Road Trippin'

Our campsite at Sage Creek Campground in June, 2000

Very early in our relationship, David and I took a road trip to Kansas to visit my dad.  Later road trips have included a summer-long ramble out West with no firm destination, spending all our time either in the car or the tent, a mad dash from Oregon to Minnesota and back, without stopping for anything but gas and fast food, a road trip with friends up to Vancouver, British Columbia, and various shorter trips all over the place.

We made a lot of discoveries along the way.  We discovered, for instance, that I make a good navigator: ("Okay, so according to these three maps I'm consulting at once, you are going to want to make your way over to the left lane for a left exit in one mile.  There will be two exits off to the left before the one you are looking for.  Once you take the exit, you will take another left, followed by an immediate right.  Not this exit, but it's coming up next. And turn! Now, remember left, followed by immediate right.  YES!  And we're set for the next hundred miles, unless you'd like to stop for something to eat, which can be done in twelve miles, forty-six miles, or possibly seventy-two miles, although information on that tiny town is a bit sketchy"), and that he is not a good navigator ("Yeah! TURN RIGHT THERE!  No, I mean, LEFT, but...yeah...back there.  Um.  Let me figure out how we turn around.")

He is a calm pilot ("No problem, honey, I don't mind being boxed in by giant trucks on a winding mountain road while the rain lashes against the windshield and the lightning makes the world seem like a strobe light disco party.  It's okay that I haven't slept in twenty-two hours and I've had to pee since we were in South Dakota and the whole world looks fuzzy.  You go ahead and take a nap"), and I am not a calm pilot ("HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET OVER TO THAT EXIT WITH NO WARNING OMG THERE ARE CARS EVERYWHERE WHY IS EVERYONE GOING SO FAST THEY'RE CROWDING ME WE'RE GOING TO DIE AAAHHHHHH!  *sob sob sob*").

But most of our experiences with road trips ended when we had kids.  Not because we didn't feel confident in our abilities to take kids on a road trip, and not because we were trying to deprive them of the experience of travel but rather because kids are expensive and travel is a luxury, and also because, as a grown-up, vacation time frequently gets used up with things like painting the house or catching up on all the laundry. 

But we finally did it--we put the kids to the test to discover if they were good road trippers, too.  And they are! D. drove the whole way, and while I had additional tools at my fingertips as navigator (GPS...so shiny! and wi-fi capable kindle...so connected!), we still adopted our usual, figure-it-out-as-we-go attitude.  There were a few things we really wanted to see.  One was the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove, MN.  We've been reading the Little House series out loud for the last year, and both boys are pretty fascinated by the prairie life.  The museum was excellent, and the hands-on exhibits kept the boys enthralled.

Sage Creek June 2011--a Kiss the Morning Star scene come true!

We also wanted to make a stop at the Sage Creek Campground in the Badlands--or maybe I need to say that I wanted this.  This was a place where D. and I camped a million years ago, and I think we had one photo of it from that trip.  But it became more important to me when I was writing Kiss the Morning Star and wrote an important scene that takes place at that campground.  I wanted to see it again, but this time thinking of it as the site of Anna and Kat's adventures.  It wasn't so much that it needed to be perfectly accurate (there are definitely some details that are...maybe we'll call it romanticized!), but I wanted to just...envision them there.  It was really cool, though, to find the perfect precipitous cliff for a key moment where Anna and Kat almost step off the edge of the prairie and fall into a chasm in the dark.  I didn't know if there would be such a place, but then we found this awesome spot.  I had to run over and take pictures, so of course D. took pictures of me taking pictures because we are picture-taking crazy.

Speaking of picture-taking crazy, if you want a closer look at our road tripping experience, I spent like all day yesterday uploading and writing notes on photos, so here's our flickr set from the trip. 

And now...must get busy on these copyedits!

(And, happy summer! I will try to get back into blogging and reading mode!)

road trip (and road kill) reflections...

I finished another round of revisions (maybe close the last one?) on Kiss the Morning Star this week, so I'd like to celebrate by sharing a little bit about the road trip that partially inspired the book, a trip D. and I took about ten years ago and which follows much of the same course as Anna and Kat follow on their "rucksack revolution".  We, too, carried some Kerouac in our backpacks, and like Anna, I carried a notebook in which I tried to capture both our actual experiences on the road and also my thoughts about life and love and truth and beauty and all that stuff that seems sometimes easier to think about while I'm speeding along a back road without an itinerary.

Some of the little details from my old notebook triggered scenes in KtMS, but most of the time, if I tried to put something that actually happened to D. and me on our trip into the book, it ended up not being believable as fiction.  One thing that we have in common with Anna and Kat, though, is the Roadkill Count--a gory list on the back cover of the notebook that documents the dead.  We tried to categorize the animals ("Coon", "Former Flyers", "Brown Furries", "Possibly a Beaver", and sadly, "Collared Critters").  You might be able to see this in the photo (that's my marked-up edit letter and manuscript underneath my notebook, by the way!), but we also wrote a few annotations ("Hit a few times!" "Big one!"), and on this trip we actually added a less morbid "Live Encounters Driving" section which tallies up to almost as many live creatures as dead ones (except one of them says, "Oops, hit this one!").

Several pages of our notebook keep track of the little details of our journey, such as where we spent each of the 77 nights we were on the road, and how much we paid for our accommodations.  We also kept track of every tank of gas we purchased, the price per gallon, and the mileage we got in my heavily loaded 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis, Berta.  The mileage wasn't great, but it is pretty amusing to remember how scandalized we were by the price of gas in certain cities--"It's OVER $1.75 a gallon, what the hell???" 

