Mandajuice

Parental Displays of Affection

Along with summer have come several unexpected pleasantries, which I will now describe for you in excruciating detail because nothing is more like a pacemaker to a blog than a wordy accounting of where you've been and why you haven't been blogging. The abridged version is this: I've been either A) writing B) reading or C) gettin' some. But never all three at once.

Alex is at camp from 9-12 every day and I've been leaving Genoa at the child watch area for 90 minutes and escaping into the bowels of the community center to work on revising my novel. It's an uninterrupted child-free editing bonanza and I get to do this for the WHOLE ENTIRE SUMMER. By the time I'm through with it, this book won't even have a stray comma. The kids both seem to adore this arrangement as much as I do and my favoritest part is that we get our boohineys out the door before 9AM every day and we're gone until noon. Then it's just a nap, a ride on the exercise bike and a couple pages of homeschooling before it's time to start dinner. It's the best schedule we've ever had and I already know I'm going to cry when school starts and it's over. (Kindergarten will be only two full days per week.)

It's also a schedule that gives me obscene quantities of time to read and in this single respect, I have never been a happier human being in my entire life. My Kindle is permanently attached to my person and when I need to use my eyeballs to, like, cook or clean or push my children on their bicycles or something, I simply pop in some ear buds, slip the sleek wonderment down the back of my pants (Genoa says, "put the book in your butt again!") and turn on text-to-speech. I'm burning through books like a stripper goes through g-strings and I'm looking for a sidebar application that will automatically post what I'm reading and/or upload my selections to Good Reads. (Any ideas?)

Lastly and most characteristically inappropriate is that Dave and I are doing that annoying thing we do every once in a while where we can't keep our hands off each other. I don't know if it was that photo I let him take of me a couple weeks ago or the season change or something in the water, but we are worse than a pair of lovesick newlyweds. We've been married almost a dozen years and I still can't bring myself to turn him down. Ever.

We invited Carol over for BBQ'd chicken on Saturday night and she caught us making out in the kitchen (god forbid I bend over to reach something out of the produce drawer!) and she scoffed at us to keep our hands off eachother in front of the kids. Of course I came to our defense with the argument that some of my fondest childhood memories are of teasing my father for groping my mother while she cooked dinner! Am I wrong? I mean, Dave and I have the kind of marriage where we openly discuss things and even argue in front of the kids because we think it's healthy for them to see us work our problems out. Shouldn't they bear witness to (an edited PG version) of the good parts too?

My sister moved here!

The highlight of my week came this afternoon when after something like six or seven years of pretending it didn't exist, my sister Audrey chopped off the disgusting skin tag I've been hiding in the crook of my elbow. We first tried using fishing line, but instead of severing it, the string got stuck around the very base of the nub and then broke, leaving me with a strangled finger mole that was beginning to turn purple. I numbed it again with a piece of ice and then she clipped it with my kitchen shears.

The castoff looked like an adorable little bald baby scrotum.

You're welcome.

June 15th

So I broke down on Thursday and ordered myself a Kindle II. I've been having terrible shoulder pain lately and I began to notice an eerie correlation between book thickness and shoulder pain - the thicker the book I'm reading at any given time, the more Tylenol my shoulder requires. How pathetic is that? I get READER'S SHOULDER and that's the full extent of my fitness-related injuries. (I always read while I exercise).

Anyway, the Kindle came to mind because it's lightweight and thin and most importantly - it lays flat and requires nothing but a single button tap to flip a page.  I don't actually have to hold it while I read either. I figured it would do two things - eventually save me money (e-books are generally less than $10, even for hard-cover bestsellers) and it would alleviate my shoulder pain.

I WAS COMPLETELY UNPREPARED FOR HOW MUCH I WOULD LOVE IT.

I LOVE my Kindle. LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!

Within ten minutes of opening the package, I transferred my OWN manuscript to the device. For free. And now I can read/edit my book using the Kindle's handy keyboard and I have saved myself approximately 14 ink cartridges and 27 trees (it's 300 pages long!). The best part is that I can edit my book WHILE I EXERCISE. In fact, the Kindle will READ MY BOOK TO ME OUT LOUD, a feature I didn't think I would use until I was stuck in the car alone twice this weekend and there was nothing good on the radio.

