Kat's Journey to Success

You Didn't Think It Would Be Effortless, Did You?

2007-05-04T18:07:00.000-04:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

People who travel between my small town and the city closest to us have two roads they can follow. One is the highway. A straight shot, smooth pavement, lots of company along the way. The other is through the country. Sometimes smooth pavement, sometimes more potholes than pavement, some gravel and always a winding, curving path pocked with the stop signs and turn signals of dozens of small towns.

It takes the same amount of time to get from my house to the my friend's house in the city, regardless of which road you choose to take. How can that be, you ask? Simple - the highway was constructed to suit the highway, not the people that use it. It skirts around towns, by-passes some towns in favor of others which causes you to back track and its cluttered with all the folks trying to get the same place you are. The country road, on the other hand, is a straight shot.

The path to success is much like these two roads. Some will hop on the highway and get there. Very few road hazards, bumps or delays - but white knuckle navigation along the way, racing to keep up with everyone else headed to that final destination: success. Some will be like me, sticking to the country road. Getting there over potholes, stop signs and traffic signals, usually all alone, but getting there nonetheless. Getting there with a lovely view along the way.

How Do You Measure Success?

2007-02-02T15:41:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

I think we can all agree that a successful life is comprised of balance in five areas: finance, spirit, intellect, relationships and health. Visualizing what determines a balance in those areas is an individual choice, but what is most important is remembering to enjoy the exhilerating, exciting, worthwhile journey. To feel what its like to already be there, while still clamboring up the mountain.

Having watched Oprah and her coverage of The Secret, I know I'm not the first or the only person who sat down and didn't have a clear picture of just exactly what it is I want. What would comprise Kat's definition of balance and success. "Happy" isn't clear enough. Its like asking for a joke that will make everyone in the entire universe laugh. There just isn't such a thing, because people are unique and wonderful each in their own way.

I'm refining exactly what it is that I want, what I could look back at and say "I suceeded, my life is in balance". But I'm quite good at knowing what I don't want, and that's where you start, with the opposite of all those things you don't want in your life.

A Beautiful Day

2007-01-29T18:48:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

Has there ever been a day as magnificent as this one? The air so crisp and cold your cheeks pink up just thinking of going outside. A thin layer of snow covering the winter browned grass, making the roads look like black ribbons carelessly dropped from a young girl's hand. This weather portends a great upcoming summer. Fewer mosquitos, fewer bugs of any kind.

Philip's story is one third told. He's tapping on my shoulder now, anxious for me to finish the writing.

"Tell them..." he whispers in my ear. "Tell them of my school in the bayou, my teacher from Chicago..."

This character is as excited about meeting the world as I. His story, and that of the boys and girls, men and women like him, has been ignored too long. I am so grateful that I was the one chosen to bring them all into the light.

The Doctor called me today, as he always does. "Where can we go? What do you see?" He asks me.

I tell him that I see auditoriums filled with children, their laughter ringing in my ears. I see book stores, the people lined out the door and down the block. I see the kids once relegated to the sidelines of life rolling and limping to stand shoulder to shoulder with their peers, claiming their right to acceptance and happiness. I see it and I feel it. Its waiting for us.

"Thank you." The doctor says quietly before hanging up the phone.

Setting the Goal

2007-01-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

The Law of Attraction uses visualization as a tool for achieving what you want. Much like the advice to "dress for success", it makes sense to see and feel what life will be like once you get there. In order to visualize anything, as Aaron suggested in a comment, the goal has to be clear.
Uncannily, I have seen this principle work in my life before I knew it had a name.

I have always been a writer. From stories as a kid, to my diary as a teenager, straight through the things I scribbled on napkins and the back of receipts all through my twenties and thirties. I talked frequently of writing once I retired. I talked about writing all the time, but always with this feeling that I wasn't good enough to ever succeed at it.

Two years ago in a random conversation with the director of our local arts council, I mentioned that I wished there was a writers group in our town. She said "Excellent idea, you're in charge. I'll support you 100%". She'd called my bluff, so I had no choice but to start a writers group, complete with the research necessary to lead a group of writers specializing in everything from poetry to journalism to children's and adult fiction. I shared my short stories with the group along with everyone else to resounding praise. With each meeting, my confidence grew. In November I encouraged the group to participate in the "write a novel in a month" challenge. As their leader, I had no choice but to write the book that had been living in my head for more than fifteen years. I didn't finish the book, but ended the month with it substantially written except for the last chapter. A friend from the group finally asked me what the problem was, the real problem. I realized that my resistance to finishing it had to do with the next step...submitting it to a publisher, rejection and what I perceived as the end of a dream. Once I'd voiced it, I had to put it away. It was in that moment that I decided I would finish up my term at my day job (I'm in an elected position) and chase my dream to be a writer. Even if that meant I had to live in a box. I stopped thinking about failing, and focused entirely on succeeding.

My book was rejected by that small publisher, but he said he liked my style and offered me a partnership, editing the books he had already signed for publication. I accepted and with my new title gained the attention of a national magazine, with just one small problem. They needed tear sheets to actually hire me. I kept writing, and working with my group. A few months later one of my members handed me an ad. A small local newspaper was looking for human interest stories. I applied and was hired. I wrote three stories a week for six months, met some amazing people and just when I had a file drawer full of tear sheets, and was burning out from holding down three jobs, the newspaper went out of business.

Through my work at the newspaper, a Doctor in the town next door contacted me about ghost writing his children's book. The concept is one that has never been addressed to date. That brings us to today, and the specific goal that I am visualizing and counting on the Law of Attraction to help me manifest.

The Philip books are going to take the world by storm. They are fun, innovative and serve a segment of our society that needs to be spotlighted. I can hear the audience applause as we walk on stage, past the big blow up of our bookcover, and settle into seats next to... Oprah.

Gratitude and Wanting More

2007-01-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

Dr. John, one of my favorite bloggers, made this comment on my last post:

I hope this works for you. But is seems to me you have most of what one could want. You have a job you like, wonderful grandchildren that make you feel alive and a great husband.

Gratitude for what you already have is one of the cornerstones of this philosophy, and why it feels so logical to me. I have so very much I'm grateful for, and if I gain not one more thing in my life, I'll still go to my grave feeling like I was blessed at every turn.

But there burns in me a desire to do and serve more.

I do like my job with the publishing company, but it pays nothing right now. We spend what we make on one book, promoting it and publishing the next. If visualizing our little company as a big successful company helps attract opportunities to make just that happen, it helps so many people besides me. My children and grandchildren are the reason my heart sings every day. I want to have the means to insure they have every opportunity to achieve their dreams through education. My husband has worked himself to the bone taking care of all of us. He's battling heart disease and diabetes, he doesn't have many more years to work and he's deserving of more happiness than a poverty riddled retirement. All of these things take more money than we currently make.

I have been a volunteer for several causes for most of my life. Alzheimer's took my father and brother. Cancer has attacked all of my sisters and mother. There are children in my little town with two working parents and still they can't afford to go to the dentist, much less own their own bicycle. Young women who've gone astray and are trying to find their way back into the light need more than just encouraging words. They need education, transportation, an interview suit and money for a babysitter. There are programs to help with these things, but they're always insufficiently funded. I want to help, but I need more money to do that.

I have no need or desire for mansions or expensive cars. The reality Neil and I have created for ourselves right now presents a grim picture for our future. Neither of us has worked at one job long enough to provide a decent retirement income and while we are young enough to turn our fortunes around, I must. Ask and you will receive. So it was written, so it will be. If you believe it.

The Law of Attraction

2007-01-27T19:06:00.000-05:00

The movie, The Secret, is an introduction to the principle behind getting what you want. An overview of The Law of Attraction, presented from some very successful people. Granted, some of those people have achieved their success from promoting the principles of The Secret. But it's the basic nature of the information that so resonated with me.

The Law of Attraction is this: thoughts become things. The power of positive thinking isn't something I hadn't heard before. I've read my share of self-improvement books, listened to my share of motivational speakers. I learned that I was worthy of having what I wanted in Sunday School - God himself passed on the message "ask and you shall receive". I've been watching Oprah since she went national. Who couldn't have this background and still not get that anyone is capable of achieving anything? Well, me. Until this particular presentation, I listened and part of me still believed that those who succeed are smarter and luckier than I am. They were more charismatic, they had the "it" factor the entertainment industry is always talking about.

Using the basic premise that thoughts become things, the first step is to identify what I want. My wants are very simple: I want to see my books in the hands of readers. I want my husband to find and chase a dream. I want enough money every year to put some in the bank, keep us in new (practical) cars, and provide funding for Alzheimer's Research, my local Women's Network, Cancer Research and Feed the Children, along with any other worthy cause that comes my way. I want to provide college educations for my grandchildren. I want to buy cutting edge medical equipment for kids with disabilities.

That's the beginning, deciding what you really want.

The Secret

2007-01-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for my everyday blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/
If you're curious about The Secret, read on down.

Here in my 48th year of life, I'm grateful for many things. Excellent health. A husband that has loved me above all others for 25 years, five healthy children, four beautiful grandgirls, adequate food, clothing and shelter. I've been reasonably successful in my career field, and have a wonderful circle of friends and family. But what has eluded me thus far, is the means to achieve my dreams.

I want to see my books in the hands of readers. I want to know that if I should live to be 100 I will have enough of my own money to never rely on social security, send my grandchildren to college and still have sufficient fluid assets to donate generously to my favorite charities as well as any worthy cause that happens by. One of my dearest friends sent me a film called The Secret, that offers a theory addressing this issue, the achievement of dreams, wishes and wants. He's not the kind of guy that just randomly suggests things, so I'm going to try out this theory, and see what happens. Recording the results here.

I've provided the link to the movie if you're looking for a change in your life. Maybe you already know these theories, please leave me word of how its working for you.

Visits from the Old Neighborhood

2006-12-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for Kat's real blog...click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com/

Lucky for me I kept this old space since I can't comment on some of my friend's blogs from my new place. Ho, Ho, Ho... Happy Holiday's to you, now go on and visit my real space!

This Quiet Place

2006-11-17T21:15:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for Kat's real blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com

A long time ago, in what feels like another lifetime, I wanted to leave Pap. Because I'm not a quitter, when he suggested counselling first, I agreed, and we worked things out. In the course of that counselling, I discovered that I was suffering the effects of depression. I also found out that I've probably been masking these symptoms for most of my life. I prefer being happy to sad, and I'd do almost anything to at least appear happy.

Apparently, "acting" happy is one of the techniques this particular counsellor used to help depressed patients. She believed people are creatures of habit, those things they did repetitively became "their way". I don't know if that's true or not, I don't really care. What I knew and what I know is that I have no reason to be depressed. I am blessed in many ways and on those days that I feel like I'm acting instead of living, or when I wake up feeling as if the light has gone out of the world, I reach for the tools that set things right. An hour by the pond watching the fish, a trip to the park with the grandgirls, a funny story or a visit among my blog friends.

Its silly to think of blogs as "neighborhoods", but I do. This quiet place is the ghost town that was once a bustling small town. I like ghost town from time to time.

Playing in the Old Neighborhood

2006-11-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for Kat's real blog, click here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com.

Since I can't seem to abandon my old neighborhood completely, I decided to try bloggers new beta version... if it messed everything up, nothing lost. So far, I'm impressed. I like being able to make changes without html. This place might just be the place to add all those bells and whistles that usually drive me crazy. Might turn into the place a REALLY rant... the radical stuff that looks like a crazy person talking.

Visiting the old neighborhood

2006-11-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

If you're searching for the day to day business of Kat, you'll have to go here: http://www.katcampbell.wordpress.com. Officially, I've moved.

This poor ransacked blog feels like the abandoned home in the middle of your neighborhood. That place whose paint fades and peels a little more each year. The house all the neighborhood kids swear is haunted.

I've always loved those kinds of houses. I don't see the tattered curtains, or web covered corners. I feel the energy left behind by the families that once lived there. I can't resist climbing the stairs; imagining the girls who descended in party dresses, the boys who descended three treads at a time with reckless abandon.

So maybe I'll drop by from time to time and leave something here that I don't want cluttering up my real blog. The kinds of stories nobody really cares to read about.

Moving Day

2006-11-02T12:13:00.000-05:00

I've moved! Come see me at my sparkling new home by clicking here: http://katcampbell.wordpress.com
and if otownhandyman seems a little tired and cranky today, it's because I made him move all the heavy stuff. Thanks Tony!

The Power of Numbers

2006-10-31T09:02:00.000-05:00

"World Peace" the tag line of beauty queens and Christmas caroles. The battle cry of hippies. A mind set many of our world leaders find laughable. A state of being viewed as overly optimistic and unachievable by most of the world's population.

But this is the beginning of the season of miracles and I believe in the power of the written word. There is another old cliche that says you get what you ask for. Cliches become cliches because they're usually true. It's time for us to ask our world leaders to put down their weapons and bombs, and with the power of our numbers and our minds, to do what we've been admonishing our two year olds to do for centuries: "Use Your Words!"

The goal is for all of the blogging community to use November 7th as an opportunity to band together with a single topic: Dona Nobis Pacem - Grant Us Peace. You'll find a much more eloquent explanation at the originators site: http://mimiwrites.blogspot.com/2006/10/dona-nobis-pacem-in-blogosphere_12.html, or even at Quilldancers place. Take some time today to think about what peace means to you.

Steal This Gnome

2006-10-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

While minding my own business, this judgemental creature popped by to criticize my raggedy yard. While it may be true that house of perpetual remodeling is a neighborhood disgrace at the moment, its nearly Halloween, and all that garden clutter is ambiance. Jeesh, some gnomes are so superior.

I've heard he's visiting wherever he can get, so feel free to steal him from me (I'll be glad to get rid of the snotty little bugger) or pop by his master and commander http://www.nwlink.com/~timelvis/2006/10/stealing-gnome.html and say hi while you're there.

More Halloween Madness

2006-10-20T05:56:00.000-04:00

Pap brought this frightening fellow home to add to our seasonal decorations yesterday. In quite unpirate like fashion, he dances when you activate the motion detector. He also sings - Super Freak and Slow Ride. He's about my height (5'5").

Typical of Pap, he snuck home before Princess and I yesterday and had the pirate set up by the front door. I was startled, but being as immersed in Halloween nonsense as I am, quickly recovered and went about my business. Princess, on the other hand, may never recover. This morning I noticed she has the poor guy turned face to the wall.

He needs a suitable Pirate name. Any suggestions?

We've lived in this house for 15 years. About 10 years ago we got new neighbors across the street who happen to be Jehovah Witnesses. Nice people, we say hello if we're all outside, but that's about it. They pretty much consider us heathenish and keep their distance. Every Halloween when the house of perpetural remodeling is decked out in it's spooky finest and every Christmas when the house turns into candyland central, the folks across the street make their social statement. They gather on their porch with their JW friends, all facing my house and pray for us.

I make every attempt to be a good neighbor. I really try not to offend anyone or to put anything offensive outside my house (I save that stuff for inside...kidding). But our descent into Halloween creepy versus the Halloween cute I used to do can be attributed to these neighbors. The rebellious teenager in me just really can't help needling them. It's shameful, but I lived here first.

Inevitabilities

2006-10-17T07:46:00.000-04:00

Grandgirls with their witch dummy from this past weekend. This was the first time they'd ever made a halloween dummy. Let it never be said that I don't pass on some quite valuable life skills to future generations.

I have a Murphy's Law kind of life. If the lid is going to fall off the salt shaker, it will be when I'm using it. If a tire is going to blow on my car, it will be during an ice storm when I don't have my cell phone. I've lived long enough that this is now acceptable, and I don't sweat it.

I spent yesterday running around doing a laundry list of annoying errands accompanied by Pap who is still crippled from his surgery so it took twice as long to do everything. No big deal, one of the errands was to the doctor to get his helpless bandage off and a walking cast on. Yay! Things were going smoothly, aside from the pounding headache that also kept me company all day. Just as we were wrapping things up by dropping his car at the shop to have the gas tank replaced it started to sprinkle. Still not a big deal, I had plenty of time to race home and put the cover on my leaky roofed car.

I'd piddled around doing house chores, checking mail... all that stuff you have to do because you're a grown up, while it started raining buckets outside. I took a bath and settled into the library with a book I'm editing and then realized I had one cigarette.

There are addictions, and then there is my addiction. Before I smoked I chewed my nails, before that I sucked my thumb. I'm a perfectly rational human being until I run out of cigarettes. I was wearing this very tacky t-shirt I've been sleeping in since I got it 10 years ago, it has one of those torsos in a bikini painted on the front, and the sweat pants I've also had for 10 years that are paint splattered, bleach spotted and overall raggedy. These are my comfort clothes, big, baggy, stretched out, non-fashionable - but comfortable. I wasn't thinking about what I was wearing while I contemplated my options. Mistake number one.

