, was consistent across all the panelists and true of me as well: writers are often people who aren't fully in the moment; they are sitting on their own shoulders, observing every situation they're in. Everything is inspiration; the magic part is in the writing.

Wii Update

Those of you who read Yeah, But Houdini Didn't Have These Hips via feed might be confused tonight. I've been scanning my "edit posts" page and finding some old "drafts" I thought I'd published months ago. For example, you might have just seen a post come through about Ada learning to walk, which seems so long ago to me that it must have been in a different lifetime, or at least a different year.

Now my younger daughter tells me, "I want down! I walk!" more often than she says, "Up up up!" like she did so often only a few months ago. Ah, Ada. Wasn't I just worried that she'd never be able to separate from me?

Anyway, this post is about my Nintendo Wii, which I confess to not having played in many months. Like, maybe since January or so. I still think it's a great platform, and if I had, say, no children, I'd probably play it more. And if I had a large, uncarpeted or thinner-carpeted area in front of the TV, I'd definitely want WiiFit.

The rest of this post was written on my birthday last September (Paul gave me my present a couple of weeks early).

So far, my favorite game on the Nintendo Wii is Super Paper Mario because, perhaps, I'm about 10 years old when it comes to my gaming preferences. I loved the editorial comment made by one of the Sammer Guys about how brightly colorful games are childish and "next generation" games must be monochromatic. One of my favorite things about this game in particular - and Nintendo in general over other gaming platforms - is the brightly colored palette. The "mature" color scheme of the new Zelda is keeping me from wanting to even begin.

But my favorite things to do with the Wii are playing the with Miis (I've designed my whole family, and will post them here if I can figure out how to do that) and watching other people play Wii Sports. Witness:


This fall I've hosted a couple of Girls Wii Nights, and while we talk much more than we play, they are still fun. I am unashamed at being a nonserious gamer. I always have been, even when I played Quake 2 and Duke Nukem 3D with my guy friends in college.

One of the weirdest things about the Wii is the creepy blue light summons. Even when the unit is off, it flashes a cool blue light to draw your attention if it has something it deems important enough to trouble you for. Kind of . . . intrusive, actually.

2008 me again. I remember being so excited about my Wii, but like it's a story I heard from someone else. That was even longer ago than Ada wanting to be carried rather than running and falling constantly. This is the best argument I have for blogging. How else could I so easily record all this stuff in a way that's easy to tag and search? With my new swiss cheese memory, tagging and searching are just about the only way I "remember" anything.

Saint Louis Patina

A few months ago, I asked local bloggers for St. Louis urban legends and interesting factoids. I didn't learn too much then, but have recently stumbled upon a very cool blog devoted to all kinds of interesting St. Louis architectural lessons.

Paul and I enjoy driving around, just seeing where stuff goes. It's a little less mysterious now, with the GPS, but it can still be very fun. Tonight we discovered a long series of off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods only a couple of miles from our house whose existence we had never suspected.

While we were driving around back there we found a road called "Lemp" and some buildings and houses that looked really old (mixed in with newer, obviously expensive houses, because this is Kirkwood, after all).

When I got home, Google helped me find a lot of interesting information about the Lemp family's Kirkwood-area "rural escapes" from the early 20th century. Locals will know all about the Lemp family, with their downtown mansion connected to their brewery by tunnels and caves, as well as their curses and ghosts.

But the estates overlooking the Meramec were news to me: Cragwold and Alswel.

The drive was fun, the girls were great, and the internet research was engaging. But the crown jewel of my sleuthfest was this site: Saint Louis Patina, which is exactly what I was looking for back in February.

I will be back, and often!

Newsflash: It's All Mom's Fault!

What a shocker! A study in contrast:

1) The June issue of Parents magazine is all about dads, and how dads are the new moms, etc. (The New Face of Fatherhood, June 2008) Did you know that many parents will now look at both schedules to determine who can more easily stay home with a sick child? And that dads now spend an average of 6.5 hours/week with their children? While that's far fewer hours than moms spend, it's way up from 2.6 hours 30 years ago. So, yay! All in all, despite the sobering statistics buried on page 2, it's a very positive article. It made me optimistic about the future of co-parenting.