We also dedicated a couple of pages to silly signs or amusing quotes that we either said or overheard while on the road.  (One of my favorites, written in iridescent pink pen, goes like this:  Elissa:  Oh, it's okay.  I'm just checking to see if I have a live hornet in my pants.  David:  Um.  Maybe you should pull over while you do that?)

Interestingly (to me, haha!), as I flipped through my road trip notebook, I also found--in a completely unrelated part of the notebook that was from before we left--the little character sketch that inspired me to write Kiss the Morning Star in the first place.  The main character of this story was a girl named Harriet, daughter of a minister with a "golden voice."  The story began, "When she was fifteen, Harriet read three books on Buddhism for a research paper in English class.  She learned that life was suffering.  Harriet stood in the shadows between the stacks at the public library, a heavy book in her hands, and thought of her mother, who hated her."

I like being able to trace the origin of this story, and how it has changed and what it has kept--a little bit of Kerouac, a little about her minister father's voice, a little about the tragedy that shapes Anna's journey.  And I like being able to also trace the path of my own journey, so long ago, and to see how it has shaped my writing.  Most of all, I like to think about the experiences of the present, and where they might lead, about ten years from now.   :)

Books!

I kept a little list of all the books I read last year.  Seventy-nine books total, which is more than my goal of fifty.  It has been my aim for the last few years to start reading more intentionally--to actually seek out the books for a purpose instead of randomly reading the books that fall into my lap from the universe, and I'm happy as I look down my list to see only a small handful that feel like a waste of time.  Quite a few of them were chosen specifically because I thought I could learn from them as a writer and as a human, and quite a few of the others were chosen because they were enjoyed by people whose taste in reading I trust.

It really does seem like a lot of books, even if it makes me a bit sad that quite a few of them have already gone missing off my bookshelves at school (Saint Iggy, So Many Boys, Linger, Notes from the Teenage Underground, Full Tilt, Two Way Street, and Jellicoe Road, off the top of my head...I'm sure some will resurface as the year goes on, but it always is a little heartbreaking to see how many of my books never make it past the first reader.)

There are some really good books on this list, books that have stayed with me, books I've recommended and booktalked and pushed into people's hands.  Books that have forged connections between me and other authors.  Some of these books are printed and on the shelf, and some still only exist in document form.  Some have created happy moments of discovery for my children (*snuggles Ramona*), and some have caused a few raised eyebrows (like when I was reading Naked Lunch while getting my hair colored...)  Some have kept me up at night reading feverishly (um, Diary, Full Tilt), and quite a few have made me cry (The Sky is Everywhere, The Flying Troutmans, Everything Beautiful, Jellicoe Road, Waiting for Normal) or laugh (Youth in Revolt, Then We Came to the End, Be More Chill).  Many of them have created fascinating and well-crafted worlds that continue to linger in my mind (The Unidentified, The Shadow Thieves, A Clockwork Orange, The Replacement). 

All of them make me happy to be a reader.  :)

1. A Certain Slant of Light, by Laura Whitcomb
2. Saint Iggy, by K.L. Going
3. Youth in Revolt, by C.D. Payne
4. Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
5. The Naughty List, by Suzanne Young
6. The Realm of Possibility, by David Levithan
7. Shiver, by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
9. The God Box, by Alex Sanchez
10. Some Girls Are, by Courtney Summers
11. Put Out More Flags, by Evelyn Waugh
12. The Lottery, by Beth Goobie
13. World War Z, by Max Brooks
14. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby
15. The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Italo Calvino
16. Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt (reread)
17. An Acceptable Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
18. Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell
19. The Giver, by Lois Lowry (reread)
20. On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (read aloud to kids)
21. Be More Chill, by Ned Vizzini
22. Impossible, by Nancy Werlin
23. Full Tilt, by Neal Shusterman
24. Spanking Shakespeare, by Jake Wizner
25. waiting for normal, by Leslie Connor
26. Schooled, by Gordon Korman
27. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson (reread, readaloud to class)
28. Two Way Street, by Lauren Barnholdt
29. The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland
30. Heist Society, by Ally Carter
31. Mothers and Other Liars, by Amy Bourret
32. Posing Strange, by Amy Danziger Ross (rereread, beta)
33. Fishboy, by Hannah Moskowitz (beta)
34. Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
35. Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
36. Everything Beautiful, by Simmone Howell (reread)
37. Notes from the Teenage Underground, by Simmone Howell
38. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
39. Fool, by Christopher Moore
40. Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
41. Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland
42. So Many Boys, by Suzanne Young
43. Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
44. Peeled, by Joan Bauer
45. Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk
46. The Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin
47. hush, hush, by Becca Fitzpatrick
48. A Good Boy is Hard to Find, by Suzanne Young
49. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
50. The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
51. Superfudge, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
52. Polaroids from the Dead, by Douglas Coupland
53. The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews
54. The Summer I Turned Pretty, by Jenny Han
55. The River, by Gary Paulsen
56. Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater
57. Fudge-A-Mania, by Judy Blume (read aloud to kids)
58. Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowat (read aloud to kids, as prep for teaching it)
59. Death Benefits, by Sarah N. Harvey
60. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
61. The Replacement, by Brenna Yovanoff
62. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
63. Ramona and her Father, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
64. The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades, by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser
65. The Shadow Thieves, by Anne Ursu
66. The Unidentified, by Rae Mariz
67. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher
68. City of Ashes, By Cassandra Clare
69. Septimus Heap #2: Flyte, by Angie Sage
70. You Were Wrong, by Matthew Sharpe
71. Ramona and Her Mother, by Beverly Cleary (read aloud to kids)
72. Somewhere in the Darkness, by Walter Dean Myers (reread, teaching to 8th graders)
73. Guys Read: Funny Business, edited by Jon Scieszka
74. City of Glass, by Cassandra Clare
75. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
76. Point Counterpoint, by Aldous Huxley
77. Forged by Fire, by Sharon M. Draper
78. Slam, by Walter Dean Myers
79. Small Steps, by Louis Sachar

Contract!