With Pap's car in the shop and mine under cover because of the rain, I had to wait for Princess to get home so I could use her car. She of course picked this night to stop on the way home for a capachino with friends, so by the time she did stroll in, even the cats were in hiding. I snatched her keys out of her hand, threw on some shoes (mistake number two) that were laying by the door and raced down the post midnight, dark, abandoned streets to our convenience store. When I arrived the store was empty, the clerk fetched my sanity sticks, I went to pay her and realized that I had no cash in my wallet and the checkbook was laying on the desk at home. Knowing that the bottom of my purse is always littered with misc. receipts, random earrings and change, I decided to dig around in there to get the necessary amount instead of going home for the checkbook. Mistake number three.

While I shuffled and dug and piled change on the counter people were wandering in, half way to reaching my goal a line had formed behind me, cranky people tapping their foot and sighing loudly. Eighty cents from completing my transaction I realized I'd emptied the well. I was frantically searching pockets of the purse, between the folds of my wallet, and under the flaps of my day planner, when a neatly manicured, male hand dropped a dollar on the counter. "That ought to cover it." The masculine voice said from beside me. This was when I knew that Murphy's Law was written just for me.

I never leave the house without my hair done and make up on. I'm goofy, but I love clothes and I'm normally very organized. I hold an elected position in town (the day job), so EVERYONE knows me, which is why I generally make a point to appear put together. I've been attempting to get a small business loan for my publishing company from our one and only bank. Most of the paperwork is done, it wasn't a cut and dried thing because it is a privately owned bank, the board can take any risk they want, turn down any project they want. The board was already a little nervous about my loan because publishing is a tough business, and we're so new. But, most recently they'd been leaning in my direction by virtue of my reputation as a professional.

The good samaritan was the president of that board. When I looked up to thank him, he was looking at me the same way you'd regard a roach in your tuna sandwich. He did the scan and scowl from my head to my feet... upon which were Princesses monkey slippers - the ones with the cute monkey faces slightly covered by their cute monkey middle fingers. That's when I remembered I also wasn't wearing a bra, and I was buying cigarettes. Oh well, our little company doesn't really need the debt.

Happy Bosses Day!

2006-10-16T17:53:00.000-04:00

In consideration of National Bosses Day, some comments I found about OTHER people's bosses:

I thought my Boss was a bastard, and quit, to work for myself. My new Boss is a bastard, too ... but at least I respect him.

My boss has given automobile accident victims new hope for recovery. He walks, talks and performs rudimentary tasks, all without the benefit of a SPINE.

My boss says that what I call a glass ceiling, he calls a protective barrier.

Shame on these thankless people who fail to appreciate the great extremes the boss goes to everyday in their behalf. My employee would never say such things. She knows I'm her warrior, her shield between a productive living and the unemployment line. My employee knows that I would move heaven and earth to make her happy and she announces this fact loudly and frequently for the nominal fee of $20 a week.

What a Difference A Year Makes

2006-10-15T23:42:00.000-04:00

Unlike my dog, our cats are not fond of the visiting grandgirls. In this rare moment of solidarity they huddle on the end table in the library that they are ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN to huddle on.

This weekend the grandgirls and their Mom stayed over. We used the time to decorate for Halloween inside and outside, and do some other things for the upcoming party. I couldn't help thinking as I watched my daughter with her kids, how much things have changed.

Thirteen months ago, at 3 in the morning, Pap and I were standing knee deep in filth attempting to get our crack addict oldest daughter to come home. We'd been summoned there in the middle of the night by a neighbor, one of many times they'd called us because the piece of shit that fathered her two youngest children was beating her up. On this day, both eyes were rapidly blacking, her cheek was cut and the hand shaped bruises on her arms were not nearly as horrifying as the ones on her neck.

Pap had called a police officer on our way over, he met up with us at her apartment door. The three of us talked, and talked and talked to the unkempt, jittery girl huddled on the sofa bed in the living room. We could have been talking to a wall, she wouldn't press charges because "it was my fault, he never does this sober."

This wasn't the first time we'd raced through the night to try and rescue her, and the children. We always went, she's our girl, our treasure, our oldest. But on this night, something just snapped in me, and I knew I couldn't help her, she could only help herself. We were able to have the two older girls removed and custody awarded to their father. She ran with Juliette, and moved around frequently enough we couldn't get a case going with Children's Services. She called from time to time, usually to ask for money which I wouldn't send, or to come home, which we wouldn't agree to except with conditions that she wasn't willing to meet.

She did'nt tell us she was pregnant with our new baby, but she did tell her sisters. They rallied, and went and got her and our now three year old. They were both infested with lice and scabbies, she was 7 months pregnant and had not seen a doctor... or stopped drinking and using. Bean, who makes her living as a social worker, took her and Jules in. Saw to it they got medical attention, counselling and a schedule. Pap and I provided money to Bean to help offset expenses and as we saw her really trying, we started inviting her for the weekends to give her a change of scenery.

Until Brendolynn was born the energy we put off worrying would have kept a major city in lights. The baby is perfect and thriving, but we still watch closely to make sure she's coming along mentally the way she should.

It's early yet, but watching my daughter out in the yard helping her girls fill bags with leaves, her hair a silky shining curtain down her back again, the sound of her laughter ringing through the neighborhood, gives me hope that she's turned the corner. Seeing her acceptance letter from OU in the nursing program leads me to believe she remembers who she is and where she came from. She's remembered what has value in life and what is just wasting time.

It's going to be a good year. I feel my heart repairing.

Nanny Dog on Duty

2006-10-15T08:43:00.000-04:00

Ruger adores our new baby and has fussed himself crazy since Grandgirls Mom first brought her over. He sleeps by her basinet if she's in it, hovers by her baby seat if she's in it. Paces and races between grown people if she's making ANY sound at all. On this day, she was having a little tummy time with her Mom and Bren was not liking it, which made the dog insane with worry. He didn't calm down until Bren's Mom let him hop up and check her out real good. He's very gentle with her, I suspect they'll be best friends when she starts to toddle around.

Rug's behavior with the baby is interesting to me. We know he became ours because his original family had a baby after they had him, they didn't elaborate more than that. He has pretty much ignored the older grandgirls, once in awhile he'll bring some toy to Jazz for a game of fetch, but he even does that lethargically. But he loves, adores and worships this little baby. He pays her the attention we devote to a cherished object we've lost and later found.

Friday Night Lights...C-ville Style

2006-10-13T20:39:00.000-04:00

NOTICE:

The football team will be entertaining before and after tonights performance by the cheerleaders.

I live in a football town. On Friday nights every household empties out and heads to the football field. It would be a good time to rob the place, because all the cops are there too. Despite a diminutive population of under 3,000, they won the state championship in 1977. They didn't see another winning season until 2003, the year my son was a senior. We start 'em young around here, the picture is of my oldest grandgirl, Jazzmin, who's in third grade. The boys her age are already playing biddy league football. All the hitting, spiking and running of the real game, with miniature players, and miniature cheerleaders.

I don't have a problem with school spirit. I don't really have a problem with football. What I do dislike about our football program is the town's tendency to make them little demi-gods. There are men off that 1977 team who are still living in 1977. That was the pinaccle of their life. I find that so sad. To have your best day ever before you're even old enough to vote. It's not quite that bad anymore.

The 13 boys that played football with my son started together in biddy league. They were undefeated all the way to High School. High hopes don't 'cha know, the pressure on these fella's was unbelievable. Their freshman and sophomore years they won more than they lost, but you must be undefeated to go to state. Junior year they lost one game. The summer before their senior year you could cut the tension in town with a knife.

They started two a days in August. I'd watch them running past the house before daylight. No talking, just the rolling thunder of sixty pairs of feet, the column led by the senior thirteen, pounding the streets to get in shape. They did everything together, my son and his twelve best friends. Dating, studying, getting into trouble, there were always 13 boys. They play 10 games a season, more if they win the district, then sectionals and then state.

They took the field that first game of the season to record attendance. They were the team to beat. Alumni flew in for the game from everywhere. All the local papers were represented, the radio stations and even the TV. It didn't get any better, they won, and won, and won. Two games from taking the district, the quarterback hurt his wrist goofing around at practice and they lost their next two games. Still a good season, but the men around this town were devastated, and didn't hesitate to let those boys know it.

My son had never made football his life, he's interested in lots of things, so this was just a ripple on the pond of life. Most of his teammates felt the same. What was important to them was their friendship, the brotherhood they formed over their years together. At the banquet that year, the tables were set up to seat four at each. As the boys wandered in they started pushing them together, until all 13 were sitting at one big table.

Four of those boys went into the military, eight went to college and will graduate this summer, one is being bailed out of jail as I write this, drunk and disorderly. The quarterback.

Things I Wish I'd Said ... or written

2006-10-13T00:11:00.000-04:00

My friend Waldo sent me these. I don't know who said them, but I wish it had been me.

I hate sex in the movies. Tried it once. The seatfolded up, the drink spilled and that ice, well, it really chilled the mood.

My next house will have no kitchen

just vending machines and a large trash can.

Because it might as well be true. Ever since the kids moved away, we eat like teenagers most of the time. I don't know how to cook for only two or three. I won't eat leftovers. Nothing left but to eat out or order in.

"A husband is someone who,
after taking the trash out,
gives the impression that he just cleaned the whole house. "
Because it's true. Pap had surgery on his foot yesterday. He was sent home with strict instructions to SIT or LAY until Monday. He was told to put NO PRESSURE on his foot. This is the man who hasn't picked up so much as his own socks for 10 years, and yet, after these instructions and surgery... he decided to wash the dishes. Martyr is spelled P A P A B E A R.

Conspiracty Theories.

2006-10-12T19:45:00.000-04:00

Our new baby up to a whopping 6 pounds.

I stumbled upon author David Southwell's blog awhile ago, and I'm glad I did. While the subject of conspiracy theories and government lies may not seem to mix appropriately with precious, innocent babies, it does. I think about the state our country will be in when she and her sisters are my age. I worry about what kind of legacy we're leaving behind. I'm going to be watching those of my peers that I've entrusted with making the decisions for my country much more closely.

While I'm basically a happy, goofy person, blessed (or cursed) with the need to find the humour in everything... there are limits. There is nothing funny about a pedophile, a serial killer or the KKK. There's nothing funny about tracking every detail of a private citizen's life from their shopping preferences to their stock portfolios to the e-mail and phone calls they make to a friend. The lure of easier, faster, better when it comes to technology is a siren call that's hard to resist. But people have been twisting good into evil since time began.

It's been easy for me to lose track of just how fast the world is changing. I live in a small town that still announces it's lunch time with hymns from the bell tower of the Church of Christ. We have one grocery store and a pharmacist that will open the store at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning if you've hurt yourself and need your pain pills. Most of the shops on Main Street don't even take credit cards. There are no metal detectors at my high school. I wasn't paying attention to much of anything but my happy life until I heard about grocery stores issuing "shopping cards" entitling the holders to discounts. A voluntary program, the store uses the records provided by the cards to track everything from restocking to determing the brands their public prefers. "Track" is the operative word.

I was trying to imagine what I could do if I knew absolutely everything about a person. From their favorite color to their choices in breakfast cereal, and the websites they visit in secret. Blackmail comes first to mind, but that's because I'm a simple person, I like things stripped right down the bare, unfrilled bones. Manipulation is the likely action. Someone smarter than me, armed with the knowledge of everything about a group of people, is a dangerous entity. The technology to do this already exists, we need to be watching.

Take a Pill and Get a Tattoo

2006-10-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

Princess is my youngest child. She earned her nickname by years of carefully manipulating four siblings and two parents into always giving her her way. On those rare occasions when she wasn't getting what she wanted, she punished us in wily and unexpected ways. She knew better than to exhibit brat behavior, I have ammunition to combat that. She kicked our butts with wit and humour. Yesterday she completely lost her mind and got a tattoo. Not just any tattoo, chinese symbols and flowers that cover her whole back. She thinks the figures say "strength", I think it would be funny if the tattooist made them wrong and they say "punch me" or something. I know it's old fashioned to think tattoos are icky on girls. I can't help it, I just keep thinking what permanent changes to a body will start to look like as that body gets older. I should just shut up, my natural mother thought pierced ears looked cheap and weren't for "nice" girls. Times change, fashion changes....

I spent most of the day toting grandgirls mom, the three year old and the baby (who's up to a whopping 6 pounds) around on errands. At one point, Juliette had said my name so many times my ears were bleeding and I had no choice but to tell her that if she wasn't quiet for 5 minutes I was going to rip her head off and use it as a soccer ball. Lucky for me, my grandgirls already know I'm insane. Her answer "Oh Nana! That would be wery, wery messy!"

The Genius Among Us

2006-10-10T23:15:00.000-04:00

Thank You Velvet Sacks for Finding My Link Problem! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!

(And I will be more observant in the future. Kinda scary what I may be missing when I edit a person's book.... hmmmm)

Updates and Plea for HELP!

2006-10-10T09:02:00.000-04:00

Here's the front and back view of Jazz and Bri's Halloween Spooktacular party... all pasted, glittered and now waiting for the little demons to write their guests names on the bottoms.
Aside from pulling it all together on the day, we're ready. Spiders and webs assembled, scary witch costume on the dressmakers dummy, creepy lanterns ready to hang in the dining room. Game materials ready: mummy wrap, ghost bowling, and my personal favorite - cluck. If you don't know how to play cluck, leave me a message and I'll explain. Hysterical for participants and observers alike.

This blog and I are having a small difference of opinion. For some reason, when I add links, it has decided to put spaces between them. I checked the template, everything is all lined up neatly like the first batch, and still, spaces between them. I'm applying for my handicapped license plate this afternoon. I am so technologically challenged, I have no hope of surviving in this highly technical world. If someone has a clue about why this is happening to me, and how to fix it, please share!

No word yet on my part in the Angel Tree play. We were instructed that we'd be informed by e-mail, I'm sure they do this so they don't see us cry. I'm sure the playbill will list me as something like "passerby #4". I'm sure this experience is going to send me into cardiac arrest. What was I thinking?

My girl down under has made the ultimate sacrifice to finance her trip up here for Christmas 2007. She's quit smoking. I'm not a good enough friend to make that kind of sacrifice. She is so getting the best present ever from me in 2007.

It doesn't get more random than this...

1.6 Billion Dollars

2006-10-10T07:05:00.000-04:00

Yes, even my dog is shocked by that figure! 1.6 billion dollars to the You Tube Guys from Google. Ruger is extremely disappointed in me, after all his love, devotion and support, I still didn't think of an idea that would provide him the to which he wishes to become accumstomed.

To BE or Not To BE

2006-10-09T07:13:00.000-04:00

I heard about the Zanesville Community Theaters Angel Tree Production over the summer. It’s a play/variety show they produce during the holidays to raise money for the Salvations Army’s Santa’s Toy Box Project. A real community project, the usual ticket prices are waived in favor of donations at the door and every penny they take in from tickets to popcorn sales and random donations over the three days that they present this play is donated to the cause and goes directly to the children in town. Everybody who comes to try-outs gets a part. That’s how they really caught my attention.

“Act in a play” just happens to be on my list of one hundred things I want to try before I die. It lives toward the top of that list, right in between “bungee jump” and “drink one bottle of every kind of wine made in Ohio”. In consideration of the fact that either of those two things could conceivably prohibit me from ever being able to complete “act in a play”, I decided it was my destiny to perform in this play.

There are several compelling reasons that I’m a writer, two of which are: I can’t paint and babies cry at the sound of my singing voice. I am, however, an enthusiastic student and I have gained a considerable resume of speaking experience since High School, surely the director of this play, Rich Tolliver, can turn me into an actor. Armed with the knowledge that EVERYONE gets a part, I happily zoomed off to try outs last night.

Things started out fine, I know several people connected to that theater and they all greeted me enthusiastically. There was a little form to fill out: name, address, phone, e-mail. Then the more specific questions: do you want a speaking part? Yes. do you want to sing? NO (circle that answer many times and draw arrows pointing to it). Are you a soprano, alto, tenor... XXX these all out firmly. Do you read music? Write in NO and circle it several times. After handing my form in to the assistant director I took a seat in the auditoreum with everyone else. To make a long story shorter... my try out process began with an admonishment from the director to "stop talking". In my defense, he's not a very tall man and his mother was leading me astray.

After some general information about when rehearsals would be, and how darn much fun this play always is, the director took his seat in the first row and try outs began. He called up all the kids first. Very cute, he asked them all to say their name and where they went to school. Asked them what they liked best about Christmas and then he turned things over to the music director, who immediately introduced the song and explained we would all sing along with them.

When I say I can't sing, I really mean it. My junior year of High School I attended a very small private school in North Carolina that let anyone into the choir. Anyone is my operative word, so I joined that choir much to the music teacher's chagrin. Whenever he would say "WHO is singing one octave below everyone ELSE!" It was always me. And that was before two packs a day. Anyway....

Since I had clearly indicated that I don't sing on my form, I wasn't really worrying. They brought up the teenagers next and things got worse. Assistant Director hands out papers with this three word song on it and notes all over the place. They teach it to the teenagers... and say again we would all sing along. That's when I started getting nervous. Especially when the music director started splitting the teenagers into groups of threes to have them sing ALONE.