When I tweeted about the Kindle, I only received negative responses. Why is everyone fighting the ebook revolution? Even as an aspiring writer, I don't see the downside.  I mean, I will always still buy real books, but the Kindle gives me IMMEDIATE access.  On Saturday, I drove to Portland for my first Romance Writer's of America meeting and one of the authors there referenced a recently published book. I had my Kindle in my purse (it's so thin, it's like Virginia Slim), so in less than a minute, I bought her Harlequin for $6.39 and started reading it right there at the meeting. I call that a WIN-WIN.

In other news, look what Alex can do!
That would be him riding a bike without training wheels for the first time. Two weeks ago, we bought Alex a lighter bike with the hope we'd be able to take off the training wheels some time this summer, but we were at the park on Friday night and he just hopped on his friend Lauren's bike and IMMEDIATELY STARTED RIDING IT.  No practice - just VROOOOM.  We were floored!

June Eleven

My kids got a new cousin yesterday!
Andrew was born just before 6PM last night and was 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 100% beautiful.

I love this video of him screaming.

Is there anything better than the sound of a healthy newborn cry?

What better way to announce the arrival of a beautiful new nephew than on a newly-designed blog! This lovely new header (refresh and/or click over to see it!) is a Secret Agent Josephine original and I love it with the heat of a thousand suns. I've always admired Brenda's work - the woman has more creativity in her pinkie toe than I have in all of my DNA combined - but I didn't think she was still designing blog headers. I've never felt so happy to be wrong!

June eighth

Six months, 102,000 words, countless hours of Disney channel later and it turns out I can add one more thing to my resume: I'VE WRITTEN A BOOK!

In hindsight, the only reason I can even think of why I wrote the damn thing in the first place is this: I just couldn't stop. 33 years later, I finally know what I want to be when I grow up - a Romance Novelist - and writing those two words at the top of my list feels every bit as good as you'd imagine. Now I just have to revise the crap out of it and figure out a way to sell it and I get to die happy.

The book is called: GRAVY. I called it that because I wrote it and that means my protagonist likes to cook, DUH, and GRAVY is the word Italian Americans use for Ragu (red sauce). But mainly I decided to call it GRAVY because that's what it's about: once you find your people - the family you were meant to have - the rest is just gravy.

June seventh

Feeling better today. Rode 15 miles on the bike. Carefully monitoring my blood sugar.

Also? 99,000 words and counting. I'm THISCLOSE.

June Six

I was all prepared to go into a big gun control debate here today, but...

I had another weird episode this morning and this one left me far more rattled than the first one. I had the same oddly pixelated vision in both eyes and the hand numbness - this time my right hand went dead, but today I had the lovely added experience of feeling my tongue go dead inside my mouth.

That did not feel good.

The worst part is that I still don't feel 100% right and I haven't all day. I can't really define "not right" other than to say: not my usual perky self, sluggish, tired, my brain is functioning normally, but not with its usual zest. It took me three full minutes to remember the word "CT Scan" when I was at the doctor's office: I just don't feel like myself.

Fortunately, I avoided the ER this time because the clinic was open and the doctor there has a new theory: hypoglycemia. Both times I experienced this feeling on an empty stomach. The first time I had just ridden the exercise bike and I didn't remember feeling hungry for about an hour afterward, but then I was STARVING and sent Dave to Burgerville for dinner while we were waiting to be seen. Today I didn't eat breakfast and my hand went numb while I was in the McDonald's drive-thru getting myself a McMuffin, again, I was STARVING. Both times, my blood sugar tests came back normal, though, because I ate after the event, but before the blood test. Next time I'll be sure and test my bloodsugar the second my eyesight goes wonky. The strange thing is that I usually feel my blood sugar dropping WELL before it gets dangerous and neither of these events felt like any kind of hypoglycemia I've experienced before.

But let's all just HOPE that's what it is because today's doctor also referred me to a Neurologist to rule out MS and I really don't even want to think about that.

June fifth

Quick Friday night political poll!

Law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits... Should be allowed to carry their concealed weapons into establishments that serve alcohol. Should NOT be allowed to carry their concealed weapons into establishments that serve acohol. view results

In the comments, I'd love to hear the WHY to your response.

How do you think I voted?

June fourth

Yesterday was Alex's Kindergarten open house, which I can no longer think about without hearing Genoa say "Can I go that garden with Alex next year?" I'm usually the kind of person who is never late and checks her calendar every morning, but I forgot about Kindergarten orientation ENTIRELY and it wasn't until Dave was leaving for work and caught the next door neighbors out front on their way there that I finally remembered. (Stupid iCal alerts! This isn't the first time I've screwed them up!)