Took a short break from my editing (by the way:  AAAAAACKKKKK!!!) to sign my contract!  Hooray!

The Portals Arrived on the Young Heroes' Birthday...

What perils will the Heroes face? What adventures will they have? Happy Birthday with the family--Saturday, December 11, 2010.

Thank you, Aunt Sharon! 

three weeks in three photos?

I'm still here, just so you know.  Most of my online presence in the last three weeks has been something along the lines of fkaosdig;aoinb;aoifaldskfj....or maybe a little less eloquent.  But I'm here.  And even though the last time I posted, it was all about writing difficulties, and even though I've had play rehearsals and book report grading and student learning conferences for my own students and for Jabber...I've managed to get my fake-NaNo MG ghost story up to 15k and also made three pages of revision notes for my Cassandra WIP, which needs...a lot of work. 

(Side note--as though any of this is not a side note--we found out tonight at Jabber's conference that he's doing well in all areas, and though I'm not saying I didn't *believe* Ms. S. when she said he only needed reminders to stop acting silly "every once in a while," I do believe I saw a bit of an eye-twitch when she said it.  Probably blocking out the trauma.  I mean, I'm pretty nice in conferences, too--for instance, usually I try not to say things like, "Well, I kind of wanted to scream at your kid fifteen times in fifteen minutes this morning, but then when I saw him in the hall, he waved at me, and I thought he kind of seemed like he might turn into a fully functional human in about eight to ten years," and besides, sitting there nervously next to their parents, they do actually seem like the sweet, interesting people they someday will become.)

(I also found out in a secret, late-night snuggle-conversation last night the name of a girl of whom Jabber says, "I really, REALLY like her, and I might want to marry her," but I would never tell, even if I did make him show me her artwork on the wall this evening at school--she has quite passable handwriting for a first grader, and she doesn't color too carefully within the lines...)

Oh, dear.  This is what happens when I don't post.  I forget how to be coherent.

So.  Picture number one is from Halloween.  I had a ninja (with a glowing light saber and a cowboy pistol) and a Spiderman (with the mask turned into a hat and a toddler who asked, of his padded muscles, "Mama, does my costume have nummies?")

Picture two is from our 9th Anniversary.  I got a new Day of the Dead ornament from D., and it just may be my favorite one yet.  Luckily my husband remains thoughtful (and a good shopper) enough for the both of us--I gave him a Halloween card and permission to buy himself a new knife.  So romantic.  I'm actually not sure how anything in my real world would get accomplished if it weren't for David, so it's probably a good thing he's been around for the last nine years.  I would be constantly doing things like...oh, driving on a flat tire, serving the children cereal for supper, and getting buried underneath a bunch of snow because I have no idea where a shovel might be.  (These are all just things I have done in the past week.)

The last picture is two of my old journals, which I have been reading my way through lately for some reason.  Actually, both of these are from the months leading up to my engagement and wedding, which was kind of fun to read, so close after the anniversary.  I've learned a lot about myself in this trip down memory lane, but I think I'll sum it up into three neat bullet points.  Maybe I can even avoid using parentheses (but I cannot give up dashes) (okay, starting in the next paragraph!)

• I learned that I've made a lot of progress as a writer, both in terms of craft--I'm a better writer, a more confident writer, especially in fiction--and in terms of business.  A lot of the time that I was writing in these two journals, I was dreaming of being published someday.  Of course, I had hoped at the time it would be soon, but I've been persistent and patient, overall.
• I learned that probably the biggest point of unhappiness in my life had to do with finding a balance as an introvert and as a person who likes the company of interesting, intelligent people.  I still have to work to find the balance between solitude and loneliness, and I still get overwhelmed when I don't have alone-time to recharge, but do better when I'm forced out of that alone-time to interact with others.  
• I learned (and in all cases, "learned" is more of a "reaffirmed my thoughts about") (damn, I got SO FAR without parentheses, too!) that the times in my life that I have taken a big risk, stepped completely outside of my comfort zone and tried something that was really difficult for me, it has turned into a hugely valuable experience for me.  

Okay.  So there was the last three weeks of my life, in which I have failed to blog but only because there are not seventy-six hours in each day, and because sometimes, I need to spend my time lying in the dark next to my nearly seven-year-old son, learning the names of the people he believes he might marry.  (That way I won't have to find out on facebook!)

the perfect moments

The young birch trees stretching up through the slanting sun, the rattle of their drying leaves in the sweet, crisp breeze.  The little hand in mine, Monkey's voice so soft with wonder.

The sight of Jabber walking proud up ahead with his Daddy, stepping into all the puddles with his black rubber fireman boots and his blaze orange cap.

The soft needles of a new white pine, the twisted hardy stand of jackpines waiting for a fire to loosen their seeds, the woody and steady curving limbs of ancient cedar.

The smell, somewhere between maple syrup and burned sage.

The contrast of the blue, blue sky with the red maple leaves and the wavering flight of the turkey vulture.

The kingfisher perched watchful on the beaver dam.

The wolf sign, fascinating us and sending little shivers down our spines.

The glimpse of water behind the trees, the opening up to find glistening waves, bordered with vivid splashes of autumn colors.