Rich dismissed the teenagers and called the adults up to the stage. I take my place, center stage of course, if you're going to do something crazy like this, you should always do it full bore I always say. He starts asking questions at the end of the line. About three persons in, I start wishing I had worn sneakers instead of my very stylish platform wedgies. My knees are shaking, I can feel this tick starting in my right eye... looking out over those seats that will eventually be filled with people is making me sweat like a racehorse. He gets to me and I get things in control enough to actually explain who I am and what I like about Christmas (presents, duh! Just kidding). I also clearly explain that dogs had been known to howl when I sing. The people on my other side introduced themselves. Then they made us sing. Then they made us sing in threes.

Note to Director: If you saw me robustly singing along with my group - that was ACTING. So give me a good part.

Funky Gurus

2006-10-08T08:51:00.000-04:00

We don't have any streetlights. Normally once the sun goes down on my little patch of town its too dark to find the street from the sidewalk. Normally, our full moons are more yellow than white. At this time of year we rarely see the moon because of the cloud cover. But this year is different. The moon is so radiantly white you feel like you want to stagger toward it zombie style. It's bright enough that my street is never completely dark until well after midnight, everything just gets layered with a silvery gray color. I'm sure it is this very strange moon that rattled my brain cells sufficiently to invite my husband to go with me to see the Funky Gurus, instead of my friends who would appreciate them.

Papa Bear and I are two very different people. We've known that from day one, and most of the time it's no big deal. Keeps things interesting. His priorities in order of importance are: work, parents, family. Mine are: family, parents, work. He likes sports, sporting events, playing sports, listening to sports and reading about sports. I like everything except sports. The difficulty comes in finding activities we can do together. We both like food and roller coasters, neither of which he can fully enjoy any more because of diabetes and heart problems. We used to both like to go dancing...

The Funky Gurus are a cover band out of Dayton that play locally from time to time. The ultimate dance band, they are an adrenaline pumping rush! Unless you're attending the set with the great fun sucking vacuum that is Pap. Before the night had even started, I knew it would be the last time Pap and I went dancing. It's not that he doesn't try, but that his body is breaking down faster than mine.

The real dilema is balancing my need to do things and try things without leaving him to languish in his recliner, remote control in hand. We aren't even 50 yet, there's still so much to explore.

When Girls are Doing Well....

2006-10-07T09:50:00.000-04:00

Apparently, this is my week for being enlightened about things I thought had been resolved and were gone forever. First banned books and now I find that young women are still hotly debating whether the children of working women are as well adjusted as stay at home mothers.

The point of the feminist movement in the beginning, well there were many points, but the one that summarizes them all for me is: CHOICE. The women who fought to give 51% of the population a voice in this country blazed a trail allowing every girl an opportunity to fulfill their full potential. For some that was a career with the ability to compete for promotions on an equal footing with their male counterparts. For others it was just the knowledge that they COULD compete if they wanted to, or needed to in support of their family.

I have a friend who says: "When girls are doing well, men and boys are doing better and that's good for the entire community." She's right. Great children come from great parenting, and the interaction of great teachers, school counsellors, ministers, adult neighbors and childcare providers. Great mothers come from working to fulfill their potential. For some, that will be working to provide a perfect home for their husband and kids. For others to achieve that perfect home, they'll work outside it for awhile every day.

I don't have perfect children. My problems with grandgirls mom are well documented throughout this blog. I was a fully engaged mother despite also working outside the home and her failures had nothing to do with how we parented her... this according to HER. The other four are hardworking, successful, well adjusted young people. They may have turned out the same if I hadn't worked outside the home, but I doubt it. Because I would not have been the same kind of mother.

I worked because we needed the money, but I would have even if Pap could have supported us all on his own. I worked because I had a burning desire to accomplish something that was just mine, to actively contribute to my community through volunteer service and I needed the feedback that comes with that kind of lifestyle. It was by having the opportunity to chase my own dreams that gave me the energy to really be there for my kids.

I'll support your decision to be a homemaker with all the enthusiasm I use supporting the women who choose to work. But I will not support either claim that one way is better than the other, it's an individual choice, based on an individual personality.

Banned Books

2006-10-06T07:45:00.000-04:00

I really need to get out more. My friend Mert called to chat about the "banned books" table at his library last week. BANNED books? Banned book week? The last time I was involved with anything using the term "banned books" I wasn't talking about it with my happy voice.

Apparently, the American Library Association has been sponsoring banned book week the last week of every September since 1982 as a reminder of our right to read. The right of free speech extends to books and people have the right to express their opinion for others to read, even if its offensive or controversial. Clever of the ALA to adopt an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude to combat the narrow mindedness of people who actually think books should be banned. Once my book gets published, I hope some group does try to get it banned or censored, it may be the only way I get to a front table in the library or book store! But I digress...

The books on the list aren't actually banned, they represent books somebody TRIED to ban. And if I'm the only goof ball on the planet that wasn't informed about this program, accept my apology now for boring you with this post. But, I couldn't believe some of the titles on this list!
If I wasn't so technologically challenged, I'd give you a link, but you can see it at the ALA's website by searching "banned book week". Anyway...

The books - Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, Cujo! My goodness, do none of these people who want to ban books read? The Harry Potter Series - trying to ban that is just criminal. I don't care what the subject was, it got children reading again, including two of mine. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Bluest Eye, Lord of the Flies??? The Handmaid's Tale, Flowers for Algernon, James and the Giant Peach, Where's Waldo. That's just a few. There are 100 on the list.

People who try to censor things really tick me off. What kind of a narrow mind does it take to assume you know best for all people?

Rain and Lightening and Hail... Oh My!

2006-10-05T06:59:00.000-04:00

I was, of course, twenty miles from home when yesterday's storm hit. In my cute car with the leaking roof. On an errand I wasn't expecting to take so long - isn't that always the way? To make a long story short by the time I went caroming into my driveway I was half soaked and putting the cover on the car finished the job. My pitiful dog is terrified of storms, and has apparently passed this phobia on to his feline sisters. All three of them met me at the door and attached themselves to my leg. But I'm not complaining. A change of clothes and baby talk to the animals got my house back in order, the people in my neighboring cities were not so lucky. Power lines down, hail big enough to break windows, it was a pretty scary night for some midwesterners.

My neighborhood didn't lose power, but there were a considerable number that did. The local news pre-empted the evenings television shows in order to broadcast non-stop that there was a storm going on and people had no power. They kept staying "we'll stay right here with you until this storm passes." Now, call me stupid, but since once you'd heard the news (or looked outside) you knew there was a storm and if you didn't have power, you couldn't hear the news anyway... what was the point in all that?

Stunned into Writer's Block

2006-10-03T07:39:00.000-04:00

I don't even know what to say about the latest school shooting. A one room school house in the heart of Amish country. Little girls shot execution style - its horrific. I can't help thinking that the shooter went there because he was going to shoot somebody and the security would be less tight in this nonviolent, peaceful community.

Even taking mental illness into account, I don't believe these shooters decide to do their deed on a whim. Where are the friends and family of these guys? Why aren't they paying attention and being proactive? I've lived with Pap for 25 years. I know when he's on a rant about something, even if he isn't talking about it. I know who's wronged him in the past and how he feels about it now. This shooter says he was getting revenge for something that happened 20 years ago. He NEVER talked about this evil deed to anyone?

It's a bad day for good news. Did you hear about the Texas teacher who was fired because her students saw nude statues in a MUSEUM? Jeesh. This country is all out of whack today.

Wonky Everything

2006-10-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

Just as quickly as it turned cold, it is now warm again. Officially, we can't call this week in the 70's and 80's "Indian Summer". To hold that title, you must have the warm temperatures after a killing frost. We've had frost, but just the bullying kind, not the murderous stuff.

Lee Redmond, 65 years old and current holder of the Guinness Book of World Records for longest nails. Twenty four feet, Seven inches. Yuck. Can you imagine? How do you wake up one day 27 years ago and decide to get your 15 minutes of fame by growing claws? I don't even mean that as unkindly as it sounds. This seems like a really nice lady, how much has she limited her life by choosing nails as a way to get recognized?

My assistant is home with the flu. This is unacceptable on many levels. Mostly I'm worried about her. She has about 1,500 hours of sick time which is the clearest indicator I can give you for how rarely she takes off work. She has two living relatives, her mother who's in a nursing home and her husband. I can't even fathom what that would be like - no aunts, no cousins, no children. Makes me think of that old Beatles song, Elenor Rigby.

My friend Waldo sent me this joke, which reminded me so much of our three year old, I decided to share it:

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though a whale is a very large mammal, its throat is very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human, it was impossible. The little gir lsaid, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah". The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?" The little girl replied, "Then you ask him!"

Enough rambling, even for a Monday.

The Calm After The Storm

2006-10-01T10:45:00.000-04:00

The irony of life... I had no sooner hit "publish" for that last entry then the bell started ringing. I live across the street from a catholic church, between masses a little guy runs out and rings the call to worship with reckless abandon. It has a very nice tone, that bell, and reminded me that two wrongs don't make a right. Life is too short to waste time on the negative.

This morning the three year old had a time out for biting. When her mother said "You don't bite!", the toddler replied "Yes, I do, I bite pancakes!" Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

Really Mean Men

2006-10-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

Considering it's Sunday, I should be commenting on only the sweet, spiritual and devine. Something light and uplifting. But that's not possible today, so feel free to wander on if you aren't in the mood for a rant. I'll understand.

I've written before about the problems with Grandgirls Mom, so will not rehash it. Since the baby was born, and we dodged a bullet, she has been diligently working to get her life together. Diet and exercise, she conscientiously cooks, cleans and takes care of her children. I can't ask more of her, and yet she even took one more positive step and enrolled in college, with classes to begin in January, and started counselling (in which she gets the same advice I give her, but from a stranger, which apparently holds more weight... I'm really not jealous, just commenting. Really.) She has not completely broken off with the scum sucking degenerate nasty monster that provided the sperm that created her kids. They are linked by the phone line, a phony umbilical cord snaking across the state. Now that she's removed herself from his physical battering, he uses the phone to beat up her mind.

Last night, with me, Pap and Princess here to babysit, she was invited out by some friends. One of the things her counsellor is pressing is the need to have friends in addition to family as part of her support network. She dressed up, fixed her hair and happily left with a group of the nice young people she used to hang around with before scum boy. She came home (sober) around 2:00 and talked about how much fun she'd had. And then the phone rang... minutes later she was sobbing. Again.

Me? I'd never tolerate anything she's been through. I'd hang up the phone, slam the door in his face... do what I had to in able to remove this kind of poison from my life. She thinks it's her fault (hence the need for a counsellor). We might as well be standing on two different planets. As for him - death is too good for mean, abusive, nasty men. Part of me knows that the divine has a way of taking care of these kinds of monsters and I should let this anger go. But the other part wants to be there when it happens, I want to see him suffering as much as he's made her suffer.

While I'm ranting: crashtest comic - of COURSE the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a tourist trap, if it was'nt, we'd call it a museum. Jeesh.

2006-09-30T09:37:00.000-04:00

A random pretty picture that came on my new computer... and made me homesick. As much as I love Ohio, I started lifed in California, Richmond, right across this bridge from San Francisco. It's been a very long time, and many states, in between that childhood of beaches, swimming pools, water ski's and sunshine...

If I learned only one thing (and I actually learned many) by moving many, many times when I was growing up, it is that people are the same everywhere. They just put emphasis on different things. Even in the 60's when I was growing up, California emphasis was on appearance. Kids were still hassled about grades, sunday school and the condition of their room, but foremost was instruction in grooming, fashion and fitness. Our first move was to Maryland, culture shock, their emphasis was on education and work, then all the other things. Pennsylvania - the state of your spirit, Indiana - how athletic are you?, North Carolina - manners, manners, manners. In every state, we adapted, changed our family dynamic and blended in. It was especially easy for me, I believe I'm one part magpie (my love of shiny things), one part chameleon.

I wonder, though, if someone trained in psychiatry would look differently at this lack of seperation anxiety? It would have been excellent early training for a con man.

Nibbling Away at Our Rights

2006-09-29T06:34:00.000-04:00

There is a company who has decided not to hire smokers. They claim that health insurance is higher for smokers. They've also said they'll fire any employee that doesn't try to quit smoking ... that's the palatable spin. Since they followed up that news with the fact that they'll be doing random drug testing for nicotine, they should just say they're going to fire anybody who smokes.

This policy isn't really about smoking. While it may sound like a conspiracy theory, it's really a test to see just how much power big business has to control their employees. Today they've chosen smoking, tomorrow they will fire all the red haired, fair skinned people. They have delicate skin and it's more expensive to treat their sunburns. This policy is testing the ability to strip citizens of their rights.

Today it's smoking, if they get away with it, tomorrow it could be our right to practice whatever religion we choose, or our right to own property. Unchecked, we are destined to repeat our most hideous pages of history. An employer has the right to control the environment in his workplace, they don't have the right to control what I do at home.

Rationalization

2006-09-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

I walked to the day job today. Unusual for me, but my reason was compelling.

1) As a conscientious citizen I felt the need to save a days gas and oil, and decrease the ozone depleting exhaust from my car.
2) Ever health conscious, I decided I needed to work some junk off my trunk.
3) Always a social creature, I wanted an opportunity to say good morning to my neighbors and shop keepers along the way.
4) It's pouring down rain and my convertible is leaking, therefore I had to leave it parked and under cover.

Isn't it amazing how we can rationalize our way to reaching whatever conclusion we want?

When I'm 64....

2006-09-27T17:46:00.000-04:00

I can distinctly remember thinking 40 year old people were ancient (then I turned 40 and got smart). The Beatles considered anyone 64 on deaths door. What do you think you'll be doing at age 88?

I interviewed this lovely 88 year old lady today who is the driving force behind the Zane Trace Players, a community theater group. They are currently in rehearsal for the musical version of Cindrella, which means the cast is mostly kids. She produces and directs the show, makes all the sets, helps with costumes, lights, advertising, ticket sales... where in the world does she find the stamina? If someone wouldn't have told me she was 88, I'd have placed her easily in her 60's.

Because people in my family seem to pass away young (60's and 70's), I like meeting people older than that. I'm one of those concrete people who's rarely sick, my kids tell me regularly that I' ll live forever. A daunting thought, so I seek out really old people to see what they do with their time. The secret seems to be staying busy. The oldest guy I ever knew died at 100. At 96 he was still recording clerk for the county. Still driving at 98, but he probably shouldn't have been, we all knew when we saw his cadillac coming down the street to leap out of the way and take cover!

2006-09-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

My goodness, what's up with blogger today? Slow.... This pretty picture from my friend Waldo, could be last year, could be the year before.

It's fall, that strange time in Ohio, and other places I'm sure, in which you dress for the day in multiple layers. Tank top, sweater, jacket, parka for the morning. By lunch you're down to the tank top and then you start putting it back on a piece at a time until you're eating dinner in your down filled coat. Not being a native Ohioian, I refuse to dress in layers. My twisted brain truly believes that if I just keep wearing my flip flops and sandals, summer will not leave. I'm not the only one like that in my town. Two of our three postal workers have a competition to see who wimps out and switches from shorts to pants first. I've seen one of them delivering the Christmas Cards in shorts before. But then, a day like today...

It was so cold this morning I couldn't even get the dog or cats to get up with me. They stayed curled up in the quilt against Pap's back no matter how much I poked and teased them. I had to defrost the windshield on the car before I left, dodging the kids in coats racing for the bus stop that's across from the house. It was cold enough on the day job that we turned on the furnace, first time since May, so we've had that burnt lint smell floating around. It wasn't until mid-morning, when I was huddled against the back door in a sunbeam (smoking, shhh... you didn't see me write that) that I gave up trying to hang on to summer. I heard the honking first, and then the V-of geese flying south.

Some Funny Things for Monday

2006-09-25T17:18:00.000-04:00

Dr. John posted today on the value of laughter. Since he's a wise man, and I agree totally, I found some funny stuff to share today. This joke was sent to me by my friend Waldo Schmidlapt, and then again by Library Lo, so it's GOT to be funny.

A woman was sitting at a bar enjoying an after work cocktail with her girlfriends when an exceptionally tall, handsome, extremely sexy middle-aged man entered. He was so striking that the woman could not take her eyes off him. The young-at-heart man noticed her overly attentive stare and walked directly toward her (as all men will). Before she could offer her apologies for so rudely staring, he leaned over and whispered to her, "I'll do anything, absolutely anything, that you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for $20.00......on one condition."

Flabbergasted, the woman asked what the condition was. Then he replied,"You have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words."

The woman considered his proposition for a moment,then slowly removed a $20 bill from her purse, which she pressed into the man's hand along with her address. She looked deeply into his eyes, and slowly, and meaningfully said....

"Clean my house."
**********
While I was surfing around yesterday, killing time while a book was printing, I found this new blog that just cracked me up: http://smhootnnanny.blogspot.com/

A Diamond in the Rough

2006-09-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

Every publisher's dream is to stumble upon a book with bestselling potential. To pick a manuscript from the submissions list, start reading and see a Stephen King, J.K. Rowling or Ian Rankin like story unfolding.