2) Mom's behavior impacts father's child rearing: study. Oh, where to begin?

a) "How much a father is involved in the daily care of his children is largely up to his wife." Yes! You read that right. It's her responsibility, and, presumably, her fault if he's uninvolved.

b) "Mothers can be very encouraging to fathers and open the gate to their involvement in child care, or be very critical and close the gate." Sure, encouragement always helps. But, hello, mothers don't own children. They don't control access unless they're granted that power. And is anyone else picturing the opening and closing of child safety gates, here?

c) "The researchers found that fathers were more involved in caring for their babies on a day-to-day basis when they received active encouragement from their wife or partner."

Look, here's the thing. Fathers need to be partners in parenting. They need to step up and take equal responsibility, not waiting for praise and encouragement ("Good boy! Way to go! Keep it up!") and not being put off by active discouragement ("Honey, I'll do it so that she doesn't cry . . . "). Fathers need to step up and say, "Hey, I'd like to change this diaper/provide this bottle/take the kids to the zoo by myself today."

Moms need to allow this to happen, of course. But the responsibility for men being active fathers falls on fathers, not on mothers.

The infantilization of men (and the making of mothers into mothers to the whole family, including fathers) is insulting to men and unfair to both men and women.

Sheesh.

We're all adults here. We don't need permission to spend quality time with our children (barring a court directive to do so, of course). We need to step up and make it happen, clearly communicating our desires and intentions all the while.

Successful Venture

Paul was sick this weekend, so he stayed home while I took the girls to Indianapolis for a wedding. A trip! Of over 400 miles! Alone with a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old! (My parents and youngest sister were waiting at the hotel to help care for the girls during the weekend, but I did the drive and the overnight portions alone, so let's not rain on my parade, eh?)

Other people do this all the time, of course, but it was a first for me and I'm (clearly) inordinately proud of myself. Some secrets to my success:

1. Be uncomfortable with public bathrooms. This will train your 4-year-old to want to avoid trips to the bathroom with you if possible. (I offer roadside stops with the portable potty seat as an alternative when emergencies arise.) It turns out that Ellie can easily last 5 hours in the car with no stops.
   
2. Have flexible children. My two spend so much time squirming around, legs over head, etc. that there's no worry about deep vein thrombosis from sitting too long.
   
3. Keep snacks and drinks handy, and children within reaching distance, if possible. (But out of reaching distance of each other, to limit fighting.)
   
4. Have a vehicle with easily accessible DVD system installed. Today, the girls watched Monsters, Inc., Toy Story, and part of The Lion King. They also listened to their beloved Ralph, played with dolls and MagnaDoodles, and took brief naps.
   
5. Offer occasional stops at parks to play, but try to schedule these immediately prior to aforementioned brief naps so that you don't have to follow through on the offers right away, ticking away a few more precious miles before being forced to pull off the interstate.

But, seriously, how's a single parent supposed to do it, otherwise? At what age is is acceptable to leave children alone in a car, however briefly? (Let's assume the car's running, unlocked, with A/C on.) Until that point, do you wake up both kids and drag them into a public bathroom whenever you need a pit stop? The horrors. Fortunately, Ellie inherited her super bladder from me, so despite all my coffee and milkshake consumption, I did just fine for 4+ hours myself. This time.

When I'm driving I don't like to stop very often. I learned this from my dad, but also from my daughters. Now that we have a DVD player, Ellie loves long car trips (her movie watching at home is limited and only on weekends or when I deem her sufficiently sick). But Ada? She's one and loves to RUN and PLAY. Sitting all day is not her cup of tea, though she's willing to do it when necessary. But putting her back into the car after a stop? The horrors. How can a small child make her body as stiff as a plank? This must be one of life's little mysteries.

Good Things

1. Geico called today, and after reviewing the claim and taking witness statements (the only real witness I'm aware of who actually stuck around to talk to the police was the other driver's friend) they're accepting 100% of the financial responsibility. Woo hoo! I get to release my frustration and aggression, now. Now. Now. OK, it will be a process. But I am feeling MUCH better already. And less litigious.
   