The abandoned wasp nest all papery and silver.

The sound of birds, squirrels scolding, children keeping their voices all hushed and breathy with excitement, exclaiming over all this and more.


My favorite season,
my favorite place,
and my favorite people to share it with. 

My perfect moments.

do you ever?

Do you ever look around you and realize that you haven't stopped to take a breath in like two weeks?

This is my deck, which I finally finished painting on Labor Day--also the day I started my second pass of my KtMS manuscript so I can see if the edits I finished two weeks ago actually make sense. 

Today began the second week of school, and I realized around 3:00 that I hadn't stopped to use the restroom all day.  And, since at that time I was besieged by sixth graders (who all wanted to escape Language Arts class to use the restroom, by the way), the realization was once again pushed aside until 4:15, when my own son got off the bus and made his way to my classroom, freeing me to finally leave.

Except by then I was in the middle of previewing an online training module, which I have to present to the staff meeting tomorrow morning at 7:30.  And since I'll be in the meeting tomorrow morning before class starts, and since my sixth grade homeroom needs way more attention and assistance in the morning than my eighth grade homeroom did last year, I decided I'd better get my chalkboards set up for tomorrow as well.  I had two documents open on my computer, and I was pecking away at a lesson plan outline for my boss and a compilation of book blog addresses for my teen book blogging elective, at the same time as I was fixing a snack for Jabber and scheduling a complicated classroom swap with two colleagues. 

Still had not peed.

At last, I realized that I was way too busy to keep poor Jabber at school with me until I was done, so I called D. and asked him to come pick the boy up...annoying to D. as he was in the middle of making an experimental dinner recipe (which turned out to be delicious, when I consumed it out of the microwave an hour or so later!), but I was busy planning and photocopying and distributing files full of links into shared folders while I filed IEP notices, answered emails to parents, and double-checked two of my sixth graders' schedule changes.

I did finally make a trip to the bathroom--at home--and during this activity I was visited by a small child who needed help with putting on his socks.  Also several arguments/wrestling matches broke out at this time, which I broke up.  I heated up my coffee and my dinner while loading the dishwasher and then listened to Jabber read while eating and making out a check for his school photos.

Fixed bedtime snacks.  Signed reading minutes.  Cleaned up snacks.  Wrangled kids a bit.  Cleaned kitchen.  Went to gym and worked out (while reading the book I am going to start teaching on Thursday, which I've only taught once before, years ago), showered, made lunches, and sat down to revisit those edits.

Except, oh crud, I still haven't blogged.

*Breathes*

And now it's bedtime.

first grade!

Jabber started first grade today, and then came home with a fever up over 102.  He's now up in his bed shivering and moaning and fighting dreams in which "terrible things keep happening over and over and I'm afraid they'll become real."  Poor little guy.  He's so tough, even when he's basically miserable.

making a difference

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.  --Elie Wiesel

I'm fifty pages from the end of my first pass of edits for KISS THE MORNING STAR (and six days away from my personal deadline for finishing said first pass), and I thought I'd give you a glimpse into why I haven't been posting very coherent blog posts lately.  I looked up at my screen, and that's really what it looked like:  four documents all competing for my attention on my little monitor, a sixteen-foot-long banner of colorful notes taking over my keyboard, plus the eight tabs of firefox, my itunes, and three more documents minimized at the bottom.  (Document titles:  KTMS August 2010, July 14 melanie thoughts, answering melanie3, Hoole more revision notes, Editing KtMS3, scraps, kerouac quotes and sources.  Tabs open on firefox:  not telling.  :P)

This is exciting.  The yellow-highlighted notes on the document on the left of the side-by-side view (Editing KtMS3) are notes about scenes I've rewritten, progress I've made, additions, subtractions, successes, haphazard attempts, experiments, and in other words (as if that weren't enough words), STUFF I DID TO CHANGE THIS BOOK and, I hope, STUFF THAT MAKES IT BETTER. 

This next fifty pages, I'll admit, need the most work.  The world won't really end if I don't finish before school starts, but I know it would make me feel better overall.  I also know this is only the first pass--the first round of changes I've made for a real, live (and brilliant!) editor.  I know some of what I'm writing will never see the light of day, and in fact, some of it will never even make it through my next pass before going to Melanie. 

I've been approaching these edits with a very open mind, thinking of the whole book more from a "What if this would work?" or maybe a "Hey, maybe I should try that?" or possibly even a "Wouldn't it be sort of crazy if I went in this direction?" kind of mindset, knowing that if this doesn't work, or I really shouldn't have tried that, or yeah, this direction is really crazy and not in a good way...I can always go back a draft or two.  I have at least twenty to choose from, after all!

And now.  Yeah, you know it.  Back to work.

things you shouldn't really do in a skirt

I'm terrified of heights.  When my body is a certain distance above the ground, my blood pressure (non-scientific description) forces every molecule of blood into my hands and feet, making them feel simultaneously numb and somehow inflated, like all four of my limbs culminate in blown-up latex gloves.

This makes me clumsy on ladders, coupled with the fact that all that blood has also vacated my brain, leaving me a little lightheaded.

(Have I mentioned this also happens when I watch movies of people who climb mountains, drop out of  helicopters, scale the sides of skyscrapers or basically anything else David would like to watch?)

Despite this aversion to heights, I sometimes tend to seek them out, finding ways to face my fear.  Maybe I hope it will disappear altogether?  That its power will be diminished?  In any case, I've made it a point to go on roller coasters and ride chair lifts and even a little bit of mountain climbing.