With unsolicited manuscripts flowing into the big publishing houses like flood water, they have no choice but to find reasons to reject books in order to narrow their search. Bad formatting, bad grammar and sentence structure... these kinds of problems in a manuscript make it easy to reject it.

But if you're a small house like ours, a shack really, a lean-to against the garage... you dream of the diamond in the rough. A writer like Zane Grey, pictured here. From 1910 until after his death in 1939, Zane Grey was the bestselling western author of all time. He wrote over 90 books, about the west, about fishing, for kids, adults. The man was a writing machine. There is a reason they say behind every great man there's a woman, and Zane's was called Dolly. Here is (as Paul Harvey would say) the rest of the story:
Zane's great success permitted him to have homes in Ohio, California and other places. He travelled frequently and on a trip to California he came up with an idea for a new book. In his usual prolific way he whipped it up and mailed it off to his agent. Sometime later the manuscript was returned to him with a scathing letter from the agent chastising "the imposter" trying to imitate the great Zane Grey. That is when Zane found out that the rest of his manuscripts had been retyped and corrected by his wife Dolly.

What nobody can take away is the fact that Zane Grey was a great storyteller. That he was not always so into proper format, punctuation and spelling can be forgiven, that's what editors are for. These diamonds in the rough are the author's my publishing house is hoping to find. Not that we aren't doing cartwheels when a manuscript like Sandra Ruttan's "Suspicious Circumstances", or Theresa Leighton's "Last" come our way - good stories backed up by professional presentation, but we read everything just in case that next brilliant storyteller isn't so worried about the rules of the game.

A Wicked Business

2006-09-23T17:23:00.000-04:00

Isn't that just a stunning sky? A picture from my niece in Texas. Wow, looks like a sky painted by a kid, beautiful.

Our little publishing company has been under attack for the last few days. Very distressing to my partner and I as well as our authors. We went into the publishing business to help new authors that just can't seem to get a break anywhere but have real talent. After getting a number of submissions that lacked even the most rudimentary structure (400 pages without a single paragraph sometimes!), we thought it might be a good idea to offer an editing service at a very affordable price ($35). Well, apparently that labels you as a scam artist if you charge writers ANYTHING for ANYTHING. The fact that we did was giving our authors piles of grief, it was way too much work anyway, and we really do care about not just being a reputable company, but looking like one too - so we discontinued the service. My partner has written personally to everyone that was questioning our integrity, and while I've been proud of him before, he was amazing in this circumstance and has managed to change the minds of many.

When things like this happen, I think always of the penalties for judging others. I don't think you get slammed for it so much in this world, but I won't risk being judgemental because of the consequences from the next world. It also makes me sad that some people are so quick to tear down anything that's not the "norm". Luckily, I have way too much to do to worry about this for long! Sometimes my many spinning plates come in real handy!

21 Gun Salute for People Making a Difference

2006-09-22T08:53:00.000-04:00

There's nothing better than a fantasy that becomes a reality, and the news was just filled with encouraging stories this morning. My 21 gun salute this week goes to:

Sir Richard Branson, airline mogul, who has given a 3 billion dollar gift toward development of alternative fuels. Great news on many levels, from the price of gas to global warming. Way to go Sir Richard! I hope his jet setting friends follow his example.

Stephon Marbury, NBA Star for the New York Nicks. He could have been like the rest of the prima dona basketball stars that lend their name to everything from sneakers to sweatshirts for endorsement fees in the millions, but he isn't. He hooked up with Steve and Barry's and his shoes, the same ones he wears on the court, are under $15! He wants kids to invest in themselves, not their shoes. Four stars for Stephon!

Walmart and their new drug plan. $4 prescriptions for generic versions of the medicines people need to treat high blood pressure, diabetes and allergies. This salute is maybe only two guns. It may be just a ploy to make us forget that Walmart has a pitiful health plan for their employees, and import almost all of their products instead of buying American. But I do applaud this small effort.

What a great day in the world wide neighborhood!

Worry From the Land Down Under

2006-09-21T17:14:00.000-04:00

My body is in Ohio today, but my head is in Australia with my girl down under. If she had a blog or I knew she wouldn't be mad at me, I would ask everyone, all you nice, funny, compassionate people, to send her a note. She's had just one tragedy after another over the last week and I've never heard her so down.

She and I met over the internet. A pen pal site I think, it's been awhile ago. We wrote back and forth for a little over a year and then she came here and stayed with us for a month last summer. Like twins from different mothers, Barb and I yakked practically non-stop from her arrival to her departure. Everyone liked her, and I made sure she had a real midwestern summer experience- She was forced to judge the Queen's contest at the pottery festival, we took her to a baseball game when the weather was so hot even our sweat was sweating, and even tried hooking her up with a date while she was here. Barb is one of those people that is so thoroughly good she glows with it. Smart, wise and funny. Think good thoughts for my girl Barbara.

Still Wearing My Head

2006-09-20T22:23:00.000-04:00

Poor Jazzmin, if it isn't her little sisters bugging her when she's trying to draw a masterpiece, it's Ophelia the Dowager Cat.

What a hoot yesterday turned out to be. I was trying to get ready for dinner and the speech around two cloying cats and one perfectly pathetic dog who had been alone all day since Princess has gone back to school. I don't know if I'm the only one who does this, but it's been a life long problem: the more nervous I am, the bigger my hair gets. I just can't leave it alone- curl, spray, comb, curl, spray, brush down, brush upside down. Before I know it I have the perfect style - if I were a beauty contestant from Texas in the 1980s. If it stopped at big hair I probably wouldn't consider it a mental illness, but I have the same problem with make up. There are certain colors of eye shadow and lipstick I never, ever wear but inevitably, I'll try them, in several wobbly layers, on nights when I really shouldn't be experimenting with anything. Lucky for me, I only had an hour between the day job and the speaking engagement so I was able to get out of the house looking more aging disco queen than clown.

Everything went great through dinner, I sat with some very nice ladies and compared notes about vacation spots. As dessert was wrapping up the president gave me the nod to start speaking, I walked, without tripping, to the podium, looked out over the 50 smiling faces and completely forgot everything I was going to say.....
This kind of behavior is so NOT KAT, I can't figure out what in the world
I let get me so riled up that I was actually speechless in front of a room
full of woman not much different from me... 80's hair aside. Nuts, one
day of totally nutty behavior. Jeesh.
I smiled at them for, oh 20 seconds or so that felt like a lifetime, and then said "Have you ever had one of those moments where everything, including your name, just flys right out of your head?" Half of them yelled "yes", the other half nodded and that broke the paralysis. I ended up speaking on mentorship and it's inclusion in the newly forming girls and women's network. They asked lots of questions, they stayed after to ask more. Done. Head still attached. Yay.

Exploding Heads

2006-09-19T12:25:00.000-04:00

It's quite possible that before this week is over my head will explode.

I have quite a large head, but I'm afraid that won't be of any help warding off the imminent melt down of my coping skills resulting in a mushroom cloud of disgusting brain matter, blood and hair. Some day, I will learn to say NO, and these kinds of weeks won't be an issue... for now, I'm looking for the mirror I broke, the black cat who crossed my path, the ladder I walked under...

Yesterday I tried to open an attachment from one of my authors to prepare the final, final, edited copy of her advanced reading copies. The document opened at a page count of 460, but as it downloaded the number on her page changed to 452. Worse, the word count changed too. Said author is on her way to a conference, she needs these ARCs at the conference so I don't really have time to read the entire book again to see what it's leaving out...

Tonight I have that speech for the Professional and Business Women. I'm not laughing any more, I have no idea what I'm going to talk to them about. Wait, I know WHAT I want to talk to them about, I don't know HOW I'm going to do it. I've tried to write something several times but the lure of..., well.... just about anything drew me from the task. So I'll be winging it. I'm a total imposter anyway, I don't even know why they asked me.

This morning I had an angry e-mail from my partner ... editing!!!! An angry e-mail from my editor...writing!!!! And a stack of notes from my assistant at the day job, who is looking quite lemon lipped and eye rolling today. There are book plates to do, and I'm fairly certain I'm out of clean laundry except for my black coctail dress and a velvet pant suit. We will not even discuss the fact that my convertable top is leaking and since it rained yesterday, I had to drive to a meeting in Pap's beater. I doubt I'll ever be able to live down the shame.

In the event my prediction comes true, and my head does explode, you may notice that my blog posts get more interesting. I definately have too much to do to actually die, so I'm sure my body will continue to go through it's paces headless. :)

Things I learned from a 3 Year Old

2006-09-18T10:43:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've taken care of a three year old for more than a few hours at a time. This past weekend was an adventure and I gained some wisdom to pass on to my friends:

Scrapbook glitter, while enhancing the appearance of the sewing machine, screws up its operation considerably.

You must cut up spaghetti O's before you serve them or they instantly become fashion accessories.

The term "time out" must never be used in place of the word "stop" or hysterics will shortly follow.

No matter how awful the three year old is being, if you put her on the naughty chair her two older sisters will look at you like you've just murdered a kitten.

If you put her on the naughty chair, no matter how awful she's behaved, you will feel like you've just murdered a kitten.

The tiny victorian couch in my library that' s too narrow for any adult to sit on comfortably is perfectly sized for a small girl and an old cat to use as a napping spot.

A brass band playing their way through the library will not wake a small girl up. The sound of a lid being removed from a tube of play-doh two rooms away will.

Blogger won't let me post pictures today... so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you I had a really cute one of the above mentioned three year old.

It's A Girl!

2006-09-15T12:38:00.000-04:00

It was a girl after all, Brendolyn Jessica Jolene... great big name for a very tiny little lady, just 4 lbs. 12 ozs. But she is lovely, and not even as big as a football! Bren and her Mom are doing fine, despite her diminutive size she has quite lusty lungs and is eating like a mad woman. Off to write my article so I don't get fired from the paper...

Thursday Full of Opportunities

2006-09-14T08:44:00.000-04:00

Grandgirls mom called yesterday to put me on notice that the birth of baby #4 was imminent. Supposedly another girl, I hope so, but doctors have been wrong before and no matter how advanced technology gets, I won't believe it until I see it...her. She has asked her sisters, Princess and Bean, to go with her to the delivery room, my job is to take care of Juliette, who is three.

I love her desperately, but I'd have a better chance of surviving by giving birth to #4 myself rather than being left alone with Juliette. She doesn't sleep, she talks non-stop, and if I knew how to trap frenetic energy, I could supply power to my entire neighborhood. Julzy does things like paint the cat with toothpaste. Her middle name is "drama". Lucky for me, Juliette loves being outside mucking in the garden as much as I do. If the rain holds off... I will wear the little darling down jogging between the tired vegetable garden and the mulch pile.

In the event we don't get a baby today, I have just one feature story for the newspaper this week. Computers breaking, cars breaking... this week was too chaotic to get much of anything accomplished.

Later......
This is one of those moments I remember why I never divorce Papa Bear. After a day of hopping like Tigger, endless rounds of "the wheels on the bus", a monster sized temper tantrum over a nap, followed by an equally frantic crying jag because she was not permited to eat the cat's food... Pap arrived to take Juliette (the chatter box) and I out to dinner and then, and this truly makes him my hero, to our house to put her to bed while I stay here in Bean's quiet, tidy apartment. Calgon calls....

A Murder of Crows...A Blizzard of Buzzards

2006-09-13T12:27:00.000-04:00

What do you call a flock of buzzards? This picture was taken by my friend Waldo Schmidlpt of an old tree by the cemetery that was just filled with buzzards. An eerie bird at best, but when hanging out in a gang like this, downright spooky!

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Today, I finally learned how to make a link from this blog. A simple thing to most people, but despite instructions, I have the hardest time with html. All those little carrots and slashes and quotation marks drive me crazy. I have new respect for dark daddy, my web designing friend.

Last year, clay guy talked me into taking a pottery making class. It was a logical request, me and Pap love pottery and have a large collection on top of the fact that pottery is our regional product and we actively promote its sale. I'm creative and kind of artsy, I thought I'd love it. I didn't. I hated everything about making pottery from the uncomfortable position you must assume at the wheel to the feel of the clay squooshing between my fingers. I hated having to remove all my rings, I hated that my long fingernails made it almost impossible to smooth things out properly. I quit the class, but, I gained a whole new respect for the potters who make my dishes and art pottery.

While you may be thinking the previous paragraphs were as random a bunch of thoughts as could be, they connect on the level of "things I once took for granted". I used to believe I was pretty smart, then I realized a three year old could stump me in under thirty seconds (smart people should also have answers for the illogical) and I don't know what a flock of buzzards is called. I used to call myself a quick learner, then the internet came along. Things I once presumed were easy, turned out to be hard, hard things turned out to be easy... I have learned that life has very many more dimensions that I had previously believed. That's cool, and it's inspired me to make a list of things I want to do and see before I die. Luckily, I have many, many years to work on this.

Top of the list: I want to tour Scotland, my husband's, families homeland. I want to learn how to use oil paints, train for a marathon, write a play and see it produced, teach my grandgirls how to walk with a book on their head, build a straw wall, raise a chicken, design a new house, learn to ballroom dance, see a financial report for the lottery, watch a concert from the first row, mediate a debate between a minister and a wiccan priestess, visit my girl in Australia... to be continued somewhere else....

Believe in Yourself

2006-09-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

Library Lo sent me this picture, it was on one of those funny things people forward to all their friends with cool pictures captioned with something motivational. This one is called, of course, Believe in Yourself.

For years, the Kat that lives in my head has been a svelte size 8, with perfect hair and small feet. The fact that I haven't been a size 8 since Junior High, have seen maybe 4 perfect hair days in 47 years and have average sized feet that are nearly as wide as they are long, makes no difference. I have been known to catch sight of myself in a store window and recognize it as me only because the reflection is wearing the same clothes I am. So I like this picture, because for once the mirror isn't betraying someone, it's reflecting this internal kitty.

I'm not sure when certain of my body parts decided to move south of their assigned places, but evacuate they did. Dressing around the effects of gravity, (pepsi, hohos, ice cream) and five children is an adventure. Especially when your head still thinks you look like the Disco Queen you were in 1979. Most shopping trips include me trotting back to the dressing room with a lovely selection of cropped and spaghetti strapped tops, then slouching back out to fetch the St. John's Bay practical middled aged t-shirts that actually fit me.

Princess and I refuse to believe there is any size larger than extra large. That's the only thing saving me from needing a cattle scale to weigh in, I don't want to disappoint her by moving into the dreaded 1X, so I do apply myself to healthy eating when I'm busting the seams on those XLs.

I've always had bad eating habits. I hate to cook, so whatever is close at hand is what I'll eat. This is complicated by the fact that I have an addictive personality. I eat oatmeal for breakfast every single morning. If Pap fails to replace my oatmeal and I run out, I'll fret for several days and eat nothing. If he goes too long and doesn't replace it, I'll eat whatever is easy: half a jar of chocolate fudge, popcorn, left over cake. We live in a small town with no fast food restraunts, so anytime we went to the city we'd eat at McDonald's. Well now I go to the city two or three times a week and I can't drive past the McD's, I have to stop. I have eaten the same thing there for years (#2 with diet coke). As slovenly and self-indulgent as this all sounds, there is good news regarding my examination of my eating habits. I don't really care if it's healthy food or junk food, to me food is only fuel. I want it fast, I don't want to have to cook it myself, and I lack a goumets palate. I'm happy to eat the same thing every day for months. I just have to figure out three healthy meals and two snacks that I can eat every day until I'm skinny.

Until that skinny day, I don't really bug on my weight. It's just a number. If it weren't for the fact that I feel like lugging around a bunch of extra pounds is the same as playing russion roulette, I wouldn't care at all.

The Autumn of a Lifetime

2006-09-11T15:26:00.000-04:00

Ever since we had our first chilly morning, I've been obsessed with the phases of a life and just where I am in that grand plan. When I was growing up and women were gossiping about the older man up the street with the young chippy - they'd call it "that May/December romance".

Memories of my life as a kid are always in the pastels of spring- squeaky clean, shiny and new. They're scented with chlorine, wet dog and playground sweat. I remember my late teens and child rearing years in primary colors suffused with neon - hot, ripe, passionate- surrounded by the cloying smell of honeysuckle, lavender and roses in full bloom.

The trees outside my kitchen window are still wearing their lush green canopies, but they're beginning to fade. The green is less vibrant, some of the leaves are edged with brown. The vines in the vegetable garden are looking wilted and have lost most of their leaves. The patio umbrella is faded and drooping, the canvas chairs have permanent bottom shaped dips in them. I look at this sad picture of late summer and remember that in a week or two the garden will be filled with mums, richly shaded in oranges, golds and browns. The trees will glow gold and orange one last time before they drop the leaves for winter. As soon as we have a morning frost, the fading pumpkin vines will shrivel out of sight leaving behind a crop of bright orange pumpkins. That's why I've always loved autumn, it's like a fighter regaining his feet on the 8 count and going on to fight out the round. He may get knocked out in the next round, but for this one he has come up fighting, swinging, punching and putting on one last show.