2. Paul has a rental car.
   
3. I'm finally reading Anne Lamott for the first time, and it's great fun.
   
4. There have been 3 official days of summer vacation so far, and we've done something fun each day (zoo, library, park). I polled the girls about tomorrow, lobbying hard for anything other than what they chose - the zoo again. We'll see. Maybe we'll stay in the children's zoo where they can run around more independently, or maybe I'll offer a larger prize: the pool!
   
5. Ant sightings are already tapering off in my bathroom.
   
6. A college friend of ours, who sang at our wedding, is getting married this weekend. And we're going! (Mostly) sans kids!
   
7. The house is tidy, and has ended each day in that state since Friday. A week now! Ahhhh.

Writing and marriage updates are conspicuously missing, yes, but that's because this is a list of happy things, and not everything can go perfectly all at once! So I'll just post a picture of the sloppy but quick and fun birthday cake my friends and I made for Paul on Monday. If you can't tell, it's two Legos.

Also, Ellie's summer hair:

Crunch . . . and I Don't Mean My Abs

To Sarahlynn's beautiful Passatt, May 2002 - May 2008: RIP.



And to teenaged girls with cell phone addictions: yes, red lights apply to you, too.

It could have been much, much worse. Paul and I go out alone together very rarely, but this was one of those occasions. We'd just left the girls at home with a sitter Friday night and were on our way out to dinner for Paul's birthday, when, BAM!

So: no kids in the accident. We were in the car, not the new van. And a fraction of a second would have made a dramatic difference: primary impact was at the front of the car, rather than directly against Paul's door. I don't know how fast she was going, but the speed limit on this road is 45 mph and traffic usually moves significantly faster than that. There's no sign that she braked at all before hitting us. (Paul, on the other hand, did slow down, which might have saved him serious injury.)

But we're both fine, though we spent the weekend hobbling around a bit, stiff and sore. Especially me, perhaps because I didn't have a steering wheel to hang on to. My back and neck have been stiff, and my chest - this is a lactating breast! - got bruised from my seat belt. Thank God for seat belts. We're fine.

But.

Today the accident took a turn for the worse. As if not having our car, being sore, and seeing the pieces of the VW on the street every time we go anywhere weren't bad enough, today we heard from Geico, Cell Phone Girl's insurance company. It seems that she's decided that she didn't run a red light, after all. Apparently, she just went through on yellow. And we, who were sitting at a red light on a cross street, decided to up and move into the intersection early, presumably to pop the tire on her cute Jeep by using ourselves as a tall speed bump. Have I mentioned that her father is a big attorney at a Very Important local company? [Specifics redacted at my husband's request.]

So. We have to wait 2 weeks to see what the police report says, and then, perhaps, we will be retaining counsel. I guess they figured that they didn't hurt us enough in the collision.

Sigh.

Cool Art

At Home with Down Syndrome in The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society



"Dr. Brian Stratford, a specialist in developmental disabilities at the University of Nottingham, suggested in the journal Maternal and Child Health that the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna used a little boy with Down syndrome as the model for his Christ child."

"The Gonzaga family of Mantua, Mantegna’s sponsor, had a boy with an unidentified “sickness,” she said, and one of the artist’s own fourteen children shared this condition—a not insignificant factor in Ludovico Gonzaga’s choice of Andrea Mantegna as his court painter."

It's unclear whether this particular painting was by the master himself or one of his students, but the message is pretty cool nonetheless.

And it's an excellent article, all the way to the very end.

Writing Stuff

This week provided mixed results on the morning writing front, so I plan to continue the experiment into next week. On the positive side, I got up early and got real work done while my brain was fresh . . . and I have a few thousand new words to show for it! On the negative side, once Lizzi the pug decides she needs to go out and the girls get up (usually between 6 and 6:30) it's a little distracting. I think it's workable, but it's not simple. Also, I only got two days in this week; Thursday was a flop.

Wednesday was Paul's birthday, and he spent it in an all-day, off-site meeting. Among other things I did for his birthday this year (not my most creative year ever, remember last year's enormous surprise party complete with clown?) I had a fresh box of Krispie Kremes for him to share at the meeting. When he did so, one of his management colleagues jokingly asked, "What's this, #30? Hah hah hah," like we were ever so young, elbow elbow.