And today I climbed a ladder to the very peak of my house, my inflatable hand struggling to clutch my camera, in order to face my fear and take a picture of D. working on the chimney.  (While D's brother and father joked about the awkwardness caused by me wearing a skirt...)  And I did it!  Up above you can see a picture of my house--the ladder was standing up on that deck, which is already one story up, and stretching up to the peak, which is outside the top frame of the photo (and you can also see a bit of my deck-painting project, though I'm farther than that right now!)  And you can see the photo I snapped with my hand all shaky and tingling--D.'s surprised smile when he realized it was me peering over the edge of the roof.

About halfway up the second story of the house (I looked down to roll my eyes at some comment of my father-in-law about my skirt and got a little dizzy...), I almost gave up, but then what would have been the point?  And it's sort of stupid--a lot of people climb ladders--but it made me feel so awesome to climb up there despite my fear.

And now...to battle my fearful (but similarly exhilarating) edits!  *straps on parachute*

picture this!

Having a husband who is a photographer means a lot of things.  It means that my children are charmingly documented in a parade of beautiful portraits capturing their every change and mood from birth to the present.

It means that when I need an author photo taken, I can count on him to help me out at a good price.  It means that even when there's nothing actually wrong with the photos that result from our first shoot, when I tell him, "These just...aren't quite me enough..." he smiles, looks more closely at the photos, and says, "Oh! Well, of course!  The problem here is..." and then he goes on to tell me a complicated explanation involving light temperature and bounce-flashes and white balances that have NOTHING to do with the fact that I'm squinting my eyes a little funny and tipping my head at that awkward angle that makes my chin multiply into the plural form.

It means that we can't go anywhere or do anything without a complicated packing process and six camera bags.  It also means that we're almost never caught in that, "If only we had a camera..." position.

It means that the bottom drawer of our refrigerator is full of high speed black and white film.

And it means that up until yesterday, the last time we had a family portrait that included David was actually three days before Monkey was born.  I'm so happy to finally have a photo of all four of us to hang on my wall!  Thanks to David, for taking all those wonderful pictures at our family gathering last night, and thanks to Mom for snapping this shot so he didn't have to sprint madly into place while everyone else tries desperately to remain in place and looking pretty.

Confession: I don't really play with my kids.

I almost never play with my kids.

I read to them all the time--it's our favorite thing to do.  We read picture books and chapter books and encyclopedias and I even read recipes on the rare occasion I can handle the mess and stress of cooking with them.

I sometimes give them a starter idea, like this morning when I handed them a cardboard tube full of plastic dinosaurs and suggested they create a prehistoric dino-land in the sandbox (and later have a dino-wash with soap and scrub brushes before the dinos are allowed back in the house), and I often set them up with supplies so that they can be creative (like the cardboard spaceship/doghouse that is on our front porch, complete with pink tissue paper and sparkly alphabet stickers), and OCCASIONALLY I may get talked into playing a board game or even a game of catch in the backyard.

But overall, I trust they will keep themselves occupied.  I even ignore them.  And...to tell the truth, I think it's good for them.  They know that I am always available for a hug or a kiss.  They know that I am frequently available for a "Wow! That sounds awesome!" and they know that sometimes I'm even available for a "Come see, Mama!"  They are always supervised, albeit sometimes through the window or even via the baby monitor that is still on in the hallway outside their bedroom.

So sometimes I worry that maybe they're not getting every kind of "enrichment" from me.  Like when I go to pick them up at their grandparents' house (the grandparents play with them and do projects and make them their special little helpers and all the things they can manage to do because they know we're coming to pick them up soon) and they wail that they never want to go back home with me.

But really, I remember when that grandma who devotes every moment to her little Jabber and her little Monkey told me to "go play outside" as she handed me a cup of Kool-Aid and locked the door behind me.  (It's hyperbole, Mom...no, you didn't really lock the door.  At least, not when it was below zero.  Not when there was lightning.  Much.)  I remember playing board games with myself.  (I even played Stratego against myself, which, if you know the object of Stratego, is pretty lame.)  I read books, drew pictures, played elaborate games with my stuffed animals and My Little Ponies and taught myself to play guitar and basically turned out okay.  And I was all alone for the nine years I waited for my parents to get around to giving me a sibling.  My kids are so lucky--they have a built in tormenter friend! 

So yeah, I think they sometimes start acting crazy because they're tired of hearing the tapping of my fingers on the keys and tired of waiting for me "to just finish this scene".  And sometimes I really would probably have more fun if I put down my paintbrush and helped them dig a dinosaur bog.  But overall, I'm happy with the way they can occupy themselves.  And when I see Jabber ride by on his bicycle, with his superhero mask and his tool belt full of mysterious objects, funny voices emanating from his constantly flapping mouth...or when I see Monkey, stubbornly wearing his fireman boots and holding "a lava bomb" as he sits on top of his "rowing crusher"--I think about how the freedom to occupy themselves might help them cope with life better than if I'm constantly guiding them or providing them with activities. 

I admit, there are ways to have the best of both worlds, ways that I periodically flirt with but ultimately find myself too adult-busy for.  A long time ago when I read the book Playful Parenting, I was really impressed with the free play time, where parents are told to play with the kids but to let the kids have the reins.  I further admit that this is hard for me.  I know that my kids love it when we do some of the things I read about in this book, especially playing with puppets or dolls or whatever to work through problems, teach lessons, build empathy.  So I try some of that, telling stories using some puppets we have--stories about a big brother and a little brother who don't always get along.

But more often than not, I hand them a cup of Kool-Aid and send them out the door.

how I'm spending my summer vacation...

My summer feels a little bit like a swirling vortex of unfinished projects.  And it's okay...I think.  Summer is still in full swing, and I have to remember that it's not like my world will come crashing to a complete halt and snow will start falling the day school starts.  I mean, the snow thing is unlikely.  (Because undoubtedly, I will have to endure two or three weeks of sweltering heat in my classroom full of stagnant, sweat-laden air and floor-to-ceiling windows full of sun...)

BUT REALLY.  I'm editing a book.  This in itself is a vast, uncertain project that sometimes feels like going backwards.  So far this summer, I have spent at least five or six straight weeks reading my book, thinking about my book, talking about my book, ignoring my book, making color-coded plot and character notes on endless streams of dot-matrix paper for my book, writing TWELVE THOUSAND words of notes (so far) about my book, and...I have yet to change a word of the actual book.  The best part of all of this is that even though the process is overwhelming and...well, overwhelming is probably the best word I can use, actually...right now, at this moment, I actually feel eager to dive in and make this book better.  And possibly more importantly, I feel confident, like I might have the ability to do so!

I'm also painting my back deck.  This project is surprisingly similar to the editing project.  Both of them are bigger than they first appeared.  Both of them involve broad strokes that require courage and vision and tiny, fiddly little details that require patience and sustained attention.  Both projects are taking a lot longer than I anticipated and include hidden work that nobody will ever see but without which the end result will be less likely to stand the test of time.  Both projects have been delayed by rain, so to speak.  Both projects mix poorly with rambunctious children.  Both are about making steady improvements.

The nice part about the two projects is that they play well together.  I do some of my best editing while wielding a paintbrush.  Many times I have reached a mental obstacle in my editing process--or probably more accurately, I have found myself unable to focus my attention on editing (i.e. I fall asleep or find myself on the internet in the middle of a sentence), and I have left the desk and headed for the deck, only to return later with some of that obstacle chipped away by the brain I thought was fully occupied by brushing and belting out songs playing on my ipod.  Somewhat sadly, this doesn't seem to work in the other direction--my subconscious has so far not managed to paint anything while I'm on the computer.  (But psssst! Brain! If you should manage to start doing that, I encourage you to focus your attention on that damned lattice!)

In all likelihood, the deck will be finished well before the edits.  Luckily, I live in an old house, and there's always another project.  Likewise with writing.

In the meantime, we're off to play in the sandbox!

Itchy McItchers

I promised a post about my office filing/shredding adventures, and I do try to fulfill my promises, at least when I have some suspicion that the person I made the promise to might remember, so here we go.  (I believe I also promised that it would be a "super exciting story", but I'm sure I meant it sarcastically.)

Anyway, I am prone to exaggeration, but I am telling the absolute, non-hyperbolic truth when I say that I had a stack three feet tall (okay, okay! 30 inches, maybe?) of paper that needed to be sorted through--bills (most of them paid), birthday cards, pay stubs, brochures from nice people who offered to paint our house for like thirteen thousand dollars but we said no thanks we can do it ourselves but really who are we kidding our house is never getting painted, and other assorted trash and treasure.

I have a filing cabinet.  Filing tubs.  A nifty paper shredder that claims to be able to shred those credit card offers with the fake plastic card inside but which I have managed to overload on numerous occasions.  What I don't have--a desire to fill my hours with drudgery--caused me to designate the area underneath the desk in the office as my "file pile" for the last, um, six or seven  years? 

So. Anyway. (Note: this post has escaped its point in a completely unbridled, parenthetical sort of way. *wrangles*) In the middle of this precarious archeological dig through my financial life, I discovered a large manilla envelope which contained a form rejection ("Dear Writer: Please excuse the form letter. While we do read all submissions...") and the manuscript of my first (and only) picture book, PRINCE ELLIOT AND THE INCREDIBLE ITCH. Look!  I wrote the page numbers on the bottom with a Sharpie marker! I also included a color photocopy of this, my sample illustration. 

On the one hand, this submission kind of embarrasses me--I cringe to think about how I sent all this weird stuff out to editors--I'm pretty sure my letter said something about how all my friends loved my story and how I wrote it for my son, I had a goofy email address, I had no idea how illustrators were chosen, etc.

But in addition to the reminder of how far I've come in terms of understanding publishing (and I'm still so clueless, believe me!), what this discovery really brought back to me is the memory of writing the story, the absolute frustration and agony and worry and shame and confusion that I felt for three months of my son's life when at age 9 weeks he suddenly erupted in what I thought at first was cradle cap...what progressed into a full-body itchy, oozing rash, a staph infection, elimination diets, compresses, bath oils, steroids, an immuno-suppressing cream that I used daily on my tiny child, only to find out several months later that it had been found to cause cancer--all of the chaos that came with the discovery that my little Jabber has a pretty severe case of eczema.

I did a search here and was shocked to see how little I've talked about Jabber's eczema.  Those first few months were basically awful: when both sides of Jabber's little jaws were covered in open sores that oozed and itched him so much that he couldn't sleep but spent hours whimpering and rubbing his face against his shoulders, when strangers looked at my precious baby and blurted out, "What's WRONG with him?", when David and I were only able to keep him from clawing his skin off in his sleep by placing him between us in the bed and holding his tiny arms all night long.  We almost didn't have any more children simply because we couldn't handle the thought of watching a child suffer like that again (luckily, Monkey did not have eczema like this!)