I feel like I've entered the autumn of my life. My kids are grown and it's the first chance I've had to fully pursue my own interests. There was that period right before Princess graduated from High School that felt like late summer - I was a little faded and droopy, sad and in need of plumping up. A bit scared about what was coming next. It's only this year that I realized after late summer comes Autumn! Another batch of memories to make, this time scented with the smell of hot cider and burning leaves, colored with rich golds, oranges and browns.

Grandgirl Weekend

2006-09-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

The house of perpetual remodeling is hopping today. The grandgirls and their mom popped in last night for an early birthday celebration for Breezy (the one on the right) who is turning 7 on Monday.

I wasn't expecting (or planning!) to be a grandmother this early in life, but now that I am I wonder how anyone who gets the little charmers keeps up at an older age. I've already forgotten what it's like to just keep kids fed and watered on a regular schedule. Jazz, the one on the left, has been my gardening buddy since she was toddling. Last month she called me and said "Nana, I'm coming over this weekend, the tomatos are so overgrown I can't even see my tree".
True, I've been a little busy lately, and Pap is supposed to take care of the vegetable garden...

Always when grandgirls mom is here I spend time biting my tongue. I know it serves no purpose to say "how can you make these kinds of life choices? Why can't you see how hard you're making life for everyone around you? What are you thinking when your recklessness results in damage to tiny lives? How do I make you see that a life worth living is lived in honesty, hard work, clean fun and legal behavior?" When I was raising my kids in the 80's, the experts harped on "kids do as you do, not as you say". I believed that and Pap and I set a good example. With this child, it didn't matter. I'm a huge supporter of mentoring, not just for poor kids, or kids missing a parent, but for every kid. Personalities are so diverse that no one person can reach everyone. Grandgirls mom grew up looking at me like I was some super woman living standards she couldn't hope to achieve. A false reality, but her reality. If there had been someone around more like her, more edgy and spontaneous, that was willing to mentor, she might have turned out differently. She's young, only 26, and there's time to change, but only if she wants to. That's the real question.

Today will be spent in board games (Mousetrap is the new favorite) and craft projects - a little calm before the storm of next week's work. Since I missed three opportunities for stories this weekend, I'll need to chase down three new somethings before my Friday deadline. Hmmm.... My desk at the day job looks like a hurricane hit it, so some serious attention to that, all doable.

Meltdown

2006-09-09T07:21:00.000-04:00

It was inevitable that this day would come. My schedule has been tottering around like a house of cards for some time, I am not surprised that it crashed today.

I'm supposed to be racing between the Bump, Spike and Dive mud volley ball for charity event and Farm City Day to get stories for the paper. By lunch I'm supposed to be at the museum to hand out writing awards for The Theme is Pottery. The afternoon was planned to be spent talking to Karen at the Armory regarding the consignment shop that's opening, then zipping back to Crooksville for middle grandgirls birthday party (picking up the cake along the way). Somewhere amongst that stuff I needed to finish making ARCs for the reading club and finish my speech for the Professional Women. A day like this is carefully orchestrated, there is no room for spontaneous action, or glitches of any kind.

Big glitch. Pap's car is in the shop for repair so he took mine to work. The backup plan was for me to take Princess to work, do my running around in her car, and then pick her back up right before I picked up the cake. Well, I have discovered it's impossible for me to look presentable in under, oh, about 80 minutes. I woke up 45 minutes before she had to leave. So the entire day is scrapped. Ugh.

A Writer's Talk with Some Artists

2006-09-08T08:03:00.000-04:00

Spooky moon still in the sky this morning. I like these crisp fall mornings that warm back up to summer by midafternoon. Pap has my car today since his is in the shop and Princess had to be at work early, so I walked to work (which is what I should be doing every day).

Last night was the speech for the artists. Lots of fun, there are so many of them! I think it went okay, they laughed several times, applauded something I said once and several stayed after to ask questions about either the newspaper or to tell me they were also writers. Zanesville is a funny old city. I've moved around a lot and know that most cities have a personality of some sort. When we moved to Southeastern Ohio fifteen years ago, Zanesville was full of moldering old businesses, derelicts roaming the streets and empty buildings. I worked in a business on Main Street for about a year, so I saw it up close and personal. Then the artists started organizing, Alan Cottrill, the sculpture, moved back and placed a bronze Indian on the roof of his studio, rapidly followed by a parade of bronze characters on the sidewalk. The antique stores started spiffing up, and new businesses moved in. ZAAP and the Artists Colony was formed, followed by several of them taking up residence in the old Armory. The transformation is amazing, and the artists deserve all the credit for both giving the city back a personality and reminding everyone of their proud old heritage as an Art Pottery town.

Among my volumous list of personal beliefs, there are two that routinely march to the top of the list: 1) everyone - regardless of economic or social standing, creed, religion or gender- has the right to own something beautiful that moves them emotionally, and 2) just like dedicated policemen, doctors or bankers, dedicated artists deserve the right to make a living as artists. Getting those two beliefs to meld into a reality requires a dedicated marketing person, and compromise on the part of the artist and the consumer. Why it's worth the effort to work at making these beliefs a reality is best illustrated through evidence of the power art has to make change in the life and heart of a person : (slightly fictionalized to protect the privacy of the couple involved)

In the 1980's Pap and I were Art Consultants for a company in Indiana that also believed everyone deserved to own a piece of beautiful art. They developed a program based on volume that kept the cost of art down while still providing a good income for a motivated and prolific artist. We sold oil paintings, some prints and water colors through home shows called private gallery showings. All very dignified, part show, part art education, part pseudo auction. Pap and I lived near an Air Force base, so we frequently had young GI's at our shows who came for the food, I'm sure, but left with a painting or two ordered.

There was a young man who worked in the motor pool named Buster Yardley who was married to a tiny little girl named Becky who had been hideously disfigured in a fire just a few months after their wedding. Buster had quite a knack for canabilizing one set of cars in order to fix other sets of vehicles making the road leading to their shack on the outskirts of town looking like a graveyard for Fords and Chryslers. GI's being what they are, Buster and his wife were usually referred to as Junkyard and Dog. I'm not sure how Buster got invited to one of our shows, I knew of him, and it was common knowledge that everyone used Buster, but the Yardley's didn't have any friends.

It was a full house that first night I actually met the Yardley's. They sat in the back corner of a room, alone and aparently uninterested until I came to a selection of sea scapes. The first one was just stunning, crashing waves with nearly transparent crests, sunlight dancing off the water across the canvas. When I illuminated it with an art light, Buster came off his chair and moved to the front of the room. He had a million questions, who painted it, where was this beach, how did he do that? They left with a painting ordered for them. Several months passed, I'd see their names on packages being picked up by other consultants, or on sales slips at the gallery. Just before Christmas Buster called and invited Pap and I out to see their "gallery wall".

It was cold that night, with wind whistling across Indiana's flat landscape. Creepy driving through the car carcasses up to the Yardley's little house with the tin roof. Buster opened the door at our knock and led us down the short bare hall to the living room, empty except for two lawn chairs and a TV tray. Once we'd cleared the wall blocking our view of the end of the room, Pap and I were both struck speechless. The Yardleys had collected a group of seascapes and rustics that when assembled together told the story of a life yet to come. Illuminated by up lights arranged on the floor, the viewer was literally swept out of Indiana. A portrait of a mermaid posed on rocks, long red hair flowing over her shoulder and floating on the water, her tail a nicked and scarred series of scales, was prominently placed in the center of the grouping. "Isn't my Becky beautiful, that's just how she looks to me." Buster said pointing to the portrait.

Buster advanced through the ranks like all GI's do, upgrading his housing as he went. When he retired we got a letter from him, postmarked from New Hampshire. It was a short note thanking us for introducing him to oil paintings and explaining that back when he and Becky had nothing, and were struggling to rebuild their life together after the fire, it was the one thing that opened up dialogue between them, and helped him to show her just exactly how he felt and what he dreamed about.

Squirrely Day

2006-09-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly certain that I am definately going nuts, this squirrel has been hanging around me all day.

I'm glad this week is nearly over, it's been chock full of bad news of one kind or another. Nothing desperate, just these little annoyances, one on top of the other until you want to gouge your own eyes out. It rained on a holiday, the paper lost two of my stories, my editor won't answer my e-mail, my computer is dieing, my internet connection is screwed up. Isobelle will not leave the beads on the chandelier in my dressing room alone, they are now scattered all around upstairs guaranteeing that I will step on at least one anytime I have to run to the loo in the middle of the night.

We've been talking lately about whether the building I work in is making people sick. I would say it was even if it wasn't... but it's funny how everyone who works here, regardless of their excellent health in the past, just starts falling to pieces. Headaches, flu, and allergy attacks seem to be the biggest complaints, followed by bronchitis. The building was constructed in 1930, it has flooded twice, once in 1950 and most recently in 2004. There's probably some creepy mold mutating and growing in the walls of this old place.

Speech number one tonight... artists. I will be a hero or a goat depending on whether they are open to hearing about a new way of doing things, or totally closed minded.

Whirlwind!

2006-09-06T16:50:00.000-04:00

I know just how this guy feels. You can only bang your head into the wall for so long before you just bust right through!

Crazy these last couple of days, I feel like the plates I spin have paired up and multiplied in my sleep. Had some work to do at the Prof.squared's yesterday, which didn't get done until today because my desk looks like a file cabinet exploded on it. I could have taken care of the desk yesterday, but instead I spent half the day on the phone following up some leads on an after school program story I'm doing, then I had a couple of interviews, followed by a Council meeting. By the time I got home, my brain resembled something like overcooked oatmeal.

Home computer is still crunked beyond use. Ugh! Did you hear that Donald Trump fired CAROLYN?! What was the man thinking? I was already bummed and sad about the death of Jeff Irwin, the upcoming anniversary of 9-11 and now that. Jeesh.

Best Laid Plans

2006-09-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

I was kidding when I said I was trying to avoid laboring on Labor Day, but the universe took me seriously and my poor home computer is suffering the last of it's way over due death throes. Very bad news for me, because that will mean I have to spend more time at the office, dressed, and looking like a working person. Sucks.

I've been piddling around in my craft room for the last couple of days, working on a wall hanging for fall. Before I could read I was a mad drawer... person who drew... I make masks, sew, paint abstracts and decorate. But my passion is writing. Most of the artists I interview also write, but their passion is ART. I will tell you I'm not a great painter, but then I've never had any formal art training, so how do I know I couldn't be a great painter? That got me thinking about people in general, and the gifts everyone might have that they don't even know they possess. Wouldn't it be interesting to see what developed if every child were required to take art, music and creative writing all 12 years they were in school?

Labor Day Weekend

2006-09-02T18:08:00.000-04:00

This painting is called Sitting on the Fence, it's by Jim Glover and the photograph does not do it justice. It was cold today and rainy, a reminder that winter's on its way.

It's labor day weekend and I'm doing my best not to labor. Long weekends are when you find out what a work-a-holic you really are. Sandra's manuscript arrived this morning, so I had to start on it at least. Did some updating on my website, answered e-mail, attempted to clean something and then decided it was entirely too cold and miserable to be that motivated so I spent the rest of the day reading a book. Interesting little mystery thriller called The Death Artist. If you like these kinds of books, its worth reading.

One thing I must do this weekend is prepare a couple of speechs. I'm speaking to artists next week and business women the week after that. The artists are easy, the women - not so much. I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around why they want to hear from me. I write like a talk most of the time, if you're reading this... that is me. Does this sound like a person who could teach a professional business woman anything? Well, I have a plan. I think I'll talk to them about mentorship and their responsibility to take on a teenage girl if for nothing else than to keep another generation from turning out like me! Living in a small town, people really know me and don't judge the quality of my work or my ability to get things done by how I'm dressed or whether I'm wearing make-up or not. When I need to, I can look professional... it's an act, but hey, we do what we must.

Hurricane Ernesto

2006-09-01T07:17:00.000-04:00

I'm getting real tired of Hurricanes. First beautiful New Orleans, my sister's home and now North Carolina, my favorite childhood memory. We lived in Wilmington when I was a teenager, this picture is of Wrightsville Beach, I didn't take it but I know that spot. North Carolina isn't getting the beating New Orleans did, but any flooding is too much flooding.

100th Post Party

2006-09-01T06:59:00.000-04:00

A mini landmark occasion, 100 posts here at random thoughts. Exciting news for me because I have a long history of inconsistency. I'm not inconsistant in completing tasks, just the method with which I complete them. It can be a filing nightmare. Journal entries in notebooks of every size, on scraps of paper, on the back of other things. I'm a hazard to myself.

Dark Daddy was able to repair what I damaged on my website and even added a cool little component that the technologically challenged, like me, can use to update things easier. He rocks! The newspaper managed to lose two of my stories - most importantly the one about Paul's art show that is scheduled for TONIGHT, the newspaper does not rock. My author is having a meltdown, and completely freaking over her deadline. She still rocks, this will pass. One more day without my assistant...

Random... So Very Random Thoughts

2006-08-31T06:04:00.000-04:00

Two more days without my assistant, the light at the end of the tunnel! Two jam packed days of office work followed by labor day weekend- three jam packed days of publishing, editing and newspaper work!

Princess was asleep on the couch when I got up this morning, VH-1 blaring on the TV. My first thought was to turn it off, but the remote control was not in the little basket provided for it. The easy thing would have been to walk the three steps to the TV and push the off button... "easy" is never the first way I solve a problem. I searched around the end table, crept around feeling for it on the floor, checked the computer desk, tore Pap's chair apart and then got distracted by some song by somebody named Fergy that was absolutely filthy. I can't believe kids are being exposed to that much implied sex at 5:00 in the morning! That song ended before I'd finished chastising the TV for broadcasting such garbage and was followed by something by Jessica Simpson and what looked like Eva Longoria - the actress from Desperate Housewives. I had to watch that whole thing to make sure it was Eva (I'm still not... sure) and then they played that sad break up song by Nick Lachey (who's from Ohio by the way) who was once married to Jessica. Normally, I wouldn't know even this much pop culture, but I live with a teenager. Puzzling over the sheer meanness of putting those two songs back to back - I remembered that the clothes I'm planning to wear today need to be put in the dryer.

On the way to the laundry room the cats reminded me their bowl was empty, by tag teaming my ankles nearly causing me to break a leg. I was jiggling the switch to try and get the kitchen light to come on so I could feed the little beasts when I heard the dog flying down the stairs, which means beat him to the front door to let him out or there WILL be a puddle somewhere. When I opened the door to let him out I caught sight of my car glistening with dew... I forgot to put the top up yesterday. That required a trip to the bathroom to get some towels, on the way back out I stopped to rearrange the honeysuckle vine that has become so overgrown you have to fight your way through it to get down the steps. I was tucking pieces in place when Ruger decided to chase the neighbors cat, barking like a crazy dog, so I had to run up the street and retrieve him then lecture the monster all the way back to the house. That's when I noticed that Pap wasn't up, and should have been on his way to work. By the time I got back downstairs I remembered I had e-mail to answer.

Several hours later, VH-1 is still blaring on the TV , and I've just remembered the clothes are still in the washer, the cats are still unfed, the honeysuckle is only half done and there are towels on the porch. Princess frequently says that I need a babysitter, perhaps she's right.

In other news... today is deadline day for Sandra Ruttan's book Suspicious Circumstances. I'll do one final look through, send it off for advanced reading copies, prepare the letters to send it out for review and then it's my partners baby to get it ready for publication.

Willow is getting moved to my write-it-now software for final edits, Pitch is languishing in a drawer. Updates to my website were started yesterday, messed up, and now need the attention of Dark Daddy to get things back on track. I have one more story to finish for the paper, half a book to finish editing for the business, final touchs on a speech I'm giving next week and payroll to do at the day job.

Not too bad, except that I have to accomplish all this naked, in a wet car, with two cats howling in my ear for food over some crap on VH-l.

Insomnia and Women

2006-08-30T00:34:00.000-04:00

I can't remember a time when I didn't have hours left at the end of the day when I'm awake and everyone else is sleeping. When the kids were young, these extra hours of quiet, dark solitude were welcome. I love my kids more than the air I need to breath, but all the noisy, frantic energy they produced just sucked the life out of me by the end of the day. It was nice to put them to bed and descend the stairs turning off lights one by one until I reached my favorite chair. To sit and listen to the house settle around me, quiet except for the hum of a ceiling fan motor, or the woosh of the furnace kicking on.

They say that it is how a person recharges that defines whether one is an introvert or an extrovert. Those that need a party, talk, music, an abundance of people to feel really alive and energized are extroverts. Those that need a quiet, dark absence of stimuli of any kind are introverts. I think people are more complicated than that, and I think everyone has both an introverted and extroverted side. I think even that changes at different times in a persons life.