Paul, who was celebrating the big 3-1, replied, "No, that was a little while ago. Hah hah hah," implying that he too was well past 40.

And therein lies the difference between men and women, folks. I might have said, "Nope, this is the second anniversary of my 29th birthday!" If I were Paul's age. Which I was. 3 years ago.

But what can you expect in a world where male actors are frequently at least 15 years older than their female costars and women are old at 30? (Is anyone else watching Lost this season? It's renewed my interest in the series.) And not to get too sidetracked, but why are people acting shocked and horrified at 15-year-old Mylie Cyrus's nude photographs for Vanity Fair (Gasp! Exploitation of a child!) but when Britney made that nasty schoolgirl video as a teen, it was A-OK. Feh. We sexualize very young girls, and then critique them for selling what we're buying. FTR, I don't think it's cool to publicize photographs of a minor that are clearly so adult and sensual - e.g. wearing only a sheet, with windblown hair and bright red lips, etc. Have I mentioned that when Ellie was 2 I started buying little boy shorts for her because the little girl shorts were so short they showed her diaper? It's never too early to start sexualizing our little girls. Note that mine wear board shorts and rash guards to the pool.

Wait. Wasn't this post supposed to be about writing? Back to that, then.

I'd like to be able to share the subscriptions to agent, editor, and writing blogs in my Google Reader without adding them as a separate blogroll here. It's not as easy as I'd hoped, unfortunately. I haven't even figured out how to "share" a whole feed rather than just an individual post. If any fellow Google Reader users have any tips, I'd love to hear them!

Next question: My local writing group has fizzled (a couple of writers lost interest, a couple more are in demanding MFA programs) and I'm looking for more critical feedback on my work so I'm exploring online writing workshops. Do any of you have experience with one of these? I know that OWW is great, but I'm not currently writing SFF and am looking for something more general. E.g. Gotham. So: any stories to share? Or gossip about the relative merits of various programs?

Final question: Is anyone else planning to attend the Heartland Writer's Conference this year? I'm still tossing the idea around.

Public Recognition

Hey, I was recognized last week for the first time. Or, rather, my kids were.

We were at our Parents as Teachers annual Teddy Bear Picnic, tired and frustrated and trying to edge for the door at the time - that description would be for the parents. The girls could more accurately be described as tired and having a great time and not planning on leaving any time soon, thanyouverymuch.

On our way to the coveted exit, Ellie found an activity she absolutely must do involving paint. And Ada thought that looked absolutely fabulous, particularly the eating of the paint part.

And I wanted to get home to vacuum and pick up the books spread all over the family room floor before a couple of girlfriends came over for pizza and the season finale of America's Next Top Model. What? What?!

And a completely unfamiliar woman walked over to me and asked, "Do you blog?"

Why, yes, yes I do. Cool.

Pulitzer

I probably didn't mention that I was quoted in the Sunday New York Times several months ago. I didn't mention it because my full name was the very beginning of the article, followed by "considers herself a supporter of abortion rights."

I stand by what I believe, and I don't regret being quoted so publicly. There needs to be a public face for this discussion, and I'm willing for it to be me. But I was a bit freaked out for a while, with the huge Sunday New York Times print and online readership seeing my controversial position and blogging about it on their right-to-life blogs, when a quick Google search would turn up my address and my daughter's school. (She's at a different school now, for unrelated reasons.) There are some scary, violent people out there who oppose abortion. There is risk in speaking out.

But I think that this is a discussion worth having and I think it needs to be explored as widely as possible. I don't think it does any good for either side to pretend that abortion is a black-and-white issue. There are some really strong reasons why women have abortions, and there are ways that our society pushes them to these decisions. I'm talking about the ways in which "pro-life" legislation frequently loses interest once babies have been born, leaving women, children, and families out in the cold.

On the flip side, it's equally reprehensible to talk about "choice" as though it's a purely personal issue, made in a vacuum, with no larger ethical or societal tethers.

Issues surrounding genetic testing and abortion include disability rights, sexism, eugenics, and the society we're building for the future.