Just look at his eyes!  There's such a "Mama, why the hell is this happening to me?" look in them.  And I remember being up all night with him, calming and holding his hands and bathing his scalp and crying and he couldn't even nurse because he was trembling with itchers and around dawn, he fell asleep at last, twitching in the middle of the bed with his skin so angry and red, and I was crying and I couldn't sleep...and I went into the living room and wrote this story--the story of a little prince with an incredible itch that moves all around his body, who tries every remedy he can think of (and makes a huge mess in the process!) and finally the itch is cured when he hops into bed between his Mama and Daddy.  It's a sweet story--all silly rhymes and messy situations.

Prince Elliot fills up the tub to the top,
And begins adding soap to the water, Plop! Plop!
The bubbles pile up, up, up,
UP to the ceiling!
"I'll wash off this itch!  I'll scrub off this feeling!"

Now there's nothing a good bubble bath cannot cure,
Be it headaches or ulcers or warts, I am sure.
But this itch of Prince Elliot's really is trouble,
for it just keeps on itching him, bubble for bubble.

It tickles his tummy,
It bothers his back--
It rankles his ribs
Like an old burlap sack!

He rubs with a washcloth,
He scrubs with a sponge,
But the itch won't wash off
Like the regular grunge!
 

It seems like this would be a story that I would read to Jabber growing up, but the truth is, I can't.  As silly as the story is, I cry when I read it, and I think it would make him miserable, too.  Even now, six years after I finally discovered (despite directions to the contrary from a pediatrician and dermatologist) that eliminating dairy from my diet at least allowed the open sores to heal, Jabber still struggles with his eczema.  We still have sleepless nights.  We still try every new "cure" we hear about (this miracle lotion and that gut-flora method), and the itch still itches on.

"I better go through all my stuff..."

My family likes to hang onto stuff.  We went for an afternoon hike this week, and Monkey picked up these two large, flat river stones.  And wouldn't put them down when we left the riverbank and got back on the trail.

As we hiked farther and farther, and he went longer and longer without a nap, he began to whine and plead with us to carry him.  "I'm not going to carry you while you're holding those heavy rocks!" we told him.  But he wouldn't put them down, even as he was crying with fatigue, until we got to the next river stop and he forgot about them in the moment--and we neglected to remind him.

I admit to collecting wayyyyy more books and journals and art supplies and books than I know what to do with, but every so often it comes over me all in a rush, and I just want to drag everything out into the yard and set it on fire.

I remember how difficult it was to pack up my life and fit it into the trunk of my car (and sharing that with D. besides).  I remember having to choose--which books?  which journals?  could I manage without any paints?  Deciding how many pairs of shoes was necessary, and choosing the small objects that would make our tent into a home, like the mandala rug that belonged to D's parents.  It was a daunting task.

But today I woke up yearning for those days where every one of our possessions is in some way essential.  And also, where every one of our possessions has a specific place it can be tucked away when it's time to move on.

I wake up on a day like this, feeling weighted down by all this stuff.

So there it is--the results of a morning of feverish clawing through closets and drawers, shoving THE STUFF into bags and boxes.  All these old clothes and toys and diapers, goodbye!  And it's funny...it was just one room (I also made a significant dent in my office but that was more filing and shredding, a super exciting story for some other day, some other post...I promise!), but it made me feel so much better.  (Ask me if I still feel better one week from now when the stuff is still piled there by the door.  No, wait.  Don't.  We will ignore that pile if it is still there in one week.  We will pretend it never happened.)

Tomorrow:  we organize the camping gear!  or...we lounge about on the floor, gasping in the heat.  I mean, it could either way, really.  But I am NOT carrying the rocks, no matter what.

(Title is a quote from the poem, "Dream: Us Kids Swim off a Gray Pier" by Jack Kerouac.)

a rare weekend

My weekend was so amazingly rare and enjoyable--a hot day with a breeze that kept the humidity from squishing us, kids playing in the riverwater pool, throwing a hatchet at zombies wooden targets, washing the cat, shooting at things, walking by the river in bare feet (was that a snake?), forging through the ferns and forest in sandals, fireworks and mosquito bites, parades and grilled food and running races and bicycles and family.  And sun, so much sun.  I still feel a bit lightheaded.

A butterfly in my mother-in-law's garden had all of us snapping photos and consulting guidebooks. 

I was fascinated all day with this tipping tricycle that just sort of epitomizes the headlong way in which Monkey approached everything he did all weekend long.

David's mom wanted to arrange the kids into a posed picture--a shot of the three of them being "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"--and of course Monkey, being a willful 3-year-old, completely refused to pose.  We did eventually get a shot, which I won't post in case she's got plans for it, but Monkey spent some time sulking in the daisies with  me.

The next day was full of parades and barbecues and baby cousins, but our personal photographer abandoned us for his day job, so you'll just have to trust me.  And now I should stop procrastinating and get back to editing!

replenishing

When we got married, David and I put together a little bundle of items that symbolized different things about our relationship--an object to represent our individual self, something to show what we have to offer the relationship, a symbol of us as a couple, and a symbol of what we need to keep for ourselves.  We shared these items with our friends at the ceremony, explaining each item as we tucked it into a small piece of cloth that we call our wedding bundle. 

We take this bundle out every so often, at the very least on our anniversary, and see if we can remember what all the things symbolize.  It's funny because we never thought it would be as difficult as it sometimes is, given how our interests and qualities do tend to merge and overlap.  (Was the pencil you and the crayons me, or was it the other way around?)  Sometimes we think about things we might put in today, whether they might be different now that we are older and busier and if not wiser then at least more experienced.  And we always take a minute to dab on a bit of D's special cologne that he put in.

So one of the items that I put in was this little jar of water from the Clackamas River, where we were married.  It was meant to symbolize our relationship, and I remember writing up a whole list of metaphorical reasons--our love of nature and traveling, the way it seeks balance and figures out the path of least resistance no matter the terrain, even the cohesion of the very water molecules was a comment on how D. and I would surely stick together.  But the biggest reason that I chose water as a symbol of our relationship was that, like a marriage, keeping a jar of water for any length of time was going to take a little attention--a little work.  It's not like you can just get married and then you're good.  The water disappears if you don't replenish it from time to time.

Well, if you look at the photo of our little jar, you can see there's hardly any left.  Did we forget about it, tucked away in the bundle?  Did we stop caring about replenishing the jar?  Well.  Not...exactly.  I admit, we could have done a much better job of refilling our little jar, but I also have to admit that a big part of that (for me, anyway) was a sort of sentimentality about the actual water.  Aw, look!  It's our little bit of Oregon!  Remember how beautiful that day was?  Remember the rain, the way the beeswax candles held up?  Remember how we scattered the leaves and the wine in the river, and how my maid of honor almost fell in retrieving the lost shoe of our minister?  It's not that we were neglecting our jar, but rather that we were holding onto the memories...maybe to the past?

Marriages change.  We have a very different life today than the one we went home to after our ceremony in the Mount Hood National Forest.  It's better and worse; it's richer and...well, no, it's richer--in so many ways. 

Anyway, we finally did it.  We went out and replenished our wedding jar, adding the cold, fresh water of Lake Superior to the lingering drops of Clackamas.  We got our feet wet (and most of our legs, to be honest) in the process, and we had a good laugh and a few shivers (it was freezing!) and then we came home and tucked our full jar back in the bundle and talked about how much things have changed and how much we've stayed the same.  And we whispered our hopes for what our marriage may look like the next time we fill the jar.

rainy monday...

...so we had a little geography lesson and then made fingerpaint maps.


Jabber was able to name all the states that I flew over on my mini-writing vacation my lovely host Amy Danziger Ross, (and we did get writing done, though to be honest the conversation and celebration and the bottle of wine from my old home in Eugene would have been worth the trip even if I didn't get anything at all done on the Cassandra WIP!)

Summer vacation is off to a wonderful start! 

the shame that sticks

It's the end of the school year, and it seems every time I open my mouth to speak to a student, something sappy comes out.  I'm awkward with goodbyes, with telling the kids how much they mean to me, but at the same time I want them to know.  Middle school is such a crazy time--I want to somehow tell each student all the good things I can see underneath that rough exterior.  I want to give them these words to remember, encase them in glass, like a keepsake they can take out and study at some point in the future when they think back about their middle school teachers, something positive to block out that one time I gave them an exasperated sigh or maybe even a bitingly sarcastic comment. 

It's funny, though.  No matter how carefully I choose my words, it's unlikely those will be the ones they remember.  I'm well into my third decade of life, and although my memories of elementary, middle, and high school are a bit blurry overall, there are these moments that are as clear to me now as the moment they happened.  Clear as though they were encased in glass, actually.  And I would venture that, of the memories involving teachers, none of them are moments that those teachers really wanted me to keep. 

My clearest memory of kindergarten is a sulking glimpse of my class playing "Skip to my Lou" from my spot behind the cloakroom door, where I had been sent after I had demonstrated a karate kick which resulted in my little brown oxford shoe flying off my foot.  "We don't kick our shoes at people," my teacher said, and to this day I can feel a sense of burning injustice and shame.

I have lots of memories of second grade, but two of the most vivid also involve shame, or at least morbid embarrassment.  Looking at them from my grown up angle, I'm sure they were completely unintentional on the part of my lovely teacher, but at the time, I wanted to curl up and die.  One was pretty common for me--I never could shut up, and my teacher chastised me in front of the class for talking to my friend Mark, except she hinted that there was a romantic bent to our purely platonic (and, if it's possible for two second graders, purely intellectual) yet nonstop conversation.  I remember Mark's ears were a deep shade of red, and I thought I'd never forgive her for embarrassing me like that. 

The other memory was about my school picture.  It was ugly.  Or rather, I was making a very weird face in it.  I can actually remember the entire sequence of events with the photographer, how he patronized me and how I made a dumb face at him because I wasn't good at hiding my disgust with adults when they were stupid.  But the embarrassing part was when my teacher got the proofs for the photos and said to me, in front of the class, "Elissa, come up here and look at your picture.  You want retakes, right?"  For some strange reason, this mortified me--that she would tell the whole class that my photo was ugly, basically.  I flounced up to her desk, took one brief look at the photo (with my vision all red as I'm sure my face was as well), and declared, "I like my picture.  I meant for it to look that way."

That was a complete lie, of course, and at the time I had no idea why I even said it.  The next week or whatever when I got my pictures, I was too shy to go back up and ask her to get retakes.  Too proud, maybe.  So to this day, my second grade picture features a smart aleck girl making a weird smirking face that shows her complete contempt for the photographer.  And every time I look at it, I remember that moment of flouncing up to her desk.

There are  more of these memories...many for each year of my schooling.  These are my mildest moments of shame; I'd feel bad writing publicly about the ones that hurt the most--the ones that still sting now instead of making me laugh, as these do now.  It's possible I'm just very sensitive to being embarrassed, but I would guess that I'm not alone in this, that many people carry with them the memories of those small shamings.

Right now, the boys and I are reading the Ramona Quimby books out loud at bedtime, and so many of the events in Cleary's books are about moments just like the ones I remember.  As we read, we laugh at the image of Ramona, always misunderstood.  We can relate to those moments.  And I can only hope a few of the other moments stick, too, the ones that let my students know that I care.