I had lunch with a friend today who said something interesting. We were talking about our daughters and she said that women who continuously improve their life unconsciously make changes and recreate themselves every decade. If you miss the window, you get stuck repeating the same mistakes, in the same rut for another decade. I'm heading into my fifth decade on earth, and with hindsight can look at my own unconscious changes. My 20's were dedicated to motherhood, five kids between 1980 and 1987. In my 30's I was devoted to child rearing, but by the end of that decade I was making strides to re-enter the work force, in any capacity. My 40's have been about connecting with the community again and as they near their end, working in a field that feeds my soul as well as my body. Our daughters are nearing that third decade, without change now, we will see ten more years of their own self-destruction and failure. I wonder if it will help grandgirls mom to share this theory with her?

Wednsday - 11:32 A.M.
In my youth I could survive a night of insomnia looking none the worse for wear... not so here in my middle age. This cat looks better than I do today. I will be very glad when my assistant gets back from vacation. I'm changing her title to Goddess of the Office or Queen High Ruler of the Finance Dept. I've always known she worked harder than any three people, but when she's gone like like this, I really feel the impact of her loss.

The Needy in Your Neighborhood

2006-08-29T16:44:00.000-04:00

My punishment for all that whining last week is to seek out people who have more to complain about than me.

First up, my poor dog Ruger, who isn't a person, but thinks he is. He is frequently just standing around, minding his own business when this wicked cat attacks him.

Pap, who I haven't quite forgiven yet, but it can't be easy to face every day with something on your body getting infected.

My friend, Earthgirl, who's only daughter, witch, spends every waking moment plotting ways to hurt people, including her own daughter. Witch is living proof that every organized religion has it's share of hypocrites. The pagan motto is "hurt no one" and yet this girl and her cult are wrecking the lives of woman and children everywhere. Anyone who doesn't believe as they do.

I'm an open minded person, I truly believe everyone has the right to dress how they want, live like they want and practice whatever religion they choose. But I also believe that one person's rights end where someone elses begin. If your religion requires dancing naked under the moonlight and drinking each others blood - well okay. But don't do it in my yard. There's also the line in the sand called "socially acceptable behavior". Right or wrong, there are standards for the kinds of behavior that are acceptable among the masses. If walking around naked on Main Street is unacceptable in your neighborhood, you should have the curtesy to stay clothed on the street. But I digress... I'm supposed to be doing penance here...

More people who have more reason to whine than me... woman who want children but can't have them, people with terrible parents, anyone with a terminal disease, anyone who's lost someone they love. Anyone who's lost their home due to natural disasters. Kids without parents, people who have lost a limb, anyone with alzheimers, anyone living in a war torn country...

Okay, everyone has more reason to whine than me. I have no excuses for not getting back to work and accomplishing someone productive.

Haunted House

2006-08-28T14:49:00.000-04:00

It's official, the house of perpetual remodeling has to be haunted. Yesterday, I was minding my own business in the kitchen, whipping up a p.b & j. sandwich when I kept hearing loud tapping from the ceiling. When I looked up the ceiling tiles seemed to be moving as well. Since the grandgirls and their mom were staying over for the weekend, I assumed it was one or all of the little ladies dancing in the room above the kitchen. The fact that there isn't really a room above the kitchen, but more a half remodeled ex-bathroom that was once a closet didn't really register until I carried my sandwich into the TV room. There were all three little girls, quietly coloring with both cats and the dog. Last night, Ruger, the dog who is usually sprawled all over my side of the bed, wouldn't even go up stairs. He just sat at the bottom looking up, and then went to bed on the couch. Today, Princess was home alone and cleaning the kitchen when the tapping started again, so loud she could hear it over her blaring tunes, and the ceiling tile lifted straight into the air and then fell back down. Very scary, and I ain't afraid of no ghosts. I just want to know what is causing all the commotion and then why. If I am very brave, I will take down the drop ceiling tiles and look around up there. Chances are, I'm not the brave... at least until I work up to it. The house is 115, just about anything could be happening up there.

Hurricane Katrina One Year Later

2006-08-27T19:19:00.000-04:00

Count your many blessings, name them one by one.
Count your many blessings, see what God has done....

A song we used to sing in Sunday School, and one I should chant as a mantra every day. The updates on the damage to Louisiana and Mississippi one year later are grim to say the least. People still with lives shattered, waiting for the Federal Government to deliver on their promises. Broken houses still in pieces on every street. The mold must be unbelievable, and from that the illness.

It makes me crazy that we are fighting in Iraq at huge expense to the tax payers, a place we aren't even wanted, when that money could be used to help victims of Katrina get back on their feet. How is it that camera crews are not capturing the success the EPA is reporting? It's time for a government overhaul. From the top down. Woosh, everybodies new. Illogical? Yes. At this point, I don't care. I want leaders that are honorable.

Responsibility... Who Needs It?

2006-08-24T16:54:00.000-04:00

In case you couldn't tell from the title, be warned that this may be a big, fat, steaming post of self-pitying, mewling, cry baby whining. Escape while you can. Click to the "next blog", shut your computer down ... save yourself!

There are days when I get so fed up with doing the right thing I want to hit a wall or curse at a priest. Mornings when I'm ready to chuck work, home and family into the abyss before breakfast. Afternoons I traipse off to some meeting, party or luncheon that I don't really want to go to, but I must because it's the responsible thing to do. Sometimes the burden of being responsible is just too darn heavy. Too clawing and clinging, not much fun. I think about running off to another state, getting a one room apartment, making my living as waitress in some truck stop and spending my nights alone in silent bliss writing until I fall asleep on my keyboard.

Then I cruise around blogdom and remember just how lucky I am, or one of the grandkids leaves an I Love You note on my nightstand... and I remember that any problems I have are nothing compared to some faced by other people every day of their lives. I remember that I've lived a charmed life free of physical or mental abuse or tragedy of any kind and I'm ashamed of myself for spending even one moment in self pity.

Responsibility, who needs it? Me. I do. The dues I owe for a lucky life filled with friends old and new, kids and pets who love me, sufficient food and shelter. I remember not to steal my own joy.

The Big, Nosy, Controversial Question

2006-08-23T23:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, here is your invitation to the coolest art show, by the nicest artist I've ever met. It's Friday, September 1st... I don't care how you get here, just get here if you can...

Paul Richmond is the protegy of my favorite artist, Linda Regula. She's been mentoring Paul since he was 3, and those early paintings weren't the usual scribbles and stick people most 3 year olds draw, they were cartoon characters anyone could recognize. This show has sample of his work from age 4 through the present, a fascinating walk through his life as he grew as a person as well as an artist. He's 26 now, handsome, charming and the joy of life just rolls off him in waves. If he weren't gay, everyone would want their daughter to marry him. Shoot, gay or not everyone would want their daughter to marry him. He's just that nice.

I stopped debating the "right" or "wrong" of homosexuality long ago... Judge not and all that. I don't care what the "church" thinks about the subject, it's a lifestyle I know nobody would deliberately choose because society is hard, mean and perfectly ruthless. It isn't an easy life and this fact has been brilliantly illustrated through some of Paul's paintings. Which brings about the age old question of why? It stinks that some of the nicest men I've ever met are not eligible as husbands to my daughters.

Artists, Actors, Writers and Musicians... Raw Emotion

2006-08-22T17:29:00.000-04:00

An interesting week so far, and it's only Tuesday! Yesterday, in between being whiny and emotional, I actually managed to spend a whole eight hours on the day job AND do an interview that will turn into two stories. Hence, the whiny and emotional.

Today I interviewed an artist that paints with asphalt. Nearing sixty, he's been an artist since he was three or four. I imagine after all that time you'd have to start experimenting with other stuff or go stark raving mad. I like the paintings, and yet I don't. They are black, beige and white, mostly abstract, with every drip, swoop and dot placed where it is on purpose. Even as abstracts, I could see a windswept Oklahoma prairie during a lightening storm in one, a woman rinsing her hair in a rushing waterfall in another. I like color, color and more color - but these reach in and snatch out an emotion. He's preparing a collection to pitch for a show at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)... apparently art is much like writing.

Princess is on a cleaning rampage today. I tried to explain that writers don't clean, but she was having none of it. Her boyfriend is on his way home for a few weeks leave from the Marines. Things must be ship shape.... ugh. Where was this kid when I cared whether the house was clean or not????

Helllloooo OUT THERE?!!?

2006-08-21T18:10:00.000-04:00

This blog has never exactly been overwhelmed with traffic, but lately I can't even get friends and family to drop by. As a writer, it makes me feel like I'm the most boring person in blogdom. If I were just keeping this as an on-line journal, it would make no difference whether anyone dropped by or not... but it isn't, and it does.

End of Summer

2006-08-19T09:17:00.000-04:00

Ruger's only trick. He sits up anytime he wants to eat something that I'm eating. It's his only trick and it works every time.

Action on the street this morning is totally crazy. The Catholics are setting up for their annual festival and have the street blocked on one end. We have new neighbors moving in on the other end with a fleet of small pick-up trucks piled with furniture blocking the only other exit from my street. I, of course, live in the middle of the street and desperately need a gallon of milk. Isn't that always the way?

I wasn't kidding about brain dead yesterday, I actually had to pass on a trip to the vineyard I was tired last night. Saved me from a headache today, but that is small comfort.

Summer is wrapping up. Even though its still hot, it has that feel of the end of a party. You know what I mean - that hour when the coffee table is covered with dirty glasses and a half eaten cheese ball and the helium balloons are floating closer to the floor than the ceiling. The kids will go back to school next week, football season will empty the town every Friday night and before I can catch my breath it will be Christmas. Why is it that time flys so much faster as you get older? If I had just three more hours a day and one more day a week, I could really get something accomplished.

Prof. squared will return from their Disney Cruise tomorrow. Today I will go shine up their house and make sure they're organized for school. Girl Prof called from the ship to tell me she had her first day of morning sickness. We are a sick and twisted family... this is the kind of news that makes us jump up and down cheering and clapping.

Brain Dead

2006-08-18T07:47:00.000-04:00

Friday has arrived, deadline day. Less frantic than some weeks, I mailed off my last story about 1:00 this morning. Phew.

This is the pond at Blue Rock Station. So many beautiful places around here. It was intended to be part of a formal English garden, but it won't hold more water than your average wetland. The owners were disappointed, but I still think it's beautiful and it attracks cranes.

I honestly have no idea what I need to do today. I've consulted the day planner, my essential guide and record keeper. It does have writing on today's date, so I assume I'm supposed to be somewhere doing something... but it's not registering. Brain dead.

Where I'd like to be is in a luxurious tree house. Today would be a great day to lounge on silk and velvet pillows, with the Jeffery Deaver book I'm halfway through, a little Annie Lennox music in the background, and a box of See's candy close at hand. A gentle breeze with just a hint of fall in it blowing through the windows... that would be a day.

If Its Thursday I Must Be in Winnepeg

2006-08-17T07:49:00.000-04:00

The ghostly Fruma Sarah from the Zanesville Community Theater's production of Fiddler on the Roof. She actually flew down from the ceiling and hovered above the floor, very cool for Community Theater, those folks rock over there!

What a chaotic week. My Friday deadline looms for the paper and there just hasn't been much to write about this week. It's getting harder to keep all these plates spinning. I'd really like to simplify my life, but for some reason, I just can't seem to give up food... or electricity.

I've had a strange kind of life, full of ups and downs. Sometimes we made enough money to live within our means, sometimes we didn't, sometimes there was even a little extra to toss in the bank. I was thinking this morning of the worst of the years and what I really missed when we were poor. Stupid things really: keeping my make-up stocked, perfume, pizza night, books that I owned rather than borrowed. I can't decide if that makes me superficial or really easy to please.

Leaving... Piece by Piece

2006-08-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

The Old Scot has had a stroke. He's been losing little bits and pieces of life for several years. A heart attack, bi-pass surgery, diabetes, loss of a toe from diabetes, another bi-pass... breaking down like an old car. My natural mother left the earth in much the same way. One part at a time, each new illness snatching away more of her quality of life until she was left with nothing but her mind, and no way to exercise it.

There are better ways to write the last chapter of a life. I love to hear "she passed away peacefully in her sleep". That's a good way. Dignity is such an important commodity to everyone, how awful to have it stripped away after you've spent so many years to earn it. But that is the luck of the draw. I've often wondered what I would do if diagnosed with some life threatening disease or illness. We'd all like to think we'd be brave and stoic. I suspect at the first diagnoses I'll have a melt down and people will spend the next few months trying to stop me from throwing myself in front of bus. I've been brave and stoic most of my life, I'm due a little bit of drama queen behavior.

My assistant goes on vacation next week which means I must actually make it to the office every day, all day. That could definately be problematic. In the good news department... Princess has been invited to the Marine Ball in November. She's positively aflutter with plotting and planning.

Writers Don't Clean House

2006-08-14T07:22:00.000-04:00

Big ole Ophelia sleeping off an attack by Isobel. Do you see the dip in the chair under her? When she hops down, the dip remains, and no amount of fluffing will poof it back out. How do you put a twenty pound cat on a diet?

Big week coming up. Final edits are due back from Sandra Ruttan, which means her book Suspicious Circumstances will be making its way through the process to the bookshelf.

Interviews for the paper include a weaver, a wholesale pottery company and a new center opened up in a house that was likely part of the underground railroad. I'm still finishing up the agenda and program for the Pen & Quill Writers which meet this week. Still working on a line edit off the submissions list. There's a grant to finish, an insurance problem to fix, three reports to write and a huge pile of mail to be answered at the day job. My novel still languishes in a drawer waiting for a spare moment for editing. But bigger problems loom...

The puffs of dust that pop up every time we sit on a piece of furniture was one clue that the housework has been sadly neglected of late. I might have noticed that the library carpet has enough cat hair on it to make another carpet. Grandgirls comment "don't ya think it's time to work in the garden? I can't even see my pine tree!" did nibble at my conscious about the fact that things are getting just a bit ratty around the edges around this place. But, it wasn't until I got up this morning and realized I have no clean towels or underware that my inner Martha Stewart broke through her bonds and forced me to admit that we are currently living in a swamp.

I need a wife.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2006-08-13T09:21:00.000-04:00

Last week I had lunch with a friend who has just quit her job to write full time. She's single and self-supporting... how brave to step off this way to pursue a dream. To pursue happiness, our right as American's.

It is an illusive thing, this state of being: happy. I had always thought I was happy. I was able to laugh and joke with family and friends. That's happy isn't it? I never locked myself in the bathroom to cry, or carried around a prescription for Zoloft. I must have been happy. Whatever frustration and discontent I felt was credited to life. I've always been a "seek the silver lining" kind of girl, and wandered the earth in my chosen role: Happy Person. I played this part long enough to forget it was an act, to lose sight of the fact that I had become a bit player in a huge cast and instead of seeking happiness through change I was settling for a make believe emotion.

Princess was about 11 when I remembered what real "happy" felt like. It was a simple thing, we'd taken her and Soup to Kings Island, the first time I'd been to an amusement park without the burden of a couple of toddlers, a kid in a stroller and afternoons on a bench while Pap rode rides with the older kids. On this day we'd paired up boys against the girls, determined to ride everything at least once. We started on the beast, Pap and Soup somewhere in the back, me and Princess in front. No cares in that moment except surviving the first big roller coaster I'd been on ... well ever. They were much smaller and tamer pre-kids. The car crept up the first hump, the sound of grinding, straining gears loud in my ears. We topped the hill and sailed into the descent so fast the scrunchee on my ponytail flew off. I looked over at Princess, her hair also loose and flying wild. She had her hands in the air and was screaming "whoo hoo! Wheeee", and in that moment, recklessly caroming around a man made contraption of steel and fiberglass, my daughter by my side, nothing to clean, fix, tend or worry about atleast right then, I felt it. Happy.

"There it is... that's what it feels like." I remember thinking. Life for my family has never been the same. That was eight years ago. I've tried many things in this pursuit of happiness, and I think I'm finally honing in on my personal recipe. The evidence is there... I wake up at dawn every morning instead of hitting the snooze button. My first thought is "what do I get to do today?". I'm interested once more in everyone and everything. There is still the day job, but the finish line on that piece of misery is in sight. I'm actively pursuing happiness.

A Friday Fantasy Come True!

2006-08-12T07:54:00.000-04:00

What a nice start to the weekend, Clay Guy and I zoomed off t0 the big city to shop at Barnes and Noble with someone elses money... now THAT is fantasy fun!. We were in search of magazines for my writers group, the "read a copy before you submit" step of sending in their articles for publication. I love bookstores and libraries. If by some fluke of nature I ever get rich, that is what I'll do with my money, I'll build a bookstore here in rural America. A hang out bookstore.

Life Inside a Hurricane

2006-08-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what this dog did to irritate the horse so badly, but I bet the horse won. Somedays are like that, no matter what you do, some big fat horse is trying to kick you in the head.

Yesterday I managed to completely forget a social engagement with Library Lo, despite the fact that this week is slim on interviews. Today I had to fight with the computer on the day job. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday.