I am incredibly grateful that Amy Harmon chose to tackle these issues head-on.

Amy Harmon is a domestic correspondent covering the impact of the genetic revolution on American life. Ms. Harmon won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2008 for her ongoing series "The DNA Age," which explores the impact of new genetic technology on American life.

She did a fabulous job, and the award is well-deserved. I hope that her work continues to shed light on these murky areas and encourage reasonable discussion about difficult issues surrounding genetic testing and abortion.

I believe that there's a difference between what's right and what's legal. I don't believe that all of my morals need to be legislated. I do believe that I need to stand up and speak out for what I believe, to help try to make the world a more understanding and accepting place for my daughter and for others who don't fit into our airbrushed templates.

I know that lots of people - whether they call themselves pro-choice or pro-life - support abortion in cases of genetic or other birth defect or abnormality. And I think that's a confluence that needs to be examined more closely, to dissect how our prejudices are helping open a really ugly path to the future.

More information about Harmon's work, complete with lots of links, here.

Ants Are Marching

Well, they're more than a month late, but they're back. Every spring, we're pestered by ants. And it's the weirdest infestation ever. For one thing, regardless of what we - and our pest guy - do, it lasts a few weeks. As far as I can tell, this period can't be significantly increased or decreased by treatment or lack thereof. Still, every year I'm willing to try something new. And either nothing's worked so far, or I haven't found their real access point yet. I had such high hopes for last year's chalk line. This year: spray baby oil. And, if step 2 is necessary: corn meal.

They're tiny little black ants, about the size of the millimeter line on a plastic school ruler. I usually think they're minute pieces of lint until they start scurrying frantically across our white bathroom floor or bathtub.

And that's the other really weird thing: location. These ants are only ever found a few at a time in the master bathroom. I've never, ever seen one in the kitchen, which shares a wall with the master bath. The fruit bowl is completely safe. Nor do I see the ants in the family room, living room, or master bedroom, despite the fact that each of those places seems a likelier hangout for ants. The master bedroom is obviously close to the master bath, and has a larger window on the same wall. The family room has a screen door opening out onto the patio. The front/living room has large windows kissed by long tendrils of ivy, a known insect and arachnid hang-out.

I don't know why this limited influx of teeny tiny ants bothers me so much, but it really does. As good ant karma, I've steadfastly refused to kill the small spider living on the inside of my front door, between the thin curtain and the glass. It won't do any practical good with the ants, but maybe it will broadcast the message to the elements of nature encroaching on my house: you stay in your space, I'll stay in mine.

Because I really don't like to encounter living creatures while I'm naked and vulnerable. For the most part.

New Schedule

I can't blog tonight, because I'm supposed to be sleeping. Tomorrow begins my first attempt at getting up to write early in the morning. I haven't tried this before because my girls also get up early - sometimes as early as 5, never as late as 7 - which puts an early morning exclusive parenting burden on Paul. He's willing to try shouldering it a few mornings a week, so we're off on the experiment.

Now I just need to get some sleep so that I have at least a solid 4 hours before tomorrow. Snore. (And I think Paul will soon be regretting the fact that he's not in bed yet, either.)

In the meantime, I'd still love to hear what you think about fanfic (below) so I'm using this opportunity to introduce my first blogger quiz. Happy Monday!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Career Options

Ellie loves to play doctor, and she's very convincing at it. First of all, playing doctor involves Ellie briskly moving around the house, tending many different patients in various rooms. She talks as she does this, but she doesn't explain everything she's doing - much of which is quite mysterious to me - and she exudes an air of utter confidence.

If she decides to pursue a career in medicine, I will support that. But I know what a difficult path that is, both before and after receiving the degree. So I was glad to learn, today, that she has a strong alternative.