Have I mentioned that the people who live literally RIGHT next door to us have two daughters? And that their two girls are the same ages as our two kids? And can you think of ANYTHING more awesome than that? We live too close to the school to be within the bus radius, which means we'll have to drive them ourselves and/or walk them to school on nice days and I can't tell you how relieved and delighted I am that my kids will both ALWAYS having walking partners, kids with whom we share a FENCE.

The best part is that I genuinely LIKE these girls' parents. They're easy-going people - we've had them over for dinner and beer - and how awesome is it that we get along great? Before we ever talked about it, I raised my hand during orientation to ask about how much influence we'd have over picking our schedules (Kindergarten has recently been changed to two schedules - either Monday, Thursday and every other Wednesday OR Tuesday, Friday, every other Wednesday) so that we could carpool. There's no reason two kids who live RIGHT NEXT DOOR should have separate rides to school every day and the neighbors agree.

Anyway,  I hate to say this, but my general impression of the school was... underwhelming. It occurred to me - particularly when it came to the vagaries of the class schedules and the way the school officials wanted to avoid the issue like the death penalty - that I'm the administration's worst nightmare. I'm the kind of parent who is opinionated, vocal and relentless. Not to mention, I write a mean complaint letter. PTA here I come. The teachers are going to LOVE me.

The biggest disappointment was that they separated us. After a ten minute film about Kindergarten, they took the kids from the library into the classrooms and I didn't see Alex again for almost an hour. I wish I could've been there to see his first reaction to the Kindergarten classroom, to the teacher, the book that was read, the craft project they did, the other kids. Instead I suffered through an hour of self-important lectures about speech therapy and not sending my kid to school when he's dripping bodily fluids. It could've been a lot more fun. Whatever. Kindergarten here we come.

June the third

Her cardboard sign read:

BROKE. UGLY. OUT OF GAS.
Anything helps.

and it made me chuckle.

I was getting off the freeway just so I could turn around and go back the other way. I was lost again trying to get to my writer's meeting and making the same stupid u-turn I made off I-5 the last time I was in the city. Portland loves to remind me how it's not San Francisco. I never once got lost in San Francisco.

At first I didn't open my wallet or roll down my window. I never give money to people with freeway signs, not because I don't care, but because I find the transaction itself awkward. What exactly am I paying for? It feels demeaning to both of us, this exchange of cash that I earned and she didn't. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a capitalist, an investor - I'm hardwired that way and always have been - and that means I want something for my money, even if it's only a promise. And you can't really buy that from a street beggar.

I wondered if the sign was true. I couldn't see her face, but I checked out the rest of her. The bottom half of her head was shaved and a husk of dreadlocks shot out of the top half, barely contained by a rubber band. Her clothes - an army green wifebeater, a long denim skirt, tennis shoes - were threadbare, but not dirty. She was probably my age. From ten yards away, I admired her arms. They were lean, tan, tattooed, strong. Looking at her made me feel flabby and overfed and I thought, she could do a lot with those arms. She's stronger than me, for sure. Why isn't she working with those arms?

Then I watched her hobble up to the car in front of me, bow her head and accept a stranger's cash. Something in the way she winced with every step made me follow the seam of her skirt down to her foot. She had a prosthetic leg.

I still couldn't see her face.

I hesitated briefly, wondering if I'd have time to finish the transaction before the light changed, but then I realized I cared less about the person behind me than I did about her and reached for my wallet. I had more, but I took out two dollars, rolled down my window and held out my hand. My stomach lurched.

She was fiddling with her backpack and didn't look up before the light turned green and the three cars in front of me pulled ahead. Instead, I pulled over, blocking traffic to get as close to her as I could without hitting the median. I didn't want her to have to walk on that leg any more than she had to. It looked so painful when she walked.

I stopped two feet from her and when she looked up at me, a genuinely surprised smile spread across her face all the way up to her eyes. "Thank you," she said and her eyes said she meant it and I said, "Good luck," and wished like hell I could turn those ones into hundreds. Her arms were hard, but her face was soft, open, stunning. Something about the way she looked at me made me blush and I wanted to tell her how wrong she was.

She wasn't the ugly one.