Another scary day world wise with more terrorists trying to blow up planes. Sometimes, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

She Just Looks Innocent

2006-08-09T20:50:00.000-04:00

This pesky cat is due for a good spanking. She won't use the litter box, but she will use the box of litter. She eats the dog's food. She dug all the dirt out of one of my flower pots, onto the side table. She sneak attacks Ophelia who is too old and fat to get even in a timely manner. Isobel sleeps on my printer and chases the mouse messing up my writing time. I really would spank her if I thought that would help, but because of her daily wrestling matches with Ruger, she's a rugged little girl and she'd probably like a beating. Just what I need, something else that malfunctions in this house.

Everyone Stand Up, Take Three Steps Left

2006-08-08T07:08:00.000-04:00

Desperately seeking my happy place.... This picture was taken by my friend Dale Hague at Blue Rock Station. A lovely diversion from the very ugly oil industry, and the even uglier state of world events.

BP with holes in their pipes sending gas prices soaring. 700 million gallons in oil reserve controlled by the government. The same government that spends thousands of dollars on parts the rest of us can acquire for tens of dollars. War in Lebanon, War in Iraq. Global warming.... these are the reasons I hate watching the news. But it's like a car wreck, you can't help yourself from gawking at the damage.

Perhaps it's a result of my visit to Blue Rock Station yesterday, maybe just the natural wisening of getting older. But whatever, I feel like it's not enough to just recycle the aluminum cans any more. The principles of a sustainable lifestyle, which once seemed radical and ridiculous, are now making perfect sense. I'm thinking of what kind of world my grandchildren are coming into, and the responsibility I have to be a good steward of my little corner of it. Global warming is a very real phenomenon, we see evidence of it here in my small town. In a place that was once under snow from November through February, we're lucky to see a few inches a year. The pond in the park used to freeze hard enough for hoards of people to skate on it. It hasn't even had a crust of ice for the fifteen years I've lived here.

Handicapped by a childhood filled with excess, an adulthood of more of the same, creating change around the house of perpetual remodeling will not be easy.

2006-08-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

Isn't that a handsome rooster among all those adoring chickens? I met some interesting people today on my trip to Blue Rock Station. Stewards of our natural resources. They were once executives who traveled the world and could have settled anywhere, but chose instead to come home, back to Ohio. Their house is known as an earthship, built of discarded tires and old cans and then covered adobe style with our regions natural clay, it is a marvel of energy efficiency. But that wasn't what I found coolest about the trip today. It was such a joy to see two people pursuing their interests in everything from nearly extinct chickens, to heirloom gardening to recycling of everything from barn wood to tin cans.

This Cartoon Life

2006-08-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

I have come to the conclusion that I'm absolutely living the life I'm supposed to have. The universe has been forbidden to bestow on me any shred of ordinary, much less good luck. Take yesterday for example....

Yesterday, before the family reunion, the prof squared dropped by the house with a present for me. Odd, I don't generally get presents except on holidays, but hey, that's exciting! I opened it up to find two positive pregnancy tests - that's REALLY exciting. My daughter has been longing for a baby of her own for several years. Boy prof. has been married before and thought he didn't want more kids than the two he had from that marriage. Drama, a trip to Iraq, more drama and he changed his mind and had the necessary surgery to try for more kids. They are both excellent parents so this is the greatest news ever. I jumped from my chair screaming to cross the room and hug girl prof. tripped over my briefcase and sprained my ankle. Princess found this vastly amusing, the sound of her laughter followed me all around the hospital as we traipsed from waiting room to examing room to x-ray room. Just to make sure EVERYONE found it as funny as she did, she made Pap, still with one leg in a cast, push my wheelchair. She wanted to be sure she had her hands free to wipe the tears of laughter you see.

So, I'm on crutches, Pap is in a walking cast and Princess is still recovering from her back injury from the car crash and can't lift anything heavier than 5 pounds. We're officially on the family plan at the hospital and we're relying on the cats to keep us fed since none of us can stand on the tile floor for more than two minutes at a time. Jeesh.

Things Seen

2006-08-05T10:32:00.000-04:00

This is a photograph by composer Charles Savage, called "The Invisible Man". Simple, but I really like it. He's an interesting guy, teaches at OUZ, writes music (not top 40, modern classical) leads a chorus and takes pictures. This isn't the kind of guy you'd call "Chuck".

Last night was First Friday in Zanesville, a monthly art walk downtown. I met some new people, had some fun with grand girls mom and my friend Tess and scheduled an interview with an artist who paints with asphalt.

I know! It sounds bizarre doesn't it? Gigantic canvanses, mostly in shades of black, cream and white. They are weighty pieces. In a room smaller than the gallery I saw them in, they would command your attention, dominate your thoughts, suck the air from the room. There are textures on these paintings we aren't used to seeing, the result, I'm sure, of a chemical reaction between something industrial like asphalt and whatever else he's painting with. I liked them very much, unlike most abstract art, I could immediately see figures, faces, structures and landscapes on the canvas. But they made me feel lonely. Like looking back at a black and white picture of someone you once really loved but was gone forever. I'm looking forward to our interview.

For me, each new week begins on Saturday. So, today is the first day of a new week. It is my hope that this new week will be better than last. So much stress! The drama over a mistake in my article on Linda (all is well, my editor isn't upset, her husband said "that was a beautiful piece you wrote on my wife" which leads me to believe that the artist is also not mad at me). Family reunion today, also known (at least to me) as the clan gathering in the boondocks. Still editing that children's book and awaiting the return of Sandra's book, Susicious Circumstances, for the race to publication. No matter how hectic this week is, I'm going to carve out time to revise Pitch. Enough dallying. Time to get busy.

The Friday Fantasy

2006-08-04T07:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I interviewed the Director of the local art museum about a story on an exhibit they are about to open called The Essence of a Thing. As I made my way through the museum to the third floor where the Director was assembling the exhibit, everyone from the volunteer at the front desk, to the museum curator to the workers putting up the exhibit, looked me in the eye and said "It's very different" (wink, wink). And it was. Fortunately, I like different, maybe not to plop on the bookcase or hang over the fireplace, but definately to take a gander at.

It is days like yesterday that rustle up all kinds of fantasies for me. It was hot, so I toddled from interview to interview in a sticky ball of sweat. I'm so paranoid about fact checking I wasted several hours tracking down the original source of one of my stories so he could verify "yes, I absolutely said that..." By five o'clock I wanted a bath, a nap, and silence. Princess had other ideas. She wanted to make sure I understood how annoying my low self esteem was to her and then have a little talk about my two bad habits. I suggested that a chat probably wasn't the best idea right then, which further annoyed her and at least got me my silence. Hot, harried and harrassed, born from in inate sense of laziness and the desire to never do anything I don't want to do, for this week's fantasy, I would like a Nanny.

Not a Nanny like Mary Poppins or those ones on TV that are all buttoned up and into rules. I am a grown up after all, I want the kind of Nanny that lays out my clothes, fixes my hair and make up, cleans up after me, and knows exactly what I want to eat at any moment. She'll need impeccable taste, and a flair for dramatic decorating. Nanny will redecorate my house (like fairies in the night, you understand, I don't want to see the redecorating) every couple of months. I like change. She needs to like all the same books, music and movies that I do, and be into gardening so she can finish all the projects I start. She'll remember everyone's birthdays and anniversarys, pay all the bills, balance my checkbook.... best of all, she will like doing all this stuff and think I'm wonderful for letting her do it.

So much for fantasy.

Too Hot for Anything

2006-08-02T16:25:00.000-04:00

Even poor old Ophelia has given up being dignified in this heat. It's hot, in the high 90's for several days in a row. I don't mind, being warm is so preferable to being cold.

My weekly deadline draws closer and I have only one article submitted this week. Since yesterdays complaint, I'm driving myself crazy fact checkin my second story to death. This Friday is First Friday, I'm hoping there will be no drama when I show up at the Artists Colony. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow and get it over with if there is.

Did you hear about the waitress in Miami who's wallet was stolen? She's serving a table one night and has to card one of the woman at the table. The I.D. the customer pulls out belongs to the waitress! Murphy's Law in action. These kinds of things are why I'm not a thief. It wouldn't matter how carefully I plotted or planned, if I tried to steal something I'd get caught.

Toughening Up

2006-08-01T18:50:00.000-04:00

Today I remembered why I never wanted to be a journalist. I started the morning by interviewing two partners of a pottery company literally resurrected from the dead. Sounds cool, happy story, people are working, woo-hoo. But then I looked at the nine pages of notes I took and theres so much information I don't know which 800 words to yank out and feature.

While I'm trying to decipher this I'm waiting on return phone calls from two experts who's quotes I need to finish my second article on the real estate market. I take a few minutes to check my e-mail and there are five are six letters from my editor, a flurry of forwarded correspondence between the editor in chief and someone who claims one fact in one story from last weeks issue is incorrect. I write back that my notes say exactly what I wrote, but they might as well have kicked me in the gut.

Complaining party, who would definately know whether that ONE fact was true or not, verifies he's right, Editor in Chief says "gee, sometimes we mess up" and it's supposed to be done. I'm horrified, and bothered. If it was me that misread my notes the subject of my interview will be angry. If interviewee stretched the truth, I'm a chump because I didn't double check her associations. Ultimately, I realize its a tempest in a teapot, but now I'm second guessing everything I write, sucking the fun right out of it, at least for today. So I took a nap, and would probably still be sleeping if grand girls mom hadn't called to talk long enough to kill my phone. Ugh.

Pap was hauled off to a baseball game today by his progeny. Baseball is his favorite thing. With the exception of yesterday, he's done nothing but clutter up the living room, his cast his excuse for being unable to contribute in any way to the care and maintenance of this house. I'd whine about this more but I'm really happy for the alone time. Which should be used to finish this pottery article, but will more than likely be spent reading in the tub.

Creative Sentencing

2006-07-31T07:18:00.000-04:00

I recently read a news article about a handful of judges throughout the country who have dragged out some common sense and are handing out punishments that fit the crime. For instance: a woman who pretended to be a Hurricane Katrina victim in order to get free rent, sentenced to clean houses. The article went on to say that Judges are skittish about doing this because of criticism from the public. The general population is most comfortable with seeing criminals, so matter how minor their crime, warehoused in prison. No matter how much it costs them.

I find this public attitude very frustrating. We have staggering numbers of repeat offenders, proving that prison doesn't work. Anyone that has raised kids knows that grounding doesn't work. Incarceration at any level is nothing more than a temporary fix. Murderers, rapists, the extremely violent - they belong in prison. But so many other criminals would actually be rehabilitated with a different kind of punishment.

When my kids were young, there was a pack of teenagers who cut all the Christmas lights on our street as a prank. My kids were little and this scared and upset them. The boys were caught and punished, I think they had to write an essay to the judge or something. The following Halloween the same group broke every jack-o-lantern on the street. Hmmm... I guess they didn't learn much from that essay. For cutting Christmas lights I think the punishment should have been to replace and hang every string plus some hours volunteering at a soup kitchen. At the time I wanted them assigned to community service- at my house. I had this really nasty garage that could have used the attention of such ambitious young men.

The judicial system isn't the only thing broken around here. When the illegals were picketing, and all of Washington was worrying about who would do those menial jobs the illegal aliens do if they should all go home, I wanted to scream at the TV. When did we become such a mamby-pamby, woosy, prima donna society? And if we have so many jobs that no American will do, why do we still have welfare? I have a simple plan for fixing just this type of thing:

Step 1: Deport all illegal aliens. This will free up a bunch of jobs.
Step 2: Institute a country wide flat tax in lieu of the federal income tax in place now. This will result in the loss of many IRS jobs, those people can go fill the spots once filled by the illegal aliens.

The added bonus to this plan is that a flat tax would generate enough money to pay off the national debt in very short order. Seems simple enough to me.

July Updates

2006-07-30T09:49:00.000-04:00

This is Miss O'Hara, the Terra Cotta Vineyard cat. She checks things out on the dining pavilion before the people arrive. Must have recognized a kindred spirit to have made an appearance while we were there.

July has raced by like a hurricane, my body has made it to the end of the month, but I think my mind is still back there somewhere around the 4th.

Tico: Final editing requests have been sent to Sandra for suspicious Circumstances and Theresa's book, Last, is off being formatted. The cover is done. The submissions list is still closed, several reviewers are having a little summer break. One full edit and review sitting on my desk, with one review to mail back.
Newspapers: Three articles published, three in the can for the next issue, leads for this week in hand and with the changing season, I'm not worried about having leads for the coming months. Vase articles, two sent, one ready to be written and pictures of five to be written.
Books: Willow needs a synopsis and mailed out, Pitch needs rewrites, Million and Ambassador are languishing about in my overstuffed head. Miserable failure this month in regard to them.
Day Job: Hopelessly behind, somebody drug me from 8-4 and put me out of my misery.

The family is in a muddle as usual. Pap still in a cast from a blister... jeez. Princess is still having trouble with her back from the car accident, she has an appointment with the doctor next week.
Grandgirls Mom has returned to the East for the weekend, but seems to be doing well with Bean. Soup and the Prof Squared are busy as usual. The garden is a mess, the house is a mess and I will fail weigh-in today. Beans curtains are done, her bedspread and throw pillows are not. I was too busy to even post on Friday, which means I missed the Friday Fantasy... Unacceptable, this week I will be the Sunday Somnambulist: too easy, a fleet of personal assistants.

A Vase and A Ramble

2006-07-29T17:48:00.000-04:00

This vase lives on the bridge in my small town. It's a painting of the old train station. That old train was the difference between a town eeking out it's own survival and a town that was able to thrive through the income derived from shipping out the pottery and coal produced here. We need the contemporary equivalent of a "means to sell our ware". Most of the potteries have closed down, the one or two left are struggling.

The first of my articles came out in Our Town this week, two of them made the front page. The vase articles are on the front page of the other paper, and Thursday I had an offer from another paper. This should make me happy, it's paid writing work despite the fact that my background isn't in journalism. It's not that I'm unhappy, any kind of validation regarding whether my writing is marketable or not is always welcome. The tear sheets are invaluable, the people that read the articles and start recognizing my name - very important. But, I'm mourning the loss of time I usually use on one of the novels. One of them languishing in a drawer, waiting to get sent out, one that needs editing, two with a fledling start, the characters bound and gagged so they won't harrass me while I write for money for awhile. I'm reminded again, to be careful what I wish for....

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

2006-07-27T07:59:00.001-04:00

Isn't that just a stunning view? It's from the upper dining pavilion at the Terra Cotta Vinyard. We've been taking advantage of their steak bake nights for a couple of years and now our favorite winery just won a gold medal for one of their red wines. Well deserved, I've certainly ingested enough of it to vouch for its excellence!

It always makes me laugh when I tell people I'm originally from California and they look at me like I'm some kind of nut for leaving. "But it's so beautiful there!" they gasp. I want to say "have you looked in your back yard lately? It's beautiful in Ohio too!" The drive to the vinyard is just breathtaking, four miles from the highway through rolling green hills and lush trees. I can't imagine there's any other place on earth more beautiful.

A little rant is necessary today. My printer just died, as always at the most inconvenient time. I toddled down to the local Staples store to replace it and found the newest way the technology industry has found to fleece the people. The last time I bought a printer, they were expensive. But they ran like mules for several years. Now you can get a printer that copies, prints, scans, e-mails and remembers your birthday for under $100. They get you with the ink, $64 a set. Jeez.

Hump Day Hooray!

2006-07-26T07:44:00.000-04:00

The artist calls this vase "redwinged black birds". It's on the loading dock at the Appalachian Potters Guild. In person, that yellow part is shiny gold, beautiful.

The schedule says dinner at the Terra Cotta vinyard tonight. Always a good day when someone else is cooking for me!

Someone to Watch Over Me

2006-07-25T15:34:00.000-04:00

Today is one of those days when I need a babysitter more than my grandgirls. It started by waking up two hours earlier than I usually do. Thrilled at first with the extra hours added to my day, I turned off the alarm so it wouldn’t wake the dog when it went off at its usual time, and trotted downstairs to attempt to get some things done.

Attempt is the operative word here. The clothes I wanted to fold from the dryer were still wet. Pap was asleep in the library so I couldn’t dust or vacuum. The cats were asleep on the newspapers I needed to take out for recycling and my computer was not booting up in any way that could be considered even remotely acceptable. Frustrated I decided to go take a bath. Big mistake, the combination of quiet and warm reminded me that I was up two hours before I needed to be. One minute I was reading a book, the next my neck was breaking and the book was floating cover up in the vicinity of my feet. I crawled back upstairs and went to bed, forgetting all about the alarm.

Totally disoriented from waking up late, it took me three trips back to the house before I could get on the road to my day job. First I forgot my keys. When I went into the house to get the keys I left my purse laying on a chair and had to go back and get it. I finally started the car, looked in the mirror to back up and saw my hair sticking out in every possible wild snarly direction. Once I got to work I had to circle the building twice to find a parking space, court today. There was a stack of “reminder” notes on my desk from my assistant, a list of e-mails from the editor of one of the papers I write for with “suggested changes” and the MAN that hired our current webmasters informed me that it was MY job to fire them. I refuse to even attempt to guess at how he came to this conclusion, I’m sure it is a result of his lack of a backbone.

Lunch was no better. The invalids are so sick of each others company the animosity is running off them like sweat. Pap made sloppy joes for lunch (nothing even resembling my list of favorite things to eat), so I choked one down in between sympathetic clucking to whichever invalid was crying the blues in the same room I was in. Princess got that wild eyed, frantic look in her eyes when I got ready to go back to work and begged me to stay. So sad, she hasn’t done that since she was four and used to cling to my leg to keep me from going to work… it worked back then.

It’s not yet mid afternoon but I’m considering going back home and straight to bed. The final straw to this crazy day was catching sight of my feet. One in a white flip flop and one in a black flip flop.

Mucky Mondays

2006-07-24T13:33:00.000-04:00

You talkin' to me?

Photo by Waldo of this crazy duck that decided to pose for his camera. Which has no relevance to the following post, but the duck is just so darn cute!

One of the front page stories in the paper today was about the loss of funding our local ceramic museum is preparing to face. I hate to be a know-it-all (big lie, I love being right) but I remember saying to a board member back when the college took over the museum from the historical society "What would a college want with a museum? What they want is the land, but they'll play nice and be such a subtle roadblock it will look as if the museum failed on it's own." Well... here we are and the most telling line in that article was that funds were available, but the college was not going to apply for them. Sad, any time you lose art and culture it weakens your community and emotionally bankrupts your people. What will be next? The library?

Princess has still not recovered from the mac truck hitting her little car. She's having trouble with her back and has been to the doctor three times in a week. She can't lift anything, Pap's in a cast for his blister.... and still not out of the dog house. I'm in invalid hell. I think the Prof. squared will have to do without my assistance this week, I have literally run out of time to do one more thing. Grandgirls mom is behaving over at Bean's. Maybe I'm wrong this time, maybe she's seen the light and will actually straighten up her life. We can only hope.

Concert on the Lawn

2006-07-23T07:41:00.000-04:00

Clay Guy in the studio with some of the big vases ready to ship out to artists. He's over six foot tall... these are BIG vases. I just love this project, I'll be boring you with pictures as it develops for some time! In his defense, I made CG stop his work (mixing slip this day, a very messy job) so I could take the picture. He doesn't normally walk around in dirty shirts. (There, are you happy now CG?)

Library Lo and I escaped for a little fun at the Lancaster Festival yesterday. I've lived here for fifteen years, and I can't believe I've never heard of this festival. It's nine days long, a celebration of arts of every kind. Our purpose was to see the Saturday night concert, this day featuring The Pointer Sisters.

It was a perfect night, clear and cool. Seating is on the lawn (unless you're a Hurst or a Gates and can afford one of the tables in front of the stage... looked crowded and uncomfortable to me, I'm glad I'm poor). We toted our lawn chairs up to a spot in the chair section, carefully selected based on it's view of the stage and proximity to the porta pottys (me and Lo can't afford to be very far from facilities). The concert opened with an hour of music by the festival orchestra followed by The Pointer Sisters and ending with one of the most phenomenal fireworks displays I've seen, straight over the top of us. Breathtaking with the orchestra playing in the background.

Some things that caught my eye during the concert... little girls spontaneously dancing in the aisle when the orchestra played, the sullen teenagers next to us who couldn't keep their foot from tapping during Neutron Dance, the elderly couple doing a vintage swing dance (at half speed) on the bridge and the overall great behavior of the hundreds of children attending this concert of music that was probably as alien to them as the outer banks of Mongolia. It's important to expose kids to all kinds of music, all kinds of art. They aren't competent to make their own way from birth to 18, parents need to take the reigns because our next great composer or artist won't come into the world knowing that's what they are. We have to show them.

Grandgirls

2006-07-22T06:53:00.000-04:00

Grandgirls reunited. Now that all three of them are back in the same area, perhaps that little one in the middle will get a taste of normal life. When the other two were rescued with the help of their Dad, I started a short story I will probably never finish. Fictionalized sufficiently to protect their identies, and clean up the lack of flow that is real life, but the facts are true. We have to do better regarding our nation's children. Children's Services is broken. I'm sure the employees of this department are kind, caring people overloaded with too much work, but we can't continue to ignore the problem we have to fix it. The story is here to get it off my hard drive.

The call came at three in the morning, like these calls always do. That time of night when you’re deep into the subconscious fairy tale of your wildest dreams. So far from the natural world that waking to the ring of the telephone is like kicking up from the bottom of the cistern through sand.
“I can’t understand... you’ve got to slow down.”
I can tell from my husband’s voice that it’s our oldest daughter. The mother of our grand girls, our lost child.
“Yes, we’re coming. Pack a bag. Give me the room number.”
I hear him fumbling for a pen and paper, knocking over the cup of water we keep on the night table, his bottle of pills, and my glasses. I know I should be leaping from the warm cocoon of our bed, throwing on clothes, racing to the rescue of my, our, child and her progeny. That’s what good mothers do; at least that’s what they do on the Hallmark channel. But my heart rebels at seeing her, again, wallowing in squalor. Drunk, high or beaten, those are the only reasons she calls, and always at three in the morning.
Mack drives and I’m supposed to navigate as we pull out onto the highway for a three hour drive to her latest location. We share the road with bored policemen and the occasional truck, not enough traffic to keep us alert to the various twists and turns of our route, too much traffic to talk about the continuing drama that is our oldest daughter. Mack finds a talk show on the radio, relieving me of the duty of providing conversation to keep him awake. Left to my own thoughts, they turn as always to what went wrong.
We named her Julianne, a moniker that rustles up the vision of blonde sausage curls adorned with fat satin bows, and white socks ruffling over patent leather shoes. For much of her life, she fit her name, despite her sleek auburn hair and aborhorance of anything too girly. She was a precocious toddler rattling off nursery rhymes, a witty grade schooler entertaining her classmates with observations of their teachers, and then she went to middle school. Julianne tried many things. Softball, band, the student paper, she never seemed to excel at any of these endeavors, and spent most of Junior High and High School blaming her peers, her teachers, and me for her lack of success. As her younger siblings followed her to high school, each shining in one thing or another, we helplessly watched her searching for her niche. By the time she started dating at 16, she’d changed her name to Jules, and taught herself to lie successfully.
Mack pulls into a gas station to check the map and stretch his legs. In the dim light of this early morning, he looks like the young man I married as he trots across the parking lot to get us coffee. I imagine that under his baseball cap his hair is still lush and dark brown, his chest is still broad and tanned instead of scared by heart surgery. Laying my head back on the seat I close my eyes and pretend this trip will end at the crystal blue lake of our honeymoon. Long lazy days walking through shady woods or rocking gently on the bow of our rented boat, hip to hip, hands entwined under the blazing sun.
“You okay Sarah? Ready to roll?”
I assure him I’m fine. We pull back out onto the highway and I wish I would have paid more attention to life back when we were young and beautiful. Maybe we would have noticed what we were doing wrong with Julianne.
We reach the city during the peak of morning rush hour. Mack finds a new radio station and hums with the music as we creep along in the bumper to bumper traffic. I think about the things I know to be true: Christmas is my favorite time of year, it always rains on Mother’s Day, Mack loves Sarah, and Sarah loves Julianne, Wendy, Beth, Ben and Amy. We met on April fool’s day, were married by the fourth of July and had Julianne on our first anniversary. There were money problems, sexual issues, growing pains of every kind over our thirty years of marriage and the birth of five kids. We bickered about housework, cars, yard work and television shows. But the only thing we ever fought long and bitterly over was Julianne. It is only because Mack loves me that we’re making this trip today.
We idle in traffic next to a billboard admonishing against the evils of child abuse. One eight hundred save a child or some such nonsense. I know that the system is broken. We’ve tried to work within it. We’ve seen that in a system overcrowded with abused children, those that are only neglected are not the priority of Children’s Services or the police. Shining stars, like my grand girls, can be reared like wolves with nothing more than a lecture from the authorities. That is the American tragedy, these damaged children that will someday rule the world. I wonder what kind of adults they’ll become. If a Julianne can emerge from a home more full of love and laughter than grief, what will happen to these children jaded by life before they’ve reached puberty?
“There’s the exit, Sarah, help me look for an opening so I can get over there.”
Mack pulls across two lanes of traffic ignoring the honking horns and angry gestures from the drivers he cuts in front of to get to his exit. I close my eyes and will myself not to grab the dash, not to stomp on the imaginary brake on the passenger’s side. He’s driven all this way because he thinks it’s what I want. He thinks I still have the power to straighten her up, my, our daughter.
Julianne is sitting on the curb in front of the motel room. Head in hands, I can’t tell right away if her eye is black or her lip is swollen. It dawns on me in that moment, that I didn’t even ask Mack why we were driving halfway across the state, what was our mission now that we were here? Mack turns into a parking space and turns off the car. He sighs as he drops his hands to his side, a lost, forlorn sigh that breaks my heart and makes me long to pull his head down into my lap and rub his back until he falls asleep. The moment is broken by the sight of Jet and Arial, peeking out the door behind their mother.
I feel abnormally happy when Julianne stands up. Her face is unmarked and she’s nearly as wide as she is tall. The weight gain is a sign she’s not using to me. Her crack days kept her jittery and thin as a willow branch, with sores and scrapes all over her body. She’s dressed in her work clothes. Julianne works at a neighborhood bar and grill, her plastic name tag is stamped “Jules, Everybody’s Baby Girl”, and I wonder what exactly that means. Her hair is a tangled mess, trapped in a scrunchy to get it off her face, she’s not wearing make-up, or fidgeting or talking ninety miles a minutes.
Mack grabs my arm as I start to get out of the car.
“She wants us to take Jet and Arial for awhile, until she gets on her feet. Honey, I know the burden will be on you, but I can’t leave them here again.”
“What about the baby?” I ask him. My spirits fall when I see him shake his head no.
The seedy hotel room is a disaster. Empty beer bottles, moldering pizza boxes, clothes, toys and dirty diapers cover every surface. In one bed the latest of Julianne’s bums feigns sleep, in the other, the baby, Daisy, is sleeping fitfully in a tangle of dirty sheets.

Ramble and Fantasy

2006-07-21T07:23:00.000-04:00

I kinda like this new life of mine. Being Friday, I don't go to the day job (reason for celebration in itself), but spend the morning interviewing interesting people instead. I have a 5:00 deadline for any stories, and this week that's no sweat because two of my three are already submitted, the third needs a quote from todays interview and it will be gone... the fact that I can't imagine this schedule ever getting boring, talk in the mornings, write in the afternoon, leads me to today's Friday Fantasy:
I would like to tear down my house and replace it with a grown up sized, multi-level, tree house. It will require the instant appearance of a very large tree, but heck, it is a fantasy. One of these levels needs to have a swimming pool, I really need some exercise and that's my favorite kind. I'll save the top for my studio. From there I'll have an excellent view of town and the surrouding hillsides. Exit from the tree house will be by zip line, inside there will be no stairs, just escalators from floor to floor. I'll need a cook, driver and gardener, anyone want to volunteer for the job?

The picture is of Ophelia in a full out pout. Princesses little kitten is getting bigger by the day and now it's ON between those two. Since this day is a full out ramble... I must mention some very nice comments that arrived from Anonymous: thank you for dropping by, if you'll leave your name next time I will happily return the visit!

mad,Mad, MAD!

2006-07-20T12:42:00.000-04:00

Have you seen the news today? Desperately seeking my happy place! This picture also by my talented friend Waldo. Unfortunately, it's not helping!

The news... homeland security people use their government issued credit cards to swindle the American public after hurricane Katrina. It's just making me sick. Big screen TVs, paying double for rescue boats and then half of them unable to be found, a beer making kit, a warehouse full of dog booties. The list just goes on and on, and the real question is WHY?

This makes me crazy on a number of different levels.

I'm a small town treasurer. We have 22 employees (not counting the lifeguards in the summer). According to state law, in order to purchase a lightbulb it requires a form documenting what is to be purchased, who from and for how much. This must be signed by me and the administrator. The form is then assigned a purchase order number and the light bulb can be purchased. Once the invoice arrives, the information is put on a list that must be approved by a six man council before the item can be paid for. Tedious, yes. But there has never been so much as a missapropriated penny in this village.

In 2004 my small town flooded. We lost everything on the first floor of the municipal building. The safe and it's contents, file cabinets full of documents, computers, police radios.... it was terrible, and even that wasn't half as bad as what the residents were suffering with the same amount of water in their houses. Eventually FEMA came down to help us sort things out. We lost nearly $400,000 worth of equipment. In order for FEMA to replace anything, we had to have three quotes for replacement, a report from a professional saying it had to be replaced rather than repaird, a request form, a picture and full description of the item. From the initial request for the next eighteen months I had to file a report saying we had the item. Tedious? Oh yes. Also unneccessary.

But handing out 25,000 credit cards willy-nilly is just ridiculous. I've always said if you throw temptation into the face of even the most honest people, they will eventually give in. We need new government leaders, we need to revamp these crazy agencies. Anything with a title so long its better known by its initials must be overhauled and streamlined. Clear Congress, Clear the Senate, clear anyone in government from the President on down and let's start over.

I Need A Navigator

2006-07-19T23:08:00.000-04:00

Ruger and I are two grumpy travelers. I must remember for the future that when Dark Daddy says "left" he means "right". Thank goodness nobody was bleeding or unconscious... they'd have died before I ever arrived.

It was my intent to skip out of the day job an hour early, which I did. I was then going to drive thirty five minutes from home for a visit with two of my dearest, oldest friends. Two hours later, after I'd toured the same stretch of road four times, and had a pay phone steal the last two dollars I had in my wallet, I gave up and headed home for my writers meeting. I hadn't been in the house five minutes before Pap explained this error in my navigation (left rather than right). Just to aggravate matters more, he added "from that pay phone you could probably see his house." Has no one explained what a precarious position this man is already in without adding that??? Jeesh.

The first stories for my new job are due by Friday. I have interviewed, researched and written the three I plan to send in. In fact, two were finished by last Saturday, edited, polished and ready to go. But I just couldn't send them. I've spent the last several days imagining that the minute I hit "send", the stories would come flying back from my editor saying she'd made a mistake hiring me, every word was crap. I spent two days reading an old edition of the paper and agonizing over whether my writing was better or worse than what they already had. With time ticking away, I changed the title of my favorite story four times. Finally, today, Clay Guy says the equivalent of "just send them for Pete's sake!" So at lunch, I sent one. At two I checked my e-mail and there were three letters from my editor. My fears had to be confirmed, my writing was so bad she had to tell me three times! One would be "your writing's crap", the next would be "who do you think you are pretending to be a writer" the last would be firing me before I'd ever seen my by-line on a newspaper.

I opened the first one and there was just one line: "I have only one word to say...AWESOME". The other two were asking if I'd sent pictures, and then apologizing because she failed to see the line where I told her I'd sent pictures. I also had a letter from the graphics guy saying my pictures were good! That was just a lie though, I'm a terrible photographer, I need my sister-niece to come be my partner. She not only takes great pictures, she can also write. We could start our own newspaper. I can't even describe how happy this made me.

The good news is it's highly unlikely that I'll ever be an arrogant writer.

Warning - Parenthood is not for the Weak or Wimpy

2006-07-18T17:18:00.000-04:00

The most frustrating thing about parenthood is the fact that once the little darlings enter the world, you can NEVER get them off your mind. It’s like one dormant quadrant of your brain comes to life in brilliant, neon, pulsing color. We worry about them in the same way we must probe a throbbing tooth with our tongue, or pick at a scab on our knee. Parenting books should come with a warning label.

My five kids range from 19-26. for the most part, they are independent, responsible young people. Logic dictates that if you have five children and four follow a path highly acceptable to society, conduct their individual lives in a way that brings respect and honor to themselves and their family, are known to all and sundry as happy, generous, kind people, you should say you've done your parenting job well. That isn't how it works.

When only four of the five are doing well, there's another quadrant of your brain that springs to life, this one spewing steam and lava, spotlights crossing paths above it, a really mean guy yelling into a megaphone: "You've messed this one up! Come one, come all and see the disaster this couple has created!" I think I told you yesterday that the prodigal had returned home. Grandgirls mom is back and despite having spent the entire day with her, I can not figure out how she turned out the way she did. I can't figure out how her mind works, I can't decipher the truth from the lies that spew from her mouth. How do you know when T is lieing? Her mouth is moving...

My intelligent, internal woman berates me constantly for blaming myself, but when did she ever have a kid? As I recall, she was the one clamoring about "population control" back when I was wishing on every shooting star for a baby. Years of soul searching and rehashing always reveal the mistakes we made with all the kids, but "all" is the key word. There wasn't any thing we did as parents to push her into premarital sex, drugs and a tolerance for the most extreme kind of self-inflicted poverty and misguided devotion. Easy to say, but my protests are no match for that guy with the megaphone.