Using the squeeze ball and tube attachment of her toy sphygmomanometer (without the arm cuff) Ellie gave me a haircut for 40 minutes today. I love having my hair cut, brushed, and otherwise played with (unfortunately my last haircut of any kind was 11 months ago) so this was an excellent nap-delaying tactic. It might have lasted longer, but the phone rang and broke up the party. During the epic styling session, I was stationed on the floor in the middle of Ellie's room picking up toys and organizing them into their storage bins while playing with Ada. Ellie stood behind me, moving from side to side, one hand firmly moving, tipping, and repositioning my head when necessary, always explaining what she was doing. Periodically, she stepped back to examine her handiwork. Have I mentioned that this was super fun for me? Plus, I told myself, all the squeezing on the bulb (simulating cutting) had to be good hand strengthening/OT for Ellie. And Ada got to read stories and do puzzles with me on the floor while Ellie worked. Everybody wins!

Mild Rants and Request

I have a crick in my neck from typing on my laptop while looking at the desktop PC's (actually, kitchentabletop, if you want to get specific) monitor. Because my laptop's backlight died this morning, which was a lovely way to start the day. Sentence fragments suggest frustration, dontcha know.

Fortunately, we purchased the extended warranty and someone from Dell is supposed to contact me tomorrow about coming out to replace it. Paul doesn't seem to think that this is a big deal, but swapping out the monitor on a laptop seems a bit more involved to me than doing the same with a PC. So I backed up my entire "Writing" folder, just in case.

For the interested, On Point had an interesting program on closed vs. open box systems and the future of innovation/the internet.

Moving away from technology to vent about something else briefly, let's talk about summer programming. I won't even get into the way most activities for kids assume an at-home parent to ferry kids around at extremely variable and inconvenient pick-up and drop-off times. That's not my rant, because I am an at-home mom and available to make those trips. (Though I still acknowledge how incredibly unfair the system is.) But figuring out a schedule for what my girls should do this summer was harder than creating a workable semester schedule for an English major/pre-med back in my college years. (There's very little overlap and lots of conflict, there.)

But I figured it out. June's will be the busy month; July and August will provide a bit more AM down-time (all afternoons are pretty relaxed). In June Ellie has summer school two mornings a week. Two other mornings, she'd be in a morning-only day camp at a local park. Those 4 mornings, Ada and I would go to swimming lessons together while Ellie was otherwise occupied. And the 5th morning, we'd do something fun altogether, usually swimming.

But I got distracted by the IEP and then vacation, and . . . camp was booked solid when I tried to enroll Ellie. It was the only camp I've found that had a two days/week option, so that it fit around her summer school schedule. But the closest pools to us have 4 days/week swimming lessons (a practice I like for the learning water comfort/safety process, though it makes scheduling tough) so I can't take Ada for swimming lessons unless Ellie has some sort of programming on those mornings. I don't think Ellie'd be really cool with being dropped off in the gym daycare while Ada and I swim. ARGH.

I know, I know, this is an insignificant problem, in the grand scheme of things. But I can't take swimming lessons with both girls at the same time (trust me on this) and I want both to have that opportunity. Scheduling summer programming feels like a big puzzle that I'm having trouble solving. Does anybody have the box, so that I can see the picture I'm trying to match? Seriously, if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Finally, thinking of bloggy helpfulness and to end on a positive note, I want to give a big THANKS to Carolyn for the Mystic Chai tip. I got three canisters for Mother's Day and I plan to put them all away before my September birthday. It's just as good as I remembered, even when I'm stirring it myself!

Fan Fic

I read an interesting discussion of fan fiction on Alas, and have been pondering my response ever since, especially given the Mariam Zimmer Bradley thing and then this agent post on copyright infringement and this discussion of the difference between fanfic and profic.

Really good article about it (read: slant I primarily agree with).

Obviously the MZB example is an extreme one. But I can't imagine losing years of my own hard work, let alone the time and anguish accompanying being sued and virtually attacked.

An excerpt from a letter to the editor of Writer's Digest, March 1993, by Marion Zimmer Bradley:

". . .While in the past I have allowed fans to 'play in my yard,' I was forced to stop that practice last summer when one of the fans wrote a story, using my world and my characters, that overlapped the setting I was using for my next _Darkover_ novel. Since she had sent me a copy of her fanzine, and I had read it, my publisher will not publish my novel set during that time period, and I am now out several years' work, as well as the cost of inconvenience of having a lawyer deal with this matter.
"Because this occurred just as I was starting to read for this year's _Darkover_ anthology, that project was held up for more than a month while the lawyer drafted a release to accompany any submissions and a new contract, incorporating the release. I do not know at present if I shall be doing any more _Darkover_ anthologies.
"Let this be a warning to other authors who might be tempted to be similarly generous with their universes, I know now why Arthur Conan Doyle refused to allow anyone to write about Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to be more accomodating, but I don't like where it has gotten me. It's enough to make anyone into a misanthrope."

On one hand, sure it's flattering that others are so excited by the world you've created that they want to keep living in it. Imitation is the highest form of flattery and all that.

But have you read any of it? It's never worked for me, because it just doesn't feel real. Even the stuff that's not atrociously written (and, let's face it, a lot of fanfic on the net is really really horrible) doesn't ever have the same feel as original stories created by the author. And, seriously, I don't care how hot the story is, Harry and Snape were just never going to get it on. What? You've never read slash?)

After kicking this idea around for a while and not making much progress with it, this is where I think I come down on the issue:

Ideas are not copyrightable. It's dangerous for fans (or anyone else) to be able to claim that an author "stole" an idea for one of her novels, because writers get ideas from all over the place: what we read, what we listen to, our families, our lives. Two people could take the exact same incident and write very different stories about it. (Heck, one author could take an incident and write very different stories about it.) It's the writing that's protected, not the antecedent.

However, when an author creates characters and a world, they are hers. Without express permission of the original author, I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of others making money off an author's creations. This one's sticky for me.

It's not an issue that's likely to impact me personally, but I guess I won't know how I'll really feel about it until I find myself in that situation.

How do you feel about it? Feel free to try to convince me that I'm wrong-headed.

Naughty Words

While I was changing Ada's diaper the other day, she was vigorously swinging the octopus toy that hangs over her changing table. On one particularly energetic pass, the heavy plastic clip that attaches the toy to its hanging string whacked me in the eye. I have no idea how it missed my glasses and hit my eye so hard, but it did a real number on me, as my father would say. Fortunately, I blinked in time so it only hid my eyelid, but wow did it hurt. And surprise me.

"Puffer duck!" I said.

I have been cultivating my potty mouth since elementary school, and 4-1/2 years of parenthood have ruined me.

I said "puffer duck!"

The Equality State

It's 1000 miles from our house to Paul's parents' house, and we tried to make the drive in one long take again this year. Since it was early May, we figured that was reasonable. Imagine our surprise when we got stuck at a rest stop, then, a little later, a gas station by black ice covering the interstate in western Nebraska. It took us 22 hours to get there, and we arrived exhausted. On the way back, we stayed overnight in a Country Inn & Suites. Nirvana! We arrived home much happier than we would have if we'd tried to drive all night.

The girls were really really really excited to take this trip. Ellie asked about it every day for a few weeks beforehand. And they were not disappointed. Nana arranged for Ellie to have a therapeutic horsemanship session, which was sort of the highlight of her month. We looked at the pictures again today, and she said, "Walk, Targo!"

Both of their language developments (can you say "language developments" like that?) are really blooming right now. I love hearing them voice their preferences. During the trip, they actually argued over which movies to watch on the car's DVD player. Today, Ada told me that she was done listening to "Ralph" and wanted to hear the ABCDs song. And, while we were at the Outback with Paul's folks, Ada flagged down the server to order a pizza. Seriously, she yelled at him, "Pazza!" Too cute. Meanwhile, I've discovered a way to help Ellie go to sleep at night (sometimes). We now talk through her day today and tomorrow, which helps her process all the stuff running through her head that she's still developing the ability to really talk about.

These kids are great.

Fiction Cred

Blog? Blog? Blog!

Sorry for the unexplained absence; we just got back from our delayed vacation visiting Paul's parents in Wyoming. We had a lovely time. I'll probably write about that, and about the cute new things the girls are doing, and about the step sheet I'm working on.

But, tonight, I want to tell you that I've had a story published. Yay! It happened really fast. I submitted the story a few weeks ago, got an email yesterday that it was accepted, and saw it posted online today. Yippee!

Enjoy the new fifteenth edition of apt: an online literary journal.

Self portrait: