8 to 3

“I’m burned out,” I confided to my husband. “Day in, day out, it just never stops.”

“It’s Wednesday!” my husband exclaimed. “You’ve been at this, what? Three days?”

Last week marked the first full-time work week I’ve logged since 1990. And it’s true: I was ready to call it a week by hump day.

Now, I’m no slouch. I can put in 12 hours on a newspaper article and turn right back around looking for an angle on my next assignment. I love deadlines, quick turn-around pieces, and nailing the closing line—even if it takes all day. I love caring for children and pets, and, hey, I’m even up for teaching a class or two—provided no one’s expecting me show up more than three days a week, and certainly not before noon.

But this all-day-every-day teaching gig? I’m just not wired for it.

In my three days on the job, I learned that the “daily grind” isn’t about sipping those first two cups of coffee over email with the cats. Turns out “punching the clock” isn’t a reference to silencing your spouse’s alarm after he’s hit snooze one too many times. And “working for the weekend” is more about holding on to a distant hope than it is about writing up advance blog posts on a rainy Saturday morning.

I’ve always suspected that I wasn’t quite cut out for the gritty world of the workforce. After my part-time, private school art program fell victim to a round of budget cuts a couple years back, I flirted a bit with the classified section, but lost interest quickly upon learning that a “canvasser” doesn’t deal in art, and that job involving an invigorating “office” in the great outdoors was with the sanitation department. And then there was the firm that bolded their big selling point-- two weeks of annual leave, the implication being that they actually expect you to show all the other weeks —51 of them, by my estimate. I broke into a cold sweat and tossed the paper into the recycling bin.

Frankly, I was relieved to find an opportunity to bolster my skills through academics rather than hard labor—but it seems even academia can’t shield one from the harsh realities of the work-a-day world, as my “culminating experience” requires 10 weeks of actual, on-the-job performance.

My Catholic friends tell me that this sort of thing is really good for the soul; that discomfort and even misery are strict yet wise instructors. I’m buoyed by this thought as I ready myself each morning under the cloak of darkness and wane prematurely each evening. But these thoughts of stalwart strength and fortitude are treasured most at the end of the week as I sadly contemplate the one working man’s maxim of which I still can’t relate: “another day, another dollar.”

I may be burned out from the daily grind, but pay day for this gig is something I’ll never see on anything but my graduate transcripts.

Punxsutawney Who?

Earlier this week, word came down from Punxsutawney, PA that winter intends to loom large for another six weeks. I’m sure of this because my family considers Groundhog Day a viable holiday, doubtless because we’ve lost all hope that there’s anything else to look forward to. We sit around the living room, watching the returns come in from Punxsutawney with a fervor most Americans reserve exclusively for Election Night. We regard the Bill Murray/Andie McDowell flick celebrating same as a holiday special, anticipating the screening with the same enthusiasm bestowed on Frosty and Rudolph weeks earlier. This year, we even made three kinds of soup to insulate us against the lingering chill.

Today, these events seemed nothing but a distant memory, as temperatures soared into the 70s and it suddenly became easy to pretend that someone found the fast forward button on a calendar somewhere.

I’m solar powered entity-- any length of time without the sun, and I slip into a lethargic stupor. I’ve spent the past several days artificially propped up by nothing but caffeine and chocolate, so today’s sunburst was especially timely.

I raked away the patina of death enveloping my yard--bagged it right up and tossed it to the curb. I planted two raspberry plants, drinking in the smell of freshly overturned earth. I poked around flowerbeds and found new growth bursting through dry leaves. Cars were washed. Sidewalks weeded. I even got bug bites—-bug bites!—on my exposed feet.

I went along wholeheartedly with the ruse—because, of course, that’s all it really was. Tomorrow’s forecast calls for the mercury to hover around the 40s, which only goes to show the importance of savoring little pockets of spring wherever they can be found: a splash of color on a drab outfit, a dollop of sherbet after dinner, or a few minutes with a travel magazine in a patch of filtered sunlight, if that’s all you can manage.

Tomorrow I may wake up in the cold grip of winter, but my yard will look a little brighter, my skin will be a shade browner, and my spirits will be a bit stronger, because I’ve glimpsed the future, and it’s just below the surface, five weeks, now, around the corner.

Ten Weeks in 7th Grade

I’m spending the next ten weeks in middle school, and I’ll just be honest: I’m in it for the stories.

Admittedly, the stint is a required element in my masters program, but I’m not sure if that reason would be enough, all by itself, to keep me heading out the door each morning before I’m typically out of bed.

See, I am a writer to the core. Although I plan to gather data, teach lessons, and complete all the requisite paperwork required for my sheepskin, I’ve stumbled upon a far more compelling reason to head into the classroom everyday: it’s a goldmine of material, particularly for a writer of YA fiction.

Although I was aware, in a general sort of way, that I could view the whole experience as an opportunity to go deep undercover on a writing research assignment, I didn’t quite realize the wealth of material to which I’ll be exposed until I was tasked with filing some student essays a few days ago.

I hadn’t even officially started my rotation yet (today is my first official day) but was logging some general get-to-know-you hours at the school when I was handed several hundred essays that needed to be placed in student folders. Regular readers know that clerical tasks aren’t exactly my strong suit, so I cheered my lagging spirits by perusing the essays as I filed them.

These kids may not be stellar writers, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have stories to tell. These were no shallow sentences riddled with crushes, BFF drama, txt lingo, or any other stereotypical middle school affectations. On the contrary, their writings told tales of the extraordinary responsibilities some of them shoulder as young adults in single parent homes; of caring for siblings, and pangs of guilt when things go wrong. They wrote of death and loss and fear and gunshots.

But the news wasn’t all grim. They confessed to a litany of minor crimes with a honesty I found thoroughly heartwarming and utterly hilarious. Who could resist reading the tell-all of a kid who lopped off a sibling’s locks, Delilah-style, by cover of night? This was good stuff—material I could never invent sipping coffee at my keyboard.

So I’m diving straight into middle school, pen poised over a little writer’s notebook. I’m going to take it all in, write it all down, and let it all settle. By the time I return to my keyboard, I expect the whole experience to have distilled into a deep well of intermingled tales, events, and details. Over time, these individual stories will inform greater stories of growing, and searching, and finding one’s way. Which makes me kind of excited at the prospect of being part of the tale.

Trotting With Scissors or Submissions, Day Five

5 PM Deadline!

Trotting With Scissors

Caution was a valued rule of thumb growing up in my house.

My newscaster father had a not-so-subtle method of instilling the ‘think twice’ maxim. “Girls,” he’d begin somberly when my sister and I sought permission to do some seemingly routine activity like say, make toast. “I know it seems that there isn’t much that can go wrong making toast, but I’m sure that’s exactly what Bill Doe thought last week when he went to the corner market to pick up a loaf of bread.”

We’d listen in grave silence as dad recounted Bill Doe’s sad fate, typically a mugging, decapitation or comparable act of wanton violence. We responded with the dichotomy of emotions that is trademark adolescence—first we’d scoff, then wonder: what if he’s right? What if the world really is a place of limitless danger and senseless violence?

My mother, the embodiment of goodness, is also cautious by nature. Some things, particularly anything involving unmentionables (we know them as underwear) are just too provocative to discuss. On a grocery store trip in the late seventies when pantyhose were still packaged in those irresistible oversized Easter eggs, I asked hopefully if they were on the grocery list, and, by the way, what color if they were?

“Shhh…we’ll talk about this in the car,” my mother said nervously. No plastic egg found its way into the cart, but I’d obviously hit on something. Curiosity mounted.

“Nude,” my mother explained later in hushed tones. “Unfortunately, they’ve named the color of my hose nude. So unpleasant, why if anyone in the grocery store had overheard us using that word! Who knows what they might have thought?”

In defense of my parents, I was certainly not known for caution.

In fourth grade, I was so careless with one of my unmentionable garments that it wound up in a lost and found box. A pair of seniors carried the box from classroom to classroom on a show and tell mission designed to eradicate the eyesore of said box from the hallway. My unmentionable, a full slip, was held aloft and gleefully received for its full entertainment value. Several boys even modeled it for the class. I’m sure you’ll be as shocked as I was to learn that my mother wondered aloud why I didn’t claim it. She actually made me go back and ask for it, but I think I was instructed to ask female PE coach for help because my teacher was a man.

My childhood was consistently punctuated by events that invariably shocked my mother and decreased the hairs on my father’s balding head. When local citizens (read: my father and the neighbor on our party line) reported sketchy bobcat sightings, I spent the better part of a week blazing deep woods trails with the neighbor boys, Lee and Keith, on an expedition of National Geographic proportions. Home play wasn’t any safer. In hot pursuit of a wayward marble, I got my head stuck between the banisters requiring the concentrated efforts of both parental units to extricate me. The marble was never found.

When I was thirteen, I pestered relentlessly for permission to take a solo trip to do charity work with street people in an inner city Chicago subdivision known as Cabrini Green. I gathered that it must be a pretty rough place, because when my parents would relate this story to other family members, the response was an invariable: “What? You’re kidding! Cabrini Green? You’re not letting her do this, are you?” You and I both know I never learned from personal experience what evils dwell in this apparent blot on the good name of our country. I wasn’t allowed to go.

I went to college briefly in Philadelphia and didn’t sleep for several months. Instead, I wandered aimlessly through the city during periods of time my parents referred to as “all hours.” I was, indeed, out all of the hours at one point or another, I’m quite sure. A friendly policeman once asked me, very nicely, to return to my dorm after I wandered into the projects at three a.m. He said I might be a lot safer. At the dorm, I’d stargaze at two a.m. while lying in the middle of the road with my Adventure Friend, a wild boy we called Block.

In my twenties, I became a mother and suddenly I feared everything. I struggled between my desire to embrace the world and my fear of it. There were so many things that could go wrong. Just look at the newspaper! It’s a mixed bag of horror out there. Accidents, cancer, poverty, crime, even bread muggings. There’s no end to the combinations of potential disaster that could be lurking under the surface of so called normal living.

I fear less now, in my thirties—partly because I got bored of it, but also because some of the things I feared have already happened. Amazingly, none of them were gruesome enough for me to wind up in the newspaper. Especially not in my unmentionables.

Ripped From My Resume: The Making of a Snake Handler or Submissions, Day Four

We're dipping into the archives this week in search of material to submit to a contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Comments appreciated!

Ripped From My Resume: The Making of a Snake Handler

A couple years back, I volunteered to serve as a snake handler for my city’s public library program. Although this was just a one-time gig, not ongoing employment, it is noteworthy on my life resume none the less.

Snakes were pretty high on my childhood list of dreaded creepy crawlies. I grew up in the country, where sightings were common and the Snake Scream—a very specific ululation, uniform in pitch and intensity, would summon one of two sources of help. By day, such shrieks would bring Lee, the neighbor boy. At his discretion, the vermin would be either housed or tortured. If the sighting and resultant scream occurred in the evening, my father would come running with the shovel.

Mulling over a Sunday School lesson one afternoon, I was thrilled when the Biblical basis of snake loathing hit me. Cursed eternally, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was put on notice that his kind would forever have difficulty with women. My childhood was a swift and just payday for the entire species.

Not under Biblical mandate, little boys’ fears seem to manifest themselves in a different form. Most of the little boys I know live in a constant state of combat with a seedy cast of Bad Guys. At any given moment my 8-year-old son could be engaged in battle with Onion-Onion Early Head -- a car crunching vegetable that debuted in a nightmare-- or Bubkis, a shady villain of whom we can’t extract much in the way of concrete information.

Real or imaginary, creepy crawlies embody our childhood fears, eliciting bloodcurdling screams, sweats, and other sundry manifestations of the fight or flight adrenaline rush of Psychology 101 fame. Watching my mom didn’t give me much hope for the future, either. I vividly recall a laundry room battle with a Big, Furry Spider in which my mother engaged during the summer of ’77. The struggle left her so emotionally drained she had to lie down for a large portion of the afternoon.

Indeed, my fear of creepy crawlies followed me to college. One afternoon, I was run out of my dorm by a particularly menacing red spider. I arrived, shaken, at the door of a friend on a higher floor. “D-d--don’t—need-- much space,” I gasped. Really. I was confident that I could pare things down to just a sleeping bag and little pile of essential texts. Any corner would do. Before I had a chance to compile and submit official room change request forms, my roommate came to visit me. She delivered a triumphant account of the relentless stalking and subsequent death of the menacing red spider. Would I please come home?

I wasn’t brave enough or, as it turned out, smart enough, to demand to see the carcass. Months later, when I was moving out of the dorm for real, Jill confessed that she’d never seen the red spider again, let alone killed it. She missed me. She knew I’d never come back as long as the spider was still at large. I was sufficiently touched, and didn’t hold it against her. I did, however, pay special attention when I unpacked at my new destination.

Perhaps in part because the killing was a hoax, any non-cuddly creature with a suspect number of legs or an ancestral history tainted by the Bubonic Plague still wielded power. I left the dorm to live in the insect infested state of Texas with my new husband, Brad. Texas roaches are big enough to eat The Big Furry of 77, all my childhood snakes, and the menacing red spider for dinner. They swarmed and festered on the sidewalks that surrounded our apartment building. Coming and going at night, I’d hold my breath and walk as if wearing blinders. I took comfort in the thought that our apartment was too clean to invite such a dreadful creature.

But, alas, these predators invade without invitation, as I discovered to my horror one evening as I lifted a cast iron skillet and revealed the great grand daddy of all the Big Roaches. I am quite sure he was Guinness book large, but who’s measuring at a time like this anyway? I did what any sensible woman would. I violently threw that cast iron skillet and screamed the snake scream.

Brad, sadly, was unfamiliar with the signal. Confused, as new husbands often are, he didn’t know whether to comfort me or kill the vermin. In the confusion, the roach got away, and things went downhill from there.

Unnerved and drenched in sweat, I wouldn’t stay alone in the apartment—for a week. This meant I had to go to my day job as well as Brad’s night job with the eleven o’clock news team. It was a tiring schedule, and, eventually, I had to give it up. Subsequent roach sightings were less dramatic. I became more like my mother, who, in ’84, was forced to single-handedly exterminate a mole from my bedroom. I don’t even think she had to lie down.

Bugs and bad guys, I think, stay with us until we’ve learned what we can from them. They’re our friends actually, appearing every so often to give us the opportunity to be brave and to conquer. Each sighting offers the possibility of a small victory to savor, until, eventually, we’ve outgrown our bad guys and they’ve empowered us.

I like to think, then, that my multi-legged victims were finally avenged the day I met Penelope. Six-feet in length and likely twice that in girth, the python requires the assistance of ten brave volunteers to greet children during her annual visits to the public library. I’m proud to report that I was the first to volunteer.

Brain Tumors and Other Boogiemen or Submissions, Day Three

We're dipping into the archives this week in search of material to submit to a contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Comments appreciated!

Brain Tumors and Other Boogiemen

“I have a brain tumor,” I confided to my friend as we arranged our dinner selections on our plates.

“So do I,” she said. We carried our plates to our chairs and sat down. “In fact, Peter really doesn’t like it when I get on the Internet anymore.” Kathy lowered her voice as her husband came within earshot.

“Brad feels the same,” I nodded, knowingly, thinking of all the medical sites my husband would love to block.

The conversation wasn’t really headed the direction I expected. I had no idea Kathy had a brain tumor, and she stole my thunder. No sign of concern, no follow-up questions, my tumor obviously wasn’t being taken seriously. This wasn’t the same, intermittent brain tumor that’s been known to flare up since grade school. This time, the world wide web was solidly backing my hypochondria.

I had realized earlier in the day that the fact that my right ear had been blocked for several years might be a problem. Once, I had a doctor check for wax, but none found, I accepted it as a one of life’s little quirks and forgot about it. Every now and then (although web research now indicates this was a mistake) I’d shove a q-tip as deep as I dared and wiggle it around a bit, or while showering, press my palm over top of my ear to create a bit of plunging action, but that was about it.

I attempted to explain to my husband and the ENT I later consulted why, after all these years, I had chosen now to investigate the problem. The truth, if you must know, is that I blame it on The Auto Mall, a mechanical group who has, at the time of this writing, taken over twelve weeks to perform a standard repair on my jeep. I no longer care, as I have long since given up hope that they can complete this maintenance before my young children graduate. The fate of the jeep is now left for the courts to determine and I wanted a new car anyway. But this was in the early days of the problem, when my husband still had to take the children and I to and from school in shifts in his two-seater pick up. I was subsequently left on the front step of the school building with absolutely nothing to do but think.

Now, I realize that I could have used the time to think about anything. The world was my palette. I had characters in works of fiction that I’d abandoned in grave peril weeks earlier. There was the stimulating article I’d read about the Irish potato famine. Doubtless, I had no dinner plans. But, no, none of those topics crossed my mind as I sat on the steps and wondered: Why is my ear is plugged?

As with all things I wonder, I decided to consult the Internet when I got home. The results were alarming.

A well-documented symptom, “fullness of the ear” could signal any of a widely varied range of dysfunction, some of which, I read with fascinated horror, had nothing to do with the ear at all. Fullness of the ear was obviously an overlooked malady. All these years I thought I was living in relative health, I actually had the dreaded fullness of the ear, harbinger of disorders ranging from ear wax and chronic infection on the tame end, capping off with MS, brain, and nasal tumors on the other.

“The symptoms you report are pretty common,” the ENT told me, just before I asked about two specific and especially insidious tumors I’d read about. Seeing no evidence of either, he quickly sapped me of any relief I was tempted to feel.

“Who knows? Could be a tumor, cancer, or worse. Could be absolutely anything or nothing at all. People worry about all kinds of things.” He gave me an order for a CT and a hearing test, and sent me on my way.

Worse than brain cancer? No web page anywhere had mentioned possibilities that could stack up against such a prognosis. This was exactly the kind of situation I feared: an ongoing investigation in search of unknown and potentially terrifying horrors.

Without a doubt, I’d end up like the faceless patients I’d read about in a recent newspaper article on new advancements in facial reconstruction. I would be hideous, if I even lived, and would I want to, anyway? My husband, the poor man, isn’t a lot of help at times like this. Having seen me through other tumors, gynecological uncertainties, and numerous suspicious moles, he’s become a bit hardened to medical drama.

“Your symptoms aren’t any different from the 20,000 other patients he’s seen,” said Brad, resorting to factual statistics to back up his unnerving calm. “How many people have you seen walking around Hampton without a face?” my husband demanded.

“Maybe one,” I said, determined not to lose ground. There was the facial reconstruction article. Truthfully, I didn’t know where the woman featured in the piece actually lived, but she was in my local paper and that was certainly good enough for the purposes of this argument.

“One?” my husband raised his eyebrows in challenge. “And the newspaper doesn’t count.”

Transactional Analysis, I remembered from my undergraduate psychology studies, purports the idea that we all live by a set of life scripts, or predetermined ways of responding to life events. TA- based therapy focuses on examining the predictable patterns, the scripts, by which we live by and changing or erasing those that are destructive or that we’ve outgrown.

As the author of scripts, director of productions, and small time actor, the concept of living by a psychological script intrigues me. On one hand, I don’t like the idea that I might interact with the world according to a limited range of predetermined responses. On the other hand, I am the author of the script, so the responses are mine.

There’s a very Dark Place I go when confronted with any type of medical uncertainty. After leaving the ENT, the Dark Place beckoned as if on cue.

In the Dark Place, I shuffle around listlessly. With a host of disfiguring treatments and the grim reaper looming, clearly, there was no point in working on my novel. Ditto for working out. Instead, I wonder if Brad and the kids will decorate for Christmas, and if they know the recipe for pasta fagoli. I burst into tears at the mere sight of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because I’m certain I can’t hold on for enough family readings to see Frodo through to Mordor.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Images of the Dark Place don’t quickly fade and I don’t want to burden you with them. But somehow, this particular trip took an unexpected turn. A voice of reason—my husband will tell you it was his—somehow made a Hollywood-style plunge through the thick blanket of cloud that enveloped me. All it said was “you don’t have to behave this way.”

“Duh,” I answered the voice (it really was my husband.) Even as I scoffed, though, I understood for the first time that the Dark Place is nothing but a setting I’ve scripted for myself in which to worry and brood.

More importantly, in a flood of realization, I knew why I went there.

In one of those flip-of-the-switch discoveries, I knew it was the promise of euphoria drives me to the Dark Place. I totally get off on the moment when the whole tawdry affair is laid to rest by whatever negative x-ray, lab result or simple a reassuring office visit the situation requires.

I’d get the good news and realize that I was going to live. After which the sky would seem bluer, the air would smell cleaner and life’s little trials would roll off my shoulders with ease. After all, I just last week I was dying. Reveling in life, I called it. It was a tremendous high that can only be achieved by going very, very low.

Kathy’s response made me realize that we all have brain tumors. Some of us even refer to them as such. Other people have different names for their boogiemen. Fear of failure, fear of commitment, monsters under the bed—we all have something that sends us scurrying into our own personal hell. My “therapy moment” made me realize that growing up is not only about finding better ways to confront our ghouls, it’s discovering why we’re hanging out with them in the first place.

Evidently, I’ve been playing mine for cheap thrills.

Will all my new found wisdom keep me from running to the Internet the next time unusual symptoms crop up? I don’t know—I threw out my script.

Submissions, Day Two

If this is your first tune-in to the blog this week, we’re dipping into the archives in search of material for a writing contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Today’s contender is actually a continuation of yesterday’s offering: I thought it only fair to give you the rest of the story, although it would need a new intro to work as a stand-alone piece.

The Second Career of a Breakfast Icon

My 30-year old-stuffed tiger has a new face.

The episode with the vacuum cleaner left me so inspired that I immediately sat down and typed out the previous chapter, shut down the computer and sighed contentedly. Clearly, now, I could put the entire matter behind me and send Tony off to his Happy Hunting Grounds in good conscience. Somewhere between garbage can and closure, however, former CIA agent Robert Barron added the rescue of a famous breakfast icon to his resume.

A newspaper write-up on Barron’s post-CIA career had grabbed my attention the previous week. Already, the piece had secured his status as my new favorite twenty-first century artist, but it was his choice of canvas that became the inspiration behind the biggest comeback in the history of elderly stuffed tigers.

By trade, Barron had been a disguise specialist. Our government paid him to render operatives unrecognizable to anyone in their family, circle of acquaintances, or, if the assignment required, race or gender, either. Accordingly, Barron’s palette consisted of the startlingly lifelike ears, eyes, and noses he expertly crafted. His canvas was the human face.

When he retired, Hollywood came calling, but, like many true artists, Barron isn’t following the money trail. His chosen work is too important.

Today Barron painstakingly rebuilds faces lost to accidents, fire, and cancer. Neither his palette nor his canvas has changed since his CIA days, but his mission has taken a 180. Barron used to work to conceal identities, but now he rescues them. His masterpieces are the salvaged dreams behind the illusions of flesh that he designs.

Art, I tell my students, communicates.

Barron’s work is about loss, but says more about hope. It’s born out of endings, but paves the way for new beginnings. His art is about using your gifts and talents for something a little bigger than yourself. It’s about living the adventure you were put here for, even if it means coming out of retirement to do it. It’s about preserving life and dignity and grace. It’s about resurrecting dreams. It’s about having the courage to confront the dreadful and transform it.

Like all good art it is very, very beautiful. And, for some reason, in the moments after I disposed of Tony, Barron’s work was all I could think about.

I pulled Tony from the trash for the second time in a week, rounded up as much spongy burnt orange stuffing as I could, and carefully matched the jagged edges of his facial tear. I slapped a sturdy piece of clear packing tape across the seam and, viola! Tony’s not only back in the game with his back-alley plastic surgery, he’s got a new gig. Of late, he’s been tooling around town with his head poking out of the top of my writer’s bag as a poster tiger for my latest book project—a cheerful rebuttal to the utter downward spiral Sir Isaac Newton promised us in our grade school science texts.

Tony’s brush with mortality is a reminder that anything at all can survive if you put a new face on it.

Of Submissions and a Mission

Welcome to one of my good ideas that showed up just south of Timely. Regular readers know that the path toward my nearly-completed master’s degree has been strewn with so much lost writing time: blog posts that never made it to cyperspace, articles that were never pitched, an entire novel’s worth of characters with fates hanging in the balance—the literary causalities are as numerous as they are grim.

Still, in the midst of the academic frenzy in which I’ve been embroiled, I’ve never forgotten that I’m a writer. And four months from now, I plan to delve deep back into my chosen profession. In the meantime, I’ve signed up for a writer’s conference to get back into the game (and take advantage of free student admission!). Like many good conferences, this one includes a contest. Not having the aforementioned writing time to craft new material especially for the event, I’ve decided to dip into the archives and submit some unreleased material that’s been distilling for a couple years. Which bring me to my slightly tardy idea.

For the rest of the week, I’ll be posting prospective contest entries here on the site—partly because this gives us a week of guaranteed posts, but also because I’d like some feedback about what piece to enter. So what makes me wish I had this otherwise win-win idea two weeks ago? The deadline is 5 PM Friday. So let’s get busy and don’t be shy—let me know what I should submit or just let sit!

Here's our first contender:

A Tiger on a (Suicide) Mission

What is it about stuffed animals? Little more than wadded cotton encased in plush and adorned with thread and buttons, these faux friends find their way onto the guest list of life’s meaningful moments. They show up at baby showers and hospital visits, on Valentine’s Day and at graduations. And they are always welcome. So why the perennial welcome mat for these cloth clones? My husband blames Sesame Street. Spending our formative years in the presence of friendly bath toys, charismatic letters, and well-spoken pieces of home furniture, it’s no wonder our society is predisposed to animate the inanimate.

PBS or not, I am a grown woman with a collection of stuffed animals dating back to the Carter administration. Parting with them would seem too much like betrayal. Yes, I realize that I’m the stuffed-PETA equivalent of those crazed animal hoarders occasionally exposed on the 11:00 news, but I’m also willing to bet there’s trusty plush friend or two in your personal archives.

In general, we’re loyal to our childhood stuffed animals because they’ve always done their job. They share our secrets. When squeezed, they don’t scratch, bite, or offer unsolicited advice. They are for us whatever-- and whenever--we need them to be.

My home, then, became a safe haven for stuffed animals, not unlike a no-kill animal shelter.

At least until my two ill-behaved Labradors assigned themselves the task of tackling the nasty business of the overpopulated stuffed species. It began with some isolated outbreaks, most notably the rabbit winnowing of Y2K. Mocha, the brown one, went on a rampage one morning and bit the faces off every stuffed rabbit in the house. Just rabbits and just faces, executed with frightening precision.

Hippos were targeted next, although more out of fond fascination than menace. As a training gift, my daughter, Allison, had given Mocha his own green hippo, which he apparently adored. He carried it everywhere, including muddy romps. Finally, the hippo was nothing more than a mass of filthy threads and had to be disposed. The next day Mocha went into Allison’s room, plucked a blue hippo from her collection and carried it around with a lone green sock. Time passed without further incident, and we began experimenting with tentative indoor privileges for the dogs when we’d leave for short periods of time.

Then came a Bad Day for elderly tigers.

A box top mail in prize from when I was three, Tony of cereal fame had come out of semi-retirement in my storage loft and had spent the night in the family room. Rain prompted a spur of the moment decision to leave the dogs inside alone while I took the kids to school—a decision I never considered being of consequence to Tony, until I returned to a horrific sight. Tony’s face was split and his innards had been strewn in what I pictured as a gleeful romp.

No doubt our cockatiel, Casey, had squawked in warning: “Dangerous! Dangerous predators!” as he’s prone to do at the sight of canines or wanton destruction. With no one home to hear his pleas, however, the labs put some snap, crackle and pop into their morning and left Tony not looking so g-r-r-r-eat.

Tony spent a week with his tail tentatively sticking out of the wicker trash basket in my bathroom, but when push came to shove on garbage day, I hastily pulled him out and transferred him to a laundry basket. In an effort of be helpful, my husband later dumped a freshly laundered load into the basket. And then another. And, possibly, another. Many days passed.

One morning, on a Bad Writing day, the computer wouldn’t work. Frustrated, but determined to accomplish something, I decided to exercise, but, for want of a hairclip, my workout simply didn’t. So I took a shower only to discover that I couldn’t find a pair of what my saintly mother would call "unmentionables." Even in the triple load basket where Tony, sole witness to my subsequent rantings, lay forgotten at the bottom.

Flinging clothes across the bed, I suddenly hit a pocket of spongy, burnt orange stuffing. Tony stuff began to fly around the room.

“Dangerous! Dangerous!” Casey squawked as I pulled out the vacuum and aimed the hose at airborne bits. Hurriedly, I jammed the hose into the laundry basket in an attempt to stop the spread of Tony bits at the source when: whoosh!--something from the basket shot up the hose and into the canister.

My vacuum gives one the benefit of viewing the captured dirt swirling inside the canister as it accumulates, so I quickly looked to see what had been sucked into the wind tunnel. Amidst the general sea of compressed dust and in stark contrast with the occasional wad of crumpled white tissue were flashes of silky black fabric. Although my mother will be mortified to learn that I’ve found it necessary to mention the unmentionable twice already—there they were, orbiting the eye of what my vacuum’s literature proudly references as the "whirlwind."

I quickly turned off the vacuum and noticed Tony staring up at me from his unseemly state at the bottom of the basket. Disapproval. I definitely saw it on both sides of his split countenance. I suddenly realized how unfortunate it was that Tony, whose only mission in his artificial life was to provide me joy and comfort should come to such a miserable end, insides spewing forth into my laundry and listening to me say things I can’t mortify my mother by writing.

Then I finally understood. Life is too brief to lose sleep over bad writing or not to be outrageously thankful that I even have hair. And what a terrible waste it would be to miss the humor in seeing my unmentionables swirling around in the vacuum canister.

I popped the canister open, shook out the offending fabric and laughed uncontrollably.

Tony’s expression changed. It was admittedly imperceptible, but I caught it. After all, who can crack a half smile better than a tiger with a fissured cranium?

Tony left me on a high note, stoically keeping my secrets, gently exposing my childishness, and reminding me that it was time to grow up.

He did his job well.

Parenting, Today

“I’m about to get ornery,” my daughter announced gleefully, popping the first of five prescribed pills into her mouth.

I sighed. It had been one of those parenting days which require more stamina and fortitude than most. Although it was true that the doctor mentioned orneriness as a possible side effect of the medicine he prescribed for my daughter’s stubborn congestion and ear infection, he also indicated that the opposite was an equally viable option-- but that prospect apparently fell on clogged ears. My daughter was embracing ornery.

Following the office visit and the requisite trip to the drug store, I drove the Ornery One to a distant neighborhood in search of a favorite security item that had evidently slipped from her clutches during an outing the previous evening. I maneuvered the van through the neighborhood at single-digit speeds, scanning the pavement for the tell tale flash of sleek blue that would identify the wayward widget. When car surveillance proved fruitless, I launched a ground-level search that quickly paid off when my daughter’s hand dove across a patch of lawn, her eyes sparking as she reinstated the recovered relic back into her firm grasp.

Things looking up, I decided to take my daughter to local eatery for lunch. The restaurant was still dotted with holiday-themed advertisements, suggesting their goods as viable gift options for service providers and civil servants.

I braced myself as I noticed my daughter staring a bit too long at one of the placards. Something was coming.

“Mailmen!” my daughter scoffed. “Who would buy a gift card for their mailman?”

I cringed, my eyes darting toward the pair of uniformed postal workers enjoying lunch mere feet from our table.

“Shh..” I hissed, shooting a stern gaze toward the oblivious child.

“Who really gives presents to the mailman,” my daughter continued, no doubt recalling any number of unfortunate encounters with our unusually stern postman. It was clear that she was gearing up for a full-scale reproof against goodwill toward mailmen when she caught my eye. We headed home without further incident, my daughter casting nervous glances at the mail truck that trailed us out of the parking lot.

At home, we narrowly averted skinned knees when my daughter tripped and fell on the sidewalk. By the time her brother came home from school, ornery took a sharp turn toward feisty, and by the time dinner was over, we were at full-blown hyper—another option on the medicinal side-effect smorgasbord. The commotion that ensued when my daughter threatened to stuff her brother into a large burlap bag was so great as to rouse my husband from his laptop--where among other things, he was viewing an online tutorial on time travel—long enough to ask: “Has it been like this all day?”

You and I both know the answer to that question, but you might be surprised to find out that I’m not as distressed by the fact as you might think.

I’ll be the first to admit that parenting can be a bumpy ride, but I’m also aware that it’s a shockingly brief one. I often find myself mourning the passing of various phases of my kids’ development. Likewise, I derive a certain amount of joy when, occasionally, an aspect of childhood I thought forever gone makes an unexpected encore—like the time my son presented me with what he confidently stated was his last fallen baby tooth, only to turn around a month later with the news that two more of his teeth had gone wiggly. Even though I’d bagged, labeled, and wept over the final fallen incisor and eulogized my role as the Tooth Fairy in my journal--going so far as to write the kid a sappy letter and to leave him a parting payoff five times his normal cut for my farewell performance-- I was nothing short of elated by the opportunity to get into character and do it all again.

And as for my daughter? I’m not altogether sure that my husband didn’t conduct his online time travel experiment because even though her lost security item was a cell phone and her ear infection just might turn out to be mono doesn’t change the fact that parenting her today felt an awful lot like it did when she was 4…thirteen years ago.


Note to readers: I am grateful to have not only my daughter’s permission, but also her encouragement in posting this piece—to put it in her words “It was great humor, why waste it?” Thanks, Allison, for being a good sport—I hope you are better soon, but if not, we’ll go back to the doctor and see what fun medicine we get next!

The Long and Short of It

“We can take it another step in that direction,” my stylist said cautiously.

I’d just outlined a fairly ambitious plan to excise all evidence of what’s simply referenced around here as The Incident. “I’m prepared to take it all the way up to the chin,” I offered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “there’s just not quite enough to work with yet.” She picked up her scissors and began taking conservative little snips in strategic places while she outlined a plan that sounded an awful lot like those multi-stage reconstructive surgeries one sees disfigured accident victims undergo on Lifetime or The Learning Channel.

“It’s growing quite quickly,” my stylist said encouragingly. She tugged on my top most layers. “All this used to be here,” she said, pointing to an area several inches above my ears.

The fact that I’ve retained my ability to grow hair really is good news, considering that my last visit to this salon ended badly at the scissors of a Substitute Stylist days before my milestone birthday, forcing me to confess to my sister my belief that all those short, compact, helmet-like hair-dos sported by mature women were the result of a single haircut gone wrong. “Then it just stops growing,” I sobbed. “They never recover.”

“Who told you that?” my sister demanded.

My husband did, actually. He’s been telling me this since my mid-twenties, every time I go to the hair salon.

“Don’t let them take too much off,” he says gravely. “Hair stops growing as you get older. Don’t forget.”

“Ulterior motives,” my sister scoffed. “The man likes long hair. That’s all he knows.”

Recalling my bicep-length tresses, I dissolved into a fresh round of despair.

“We’ll work with it,” my sister said, her voice evaporating into a shaky warble as she examined the carnage.

I flipped the hood of my sweatshirt over the jagged, ill-shaped tufts. “I just wanted to be pretty on my birthday,” I sobbed.

I knew it was bad, but little did I know the horror my sister was enduring, as I was blissfully unaware of the surprise party the family was planning two days hence. I was thinking I didn’t want to look bad in a few commemorative snapshots; she knew a limelight appearance before friends and extended family in my present state could result in years of therapy. Although it thankfully didn’t slip in the heat of turmoil, later the word “mullet” would be uttered.

Knowing the full ramifications of my shorn state, my sister didn’t mess around. Pictures were pulled from archives; the Real Stylist was summoned from a color job to perform some “blending” with a razor; products were purchased. At home, my sister demonstrated all manner of blow drying techniques, quoting liberally from James, the expensive stylist she employed before the economy went south.

Somewhere between the mousse and a product labeled “pomade,” a sassy style emerged. My sister wrote the whole episode off as a blessing in disguise, and even hinted that I might want to keep the new look.

While I admit to having a little fun with the new style, I found all the washing, blowing, lifting, and shaping to be rather daunting, and about two weeks ago, I discovered that it no longer rendered the same results, anyway, so I figured an appointment with the Real Stylist was my ticket back to a shorter version of my Regular Hair.

My prognosis looks good for a chin-length regular look in about two months, although we can take another “baby step” toward it in about four weeks. Until then, I’ve got a layered two-tiered style that’s just going to have to suffice.

Oh, and the original haircut that I went in for back in November? That’s a good 5 months down the road.

In light of all that’s transpired, my daughter thinks perhaps it’s best if we all guard against general deterioration by growing out some good, solid hair and storing it up for the future—a good foot or so of fresh growth should do, on top of what we want to keep attached.

I don’t know what kind of a plan I’d be looking at to get there, but I think for now I’m just happy I didn’t have to show up at my party in a mullet, and from here it seems unlikely that I’ll be showing up next year in a helmet.

On and Off the Radar

Beep.

Do you hear that faint, electronic beat? Beep…there it is again. Readers, I think cyberspace radar has just detected a faint pulse from this stone cold forum.

We were coding here, folks. We’re two weeks into a postless January on the heels of a blog-free December and I’m frankly speechless. Part of me wants to blame my oft-mentioned milestone birthday, as I’m told time hightails it toward the fast track right alongside fleeing youth. Although time has passed rather quickly, I refuse to lean on the shopworn“time flies” bit, especially as clichés are avoided as a matter of policy here at RunningWithLetters.

The truth is I’ve been wantonly going on and off the radar in an alarming number of arenas, and there’s no telling when it will end. In late November—just prior to going dark on the blog—I disappeared from the academic scene to revel in pumpkin cheesecake, pots of coffee, and a houseful of general family fun. I skipped classes and shimmied around deadlines, effectively extending my Thanksgiving break into a full ten day binge of frivolity.

Turns out ten days is a long time to go rogue at the tail end of a masters-level semester. Even as my sister’s hand was still waving sadly out the window of her departing car, I began what turned out to be a non-stop, two week program of educational penance.

Grades safely secured—all A’s and a P, thank you very much—I was stunned to find myself catapulting toward mid-December thoroughly ill-prepared for the season. At that point, the only radar detecting any activity from me was operated by elves in the North Pole as I swiftly switched into an all-Yuletide, all the time format.

Oh—and that treadmill routine I was so jazzed about? I fell off the radar there, too, as soon as we got a wii fit (actually, we had 2 of them at one point, but that’s a long, sad, O’Henry-esque story for another post). See, the wii fit virtual trainers get really upset if you go missing from their program, and they’ve kept my Daytimer pretty full of late, requiring all manner of balance maneuvers, poses, and feats of strength. Over the past three weeks, I’ve logged an impressive track record of physical fitness. But alas, I’m hearing something that signals an impending fade off the fitness radar, too.

Did you hear that?

It’s still a bit faint, but it’s the unmistakable toll of the school bell.

Bloom

Against all odds, it bloomed.

Sort of.

Readers may remember the experimental sunflower I planted in October. With a milestone birthday looming two days after Thanksgiving, I wanted a living reminder that new growth can sprout and beauty can blossom in all seasons. So I planted the seed with a view toward a flower that would become an eye-catching focal point on my Thanksgiving table as a kind of late-bloomer’s success story.

Despite several episodes of early frost, drear weather, and--I must confess-- resulting neglect, I was encouraged by the little speck of yellow cheer I spotted from my sunroom window a week or two ago. Since then, I’ve focused on the little flower as a backyard sun burst in the midst of an unexpected patch of cloudy conditions, even as I anticipated it’s burst into full-on Thanksgiving bloom.

Closer inspection, however, revealed that this garden specimen did not emerge unscathed from the harsh conditions of it’s off-season development. It became apparent that perhaps this isn't a flower of centerpiece quality. At first brush, this fact might seem to validate the notion that growth is a springtime proposition—that color, strength and vitality are the domain of the early months.

I choose to remain encouraged by the little spark of life my experiment produced. In a sea of withering decay, my little flower stands--a rugged beauty capable of weathering the elements and blooming anyway, alone and alive.

I’m thankful.

Whittling

Strictly by choice, I’ve been spending nine minutes every day in complete misery, and I’m absolutely loving the results.

About three weeks ago, I adopted the “Speedy Waist Whittler,” a treadmill-based exercise routine I discovered in a random magazine that showed up in my mailbox. I was skeptical of the ability of this 20-minute regimen to deliver on its claim to carve a full inch of belly flab from my figure in a mere month. After all, I’ve invested over twice that time into efforts which have yielded nothing more than negligible results.

The Whittler rests upon the theory that the kind of measurable success I’m seeking can only come from short spurts of intense effort sandwiched between stretches of moderate momentum. Accordingly, The Whittler doesn’t get uncomfortable until around Minute Five, and by Minute 14, we’re closing in on the cool down. But those roughly nine minutes in between? Let’s just say, I feel lucky every time I make it to the quarter hour mark without paramedic involvement.

My narrowing midsection tells me that the time I’m spending in the upper register of my endurance range is critical—that what happens in those nine interminable minutes is the difference between where I am and where I want to be. It seems that even a small amount of time spent just beyond what I think possible delivers a far greater payoff than an extended effort in a mid-range zone.

What’s more, the standard changes as I go. The workout I’m calling challenging this week isn’t the same one I barely wheezed through last week. My definition of difficult is changing; expanding; evolving as I become stronger.

This all makes me wonder where else should I be stretching my endurance. What other extraneous flab could I excise from my life by upping my game for a moment or two every day? I’m inspired, really.

At least I was, before Thanksgiving week hit and my sister showed up at my door with our traditional pumpkin cheesecake. Now the only whittling in which I seem to be able to sustain interest involves altering the circumference of said dessert.

At the moment, I’m in the throes of decision. I’m completely committed to whittling—I just don’t know which soft circle to target--the one that I can reduce in about three minutes of sheer bliss, or the one requiring nine minutes of utter misery.

A Seasonal Tale

There's a lot of seasonal action underway these days, and I'm not just referring to the hasty pounce retailers have made on the Christmas season.

Stray jack-o'-lanterns and the occasional roadside dum-dum serve as daily reminders that Halloween hasn't even fully exited the social arena--and with Thanksgiving waiting a mere two weeks in the wings, one can stand on virtually any street corner in America and witness pilgrims cavorting recklessly with elves and reindeer under the watchful gaze of a tardy grim reaper.

It's unsettling, really, this wanton intermingling of frivolity. Personally, I'm for strict regulation of inter-holiday commerce. Costumes and candies should enjoy a grace period into early November, handing the show over to the pilgrims and Indians around mid-month. As suggested by the format of the traditional Macy's parade, the North Pole should be ushered in on Tom Turkey's tail feathers.

This brings me to a dilemma. I've got a little something for my readers that it just doesn't seem right to withhold. Sort of like the Santa socks you receive on New Year's Eve, or the ornament you open on January 1st, this is the kind of thing you should be enjoying all season long. And I want you to share it, too, and I know that it can take awhile sometimes for things to circulate around cyberspace.

So I offer the following link to a short story I wrote as a Christmas gift to my readers. Set in the world of my two Young Adult novels, it also works as a little stand alone story that should get your thoughts moving in the right direction this holiday season--no matter which one you're currently celebrating.

http://www.greenroombooks.com/ACampEdsonChristmas.html

Crunch Time

It's crunch time, and I'm not talking chips and salsa.

I haven't really had too much to complain about this semester--my weekends have been pretty much my own, and I haven't logged too many hours with my nose in a text book. In fact, most of what I have to look forward to in my masters program is my internship--ten weeks in a 7th grade classroom. Sounds like heaven, compared to sitting through three hour lectures.

But merging my syllabi with my calendar over the past few days, I've come to the realization that I'm actually going to have to engage in some authentic collegiate activity over the next two weeks.

I'll be in and out here, between now and Thanksgiving. Posts will likely be short--maybe even pictorial--but don't count me absent. I've got some good stories that I'll share in spurts over chips and salsa snack breaks. In the meantime, stock up on some tortillas and I'll meet you back here in a few days.

Finding the Rainbows

For about 10 mid-morning minutes every reasonably sunny day, the sunlight streams through a window in the back of my house at just the right angle to catch a little glass ornament that bends the light into mini-rainbows that scatter themselves across my bedroom.

Most mornings I miss the show-- I’m too late, my attention is elsewhere, or I just plain forget.

That’s kind of the way it is with rainbows: you have to look for them.

How many times have you seen a ray of sun emerge at the back end of a fierce storm and immediately heard someone say, “There’s got to be a rainbow out there somewhere,” prompting everyone to crowd the window, craning their necks in owl-esque circles in an effort to catch a fleeting glimpse of dissected light fanned in seven colors across the sky.

Most times we miss the show: we’re too late, our attention is elsewhere, or we just plain forget to look.

I’ve thought a lot about rainbows this week, as I’ve been tracking the weather with a devotion rivaling that of a retiree with the Weather Channel tuned to HD. See, I have plans to go on a thrice-scheduled camping trip this weekend. I’ve been working on making an annual pilgrimage to a favorite camping location since August. Poor campsite availability, rain, and the usual plethora or family commitments have rendered this trip particularly elusive. Considering this much-loved locale is on a lake in the mountains, I don’t need to tell you that it’s now or never, what with the calendar stating we’re a week away from Halloween, and the 10-day mountain forecast hinting at conditions like snow showers.

And a lot of rain, depending on which of the hundreds of forecasts I refreshed my weather.com screen proves most accurate. The conversation went back and forth all week: could it really be any worse than Maine? Should we get a refund, and book early for next year? What if the forecast was wrong? Wasn’t there a sunshine icon next to the name of one weekend day just ten minutes ago?

Which, when you think about it, is a dialogue that pretty much mirrors our real-life musings. Oh, sure, we're pretty good at recognizing a sunny day when it comes along, and we can certainly spot a storm brewing on the horizion--but most of life really plays out somewhere between the extremes: it's a partly cloudy (or mostly-sunny, if you happen to be a glass-half-full type) mix of showers and sun, cool and warm, arid and humid. And, frankly, we don't always know what to do with a forecast like that.

But as for the camping trip? We finally just decided that with the hodgepodge of sun and rain they keep showing us, there’s got to be a rainbow in there somewhere—so we’re leaving tomorrow at first light to find it. We don’t want to miss the show.

My Number is Up

195

Think of This Post as a Test of the Emergency Broadcast System

Earlier this week, I alerted readers to be on the lookout for an upcoming numerical post in a Running With Letters preview trailer. We’re still waiting on that. In the meantime, I wanted to issue an alert concerning a post I hope never appears in this forum. However, considering that life is a fragile web of circumstances, luck, and providence, I thought it best to inform readers about a risky new pastime in which I am engaging, and to set up a clear system of communication in the unlikely event of my upcoming disappearance.

See, I recently got an inflatable kayak as a gift from my husband. It was originally purchased as an enhancement to our camping gear, but it quickly occurred to me that I am literally surrounded by water at every turn. In fact, a quick bit of afternoon research revealed that a brand spanking new launch dock for canoes and kayaks has been erected yards from my door step. Although the waters I’d be putting in are technically river waters, they are brackish, flowing as they do into the Chesapeake Bay, and eventually, the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, literature included with my new toy encourages the use of actual ocean waters, which I can easily access within five minutes of my front door.

Oh the possibilities! Morning coffee on the river! Sunsets on the high seas! The adventurer in me can not wait to embark.

My enthusiasm is tempered only by a certain nemesis of which I have been afflicted my entire life: I have no sense of direction. Readers, I couldn’t find my way out of a wet paper bag—and we’re talking land conditions here, with landmarks: signs, buildings, roads and the like. How will I fare should ill winds carry my craft off what I’ll metaphorically call the beaten path? What resources will I employ should I float adrift, with a 360 degree view of nothing but water?

I do not know. But adventure calls none the less.

Knowing that I am prone to disappear from this forum for days, even a week or more at a time, I did not want this news to cause a mass panic should my blogging schedule—prolific as it has been—experience what Wall Street would call a “correction,” or in layman’s terms, a sudden, downward plunge.

It is only a matter of time before routine eventualities will cause me to be absent, here, for a few days. Don’t let this make you uneasy. If you return to this page for two or even three consecutive days, you need not fear the worst. Under no circumstances should you imagine me adrift and clinging to the deflated remains of my craft.

Here’s why: before my maiden voyage, I will leave instructions for my husband to post the following message here in the event that I go missing: LOST AT SEA.

If these words do not appear, then you can rest easy, and assume that my absence signals only that I am reveling in the joys of a seafarer’s life.

Anchors away!

If You Can't See the Forest, it's Because There are No Trees

So, it’s my day off today, and I’m feeling like I should really go plant a few trees following what we’ll simply refer to as an incident that occurred at the Grad Office this week.

I showed up for work on Tuesday only to be greeted by a thick dossier situated prominently on my chair. You can think of it as a really fat file full of stuff that needed to be copied, if you’d like, but I feel it might trivialize the tale. The sticky note affixed to the top of the folder outlined the parameters of the assignment: a stack of 35-odd pages needed to be transformed into 60 sets of double-sided copies, sandwiched between the provided covers, bound utilizing equipment I was to obtain from an unfamiliar part of campus, and then delivered to a cross-campus professor.

I chalked all this up as mostly good news. The overarching message I gleaned form the communiqué was that the assignment was clearly anchored on not one, but two, out-of-office field trips, and I’m all over that kind of work. Sure, there were all those copies; regular readers know that I’m not very adept with office tasks of any kind, and copy machines in general are far beyond the scope of my expertise. However, well into my third semester at the Grad Office, I’ve acquired a modicum of basic skills that afforded me a guarded confidence in my abilities to perform the task.

So, I ran a test round, making sure I was all good with the double-sided format, and everything looked great. I programmed the copier to do it’s thing 59 more times, grabbed my noodle bowl, and headed off to the English Department to use the microwave, giving Dr. S., the professor for who I work, a confident thumbs-up style report on my progress as I passed her in the hall.

The next time Dr. S. saw me, I was on my knees, staring helplessly into the bowels of the copy machine, surrounded by a sea of printed matter, the shredded remains of extracted paper, and a rapidly cooling noodle bowl.

Evidently, the copier suffered a massive shut-down of it’s internal organs while I was nuking my noodles. Fortunately, it seemed to produce around 15 complete sets of booklet innards before it went on the fritz. These I’d dutifully sandwiched and stacked, grateful that all was not a complete loss. Scattered in dubious clusters across the floor was a disturbing amount of superfluous partials—papers I recognized from the project, but in no discernable order.

I’d managed to extract at least three pages from the copier’s innards before Dr. S. found me. I could see a fourth jammed paper, but just couldn’t quite reach it. Dr. S, trained for such an eventuality, showed me how to pull an entire appendage straight out of the core of the machine as removed the stray sheet with a surgeon’s precision.

The copier’s status screen gave us the go ahead to proceed, claiming it would get back to work if I’d re-scan all the originals. Everything seemed back on track until the copier reported that it would NOT get back to work due to a numerical discrepancy between the originals I just scanned and the ones previously entered. I went into a bit of a panic at this point, so I shut down the entire system, fired it all back up again, and scanned my current batch of originals—plus or minus, who knew?—deciding to compare the resulting set of copies against the pre-accident products, in a calm, page-by-page analysis.

The results were shocking. The post-accident booklet contained a page that the pre-accident editions did not—folks, we gained a page here, and, judging from the context, a key one at that. Book by-book, I removed all the pages from the discrepancy onward, thinking how ironic it was that if we weren’t doing this job double-sided to save paper, I could simply just print off copies of just the missing page and insert it in place, instead of recopying what amounted to roughly a fourth of fifteen booklets.

At this point, the copier randomly decided to start printing the materials on legal-sized paper, causing no less than half a dozen emergency stop-the-presses type situations, most subsequently followed by an intense jam session.

By now, the volume of printed matter strewn across the floor was so great, I was beginning to become overwhelmed and confused. Were the corrected editions in this pile, or the other one? Were these good copies or rejects? And where was that noodle bowl, anyway? I knew my co-worker, A, was about to arrive and I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful that reinforcement was on the way, or embarrassed to be seen like this.

“If you’re smart, you’ll turn around and run,” I said, as A appeared at the door.

A gave a knowing glace around the office—she’s seen this sort of scene before. She assumed an air of confidence, and suggested that she take over the copying while I established some sense of order on the floor.

Half way through copying her 3rd booklet, A seemed on a roll. The small office fairly hummed with the sounds of productivity—or maybe that was just how the copier sounds when it works. Whatever the case, you know why it all came to a screeching halt.

Dr. S. appeared about this time and blamed all the trouble on the advanced operations of double sided copies and had us switch to single sided sheets. A suggested I go get the binder while she continued to work on the machine, figuring a finished book or two might buoy our spirits. More than ready for the anticipated field trip, I bolted from the office.

The grad assistant in the department which housed the binder looked a little dubious when I requested the equipment, and went off to get Professor So and So.

I smiled warmly at the stout, stern professor as I introduced myself. “I called earlier, about the binder. I know we asked to use it over here, but we’re in the middle of a—er—situation—and it would really help us if we could use it on site”

“Is this the kind of thing we normally do for you folks?” Prof S&S boomed.

I wasn’t sure if she meant taking away the equipment, or using it in the first place, so I just smiled really big and said I was quite sure it was pretty routine.

Prof S&S handed the equipment over with no small amount of chagrin, causing me to I walk really slowly on the way back, because I wasn’t sure what would become of any of us if I dropped the binder. This gave me time to study the machine, and I kind of got a bad feeling that something wasn’t right.

I knew enough about comb binding to know that the whole process pretty munch hinged on having plastic comb pieces. There didn’t seem to be any visibly included with the machine, and this worried me. I convinced myself that they must be housed somehow inside the apparatus, that perhaps they popped out somewhere when you turned the crank on the side.

“Where are the combs?” A asked when I returned.

“Umm…inside the machine?” I tried.

I trudged back to the office of the irate professor, taking no glee in the bonus field trip.

“We have to supply the materials, too?” Prof S&S boomed when I reappeared in her foyer.

She thrust a box in my general direction, suggesting that I pass along to my department her sentiments that we invest in our own equipment.

“For the one time a year that we use it?” Dr. S exclaimed, aghast, scribbling rapidly on a note pad as I relayed the message.

“I’m sweating,” A panted from the underbelly on the copy machine as I entered the office.

M, a third graduate assistant, appeared at the door. “If you’re smart, you’ll turn around and run,” A and I said, in unison.

“We’ve been working on making booklets for three hours. The copier is down, and there’s a whole department mad at us,” I added helpfully.

M replaced A at the copier. “Which department?” she asked.

“The Dean’s Office,” I replied.

“Oh—that’s a big one. I was hoping it was just a little department.”

A and I looked at each other nervously as the binder groaned against the heft of the product. We ended up having to punch the pages in small batches, which didn’t line up properly.

I finally held the single, jagged booklet aloft three full hours after I found the dossier. Exhausted, I examined the reams of waste product which surrounded me. I imagined the legions of sacrificed forest as I calculated the tax dollars it took to pay three grad assistants to produce the sad specimen I held in my hand. I wasn’t quite sure what the booklet was for, but I imagined it must be pretty important.

Meanwhile, A examined the actual contents of the booklet for the first time. “Hey!” she said, noting the course number printed on the cover, “I took this class last year. I never opened this book once.”

Thrifty Business

I grew up with mixed messages about thriftiness. On one hand, there was the coupon clipping, comparison shopping (my mom actually kept a notebook in her purse, where she recorded the prices of grocery items at various stores), and consciousness over mileage logged on the cars (“a car only has so many miles between breakdowns,” my father would say, “you have to use them wisely”).

On the other side of the equation, I developed an understanding that there were limits to what was acceptable to do in the name of economy. Shopping for sundries at the Dollar Store was just plain smart. Hand-me-downs were a gray area, usually OK if they came from a known source—family was preferred. Under no circumstances were yard sales tolerated, and we never, ever went to—shudder—thrift stores.

“You just don’t know where this stuff has been,” my mother explained matter-of-factly. “Just think of the germs.”

Oh, the horrors! I swear, I could see the contagion crawling all over the wares at every yard sale we passed on our carefully mapped trips to the Dollar Store.

Chalk it up to morbid fascination, rebellion, or maybe just a healthy dose of good old American entrepreneurial spirit—but one lazy afternoon, circa middle school, I organized a yard sale of my own along with my best friend, Sunshine, and a schoolyard ruffian named Robbie.

It started in the Usual Way—a traveling carnival had pitched tents in the neighborhood and no parent was willing to fork over cold, hard cash for us to toss into fishbowls in vain attempts to score cheap, oversized toys.

Totally in character, I forgot all about my mother’s grim appraisals of yard sale fodder, and went into the venture pretty much expecting to rake in enough cash to stage a hostile takeover of the carnival. I wound up asking way too much coin for too little bauble, clashing vehemently with The Ruffian, who just wanted to give it all away. Where was this kid’s vision?

As for me, I’ve slowly acquired a new view on the second run market over the years—I’m not sure that it would be accurate to credit the yard sale (although all three of us earned enough money for a full evening of Tilt-a-Whirl rides and cotton candy) but I’ve been flirting with used goods with increasing abandon.

First there was ebay—a great, big worldwide yard sale—and I love imagining where some of that stuff has been. Ditto for antiques, which I later grew to love. From there, it was just a short leap to vintage clothing—of which I have exactly one piece, if you count the skirt I have that was cobbled together with vintage saris from the 70’s—and it wasn’t exactly a bargain.


In fact, none of the clothes I buy really are.

Then some friends took me shopping during a girls’ beach weekend a few weeks back. They said they were hunting for some bargains. I was really excited to see where they shop- these girls are, to a person, some of the most fashionable friends I have. I couldn’t wait to see where they got their clothes.

I trailed them into a store, not really looking at the sign over the door—sort of blindly following the stylish crowd.

“Three dollars!” someone called from behind a rack of jeans.

“Wow,” I thought, making a beeline to the rack.

I’m not sure what hit me first, once my senses kicked in. Maybe it was a lack of fluorescent lighting. Maybe it was the absence of piped-in music, or perhaps things didn’t have that fresh-from-the box smell—whatever the case, I was suddenly struck by the awful truth that I was in a thrift store. A yard sale with a roof! The last frontier into an unknown wilderness of germs and unknown origins!

I know my mother will be mortified when she reads this (hi, mom), but I actually purchased a couple things. And, even though the girls congratulated me and praised my finds—I sneaked them in my house and attempted to introduce them into my wardrobe without fanfare.

But my family insisted on knowing where I’d gotten such a great shirt, and, later, why they’d never seen that fashionable little skirt before.

When I sheepishly admitted where I had been shopping, everyone laughed heartily. Perhaps there was even a hint of relief in my husband’s chuckle, as he realized I got those trendy numbers for chump change.

“What’s the big deal?” my daughter asked. “I’ve always wanted to shop at a thrift store.”

To borrow a phrase being bandied around the financial sector these days, I still don’t know where the bottom is in all this, but lately I’ve found my thoughts turning to the food industry —specifically two out-of-way little shops I happen to know (one in Oregon, and one right here in Virginia) that carry a large selection of vintage foods.

For me, this is the last frontier. Mom, I promise—I walked right away from those six- month-old eggs and late 80s boxed mixes—really. And those rusty cans encased in a layer of dust so thick I couldn’t even make out the dates…I turned my heel away in disgust.

But that was some time ago, and with the economy as weak as it is, I may have to give vintage foods a second look. Now, I’m keeping the little shops I know to myself, but readers interested in risky little off-the-beaten path investments will want to keep a close eye on the rural mom-and-pops over the coming months. In both shops I was in, the decades-old staples came complete with period price tags. People are going to be clamoring for this stuff. Eighty cent boxes of Duncan Hines cake mixes, thirty-nine cent mustard…this stuff is going to go like hot cakes—which happened to be selling for a low, low price of a dollar fifteen.

At least I think these prices are good by 80s standards, but we won’t know for sure unless my mom’s price comparison notebook should happen to turn up.

Think of This Post as a Preview Trailer

At some point within the coming days, alert readers should be on the lookout for a post containing a single number. If the number is greater than or equal to 172, then we’re good: the world here at Running With Letters will progress as normal. Pop the champagne on my behalf, send me some congratulatory remarks if you feel so inclined, as a sum of such stature will indicate that I have passed my proficiency test, and I’m looking at a straight shot toward my post post-graduate life. If the reported value falls short of the target number, it means that you’ll be able to follow along live, online, as my grad program implodes around me. Should be good reading either way. Stay tuned.

Here’s Hoping You Are Still Able to Read This After Business Hours

There’s a lot of buzz within the newspaper industry these days to the effect that blogs are replacing newspapers—a sentiment which has caused me to ponder the role of the Running With Letters forum in the ongoing reorganization of the news industry.

I’ve decided that it’s pretty safe to think of me as a fixture in the Lifestyles section—you know, the humor columnist who frequently subs for the books and literature editor, spots the religion columnist on occasion, all the while angling for a plum travel assignment.

However, in the interest of providing relevant and timely commentary to my silent but stalwart readership, I digress from my normal format today to bring you a muck raking exposé from the technological sector.

Readers, it is my duty to inform you that the Internet is not the 24-7 machine in which we have come to believe. Last night, I logged on to the Information Superhighway in search of pertinent information only to have my search engine come to a screeching halt upon discovery that the site I wished to access was “closed.” Not down for maintenance, mind you, not, “currently unavailable,” but closed, like the bank after 3:00. “We’re sorry,” the screen informed me, “the site is currently closed. Please try again during the site’s hours of operation.” This zinger was followed by a breakdown of the site’s operating hours, such as one might find after 5:00 PM in the window of the local five and dime.

Alarmed, I immediately called an IT industry insider (ok, so I bellowed to my husband who was in the next room) to find out if perhaps I had missed out on some sort of new online protocol.

“What kind of crackerjack outfit is this?” the IT insider boomed after an extend scowl at the screen.

At this point, I’d like to be able to report that it was the homepage of a 3rd grade classroom, and that perhaps little Jimmy got a tad carried away with the html. However, I was on the website of ETS, the educational behemoths who bring us the SATs, GREs, and proficiency measures of myriad other alphabetic configurations.

About four weeks ago, I, myself, was required to take one of the legions of proficiency tests they administer, and was seeking feedback on how I may have fared. The internet, I’d been informed, was the fastest and most timely source for test results—just as long as you don’t log on after 8 PM on a Sunday, or before 7 AM on weekdays.

My guess is that the newspaper industry might be in the midst of a premature panic. After all, paper carriers are a robust group of early risers, successfully delivering the news before sunup with stunning consistency. Once the word gets out that the Internet has taken to banker’s hours, people might be just as happy to find their news on the front lawn at 5 AM every morning.

Reality Therapy

"And so then all the children started to clap. We clapped very hard and very long. My palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard."

Many years ago, I delivered this line while sitting on a sofa in my bathrobe in front of a dinner theater audience during a presentation of Christopher Durang’s ‘dentity Crisis, a sort of off-beat art house production involving the emotional unraveling of a girl named Jane, whom I portrayed in the drama. At the root of my character’s disintegrating mental health was a particularly bad staging of Peter Pan she attended in her youth.

Among sundry other irregularities, the production adhered to a grim interpretation of the “clap to save Tinker Bell” scene, whereby the audience was informed that they had failed to cheer loud enough and had caused Tinker Bell to succumb to an untimely demise. Jane, so the story goes, was never quite the same.

Regular readers probably won’t be surprised if I admit to a certain level of identification with my character’s disappointment. Doesn’t the impossible become probable if you just believe hard enough? Can’t you hope and pray and sweat and cheer your wildest dreams into reality? I always thought so.

Why, in recent weeks alone, you’ve witnessed my unshakable confidence in a Bronx World Series. You’ve been on hand as I’ve sown September seeds in full anticipation of sidestepping blooms as I string my Christmas lights.

And that’s just the small stuff.

When my first, independently published YA novel failed to climb to the top of the New York Times best seller list, I was stunned. Oprah didn’t even call.

It only gets worse from there. I pretty much go through life expecting the blind to see, the lame to walk, and mountains to move on a routine basis. I not only believe in the impossible—I’m scoping it out at every turn.

Perhaps Hollywood is to blame, or maybe I’m more of an optimist than most people realize. Whatever the case, I spend a whole lot of time feeling more than a little disillusioned—which could be why more people don’t immediately peg me as an optimist.

I think the hardest lesson I’ve encountered thus far in the curriculum of life is that there are outcomes that can’t be changed no matter how much we clap and cheer. The team doesn’t always pull through in the clutch. Some books don’t even become sellers, let alone best ones. Some seeds don’t grow (although my sunflower is holding on—albeit in need of a pep rally, or, failing that, some Miracle Grow.)

Sometimes the most healthy, practical, and even spiritual thing we can do is to simply embrace what is.

And, more often than not, what is is usually pretty good.

Sure, it might look like a mess from where you’re sitting. Chances are, you’re reading this post from a cramped cubicle in a dingy office. Perhaps you’re trolling the internet out of sheer boredom, clutching the metaphoric scraps of disfigured dreams.

Me? I have a fridge full of decaying leftovers, a schedule of classes I don’t really like, an attic full of orphaned books, and a bathroom that’s been under construction for over a year. I’ve procrastinated on a project and slacked off on my exercise plan. Mouse traps surround the perimeter of my house.

A far cry from a six-figure advance and a New York book tour? You bet. But you know what? It’s a wonderful crisp October morning and I get to work at home today, surrounded by my silly cats and my demanding dogs. I’ll get to spend some time with my kids today, and my friend, Lori, is threatening a visit. The upheaval in my bathroom reminds me that my husband did a lot of good work this weekend. And the coffee this morning is reasonably good, if not quite superb.

Best of all? I’m still here to clap and cheer. Life is good.

Game Over

"I guess I'll just go to bed and start dreaming about next year..."

--a resident of the Island of Misfit Toys

from Winter Girl's notable quotable archives

The Stadium's Dark, but the Story's Not Over

The stadium went dark last night, and I don’t believe it.

I don’t want to believe the story is over, and I’m not saying this is in the same nostalgic where-did-all-the years go vein as every other sports writer you’ll read today.

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with the New York Yankees will admit, if pressed, the story of Yankee Stadium can only be properly concluded one way: with a dramatic, one-for-the-ages O’Henry of an ending.

And it is still possible.

You’ll be tempted, should you choose to proceed, to chortle dismissively at the at the ember of hope that the virtually-retired stadium is on the cusp of going out in a blaze of unprecedented glory

But for perhaps just this one, last day, I have the power of mathematics on my side. Yes, I know that there’s a full seven game disparity between the Bronx Bombers and our nameless Northern Nemesis. I know that only seven regular season games remain in the 2008 season. I’m aware that for the darkened stadium to burst into post season life there is absolutely no margin for New York error, or Boston success.

But I also know that the Sox are facing a Cleveland team I’ve learned not to underestimate. Should the Indians pull off an epic Fenway sweep, the season could come down to a battle for post-season life between New York and Boston during the season’s final three games.

From there, who is to say that Yankee Stadium won’t play host to Game seven of a Fall Classic destined for the sports record books?

Far fetched? You bet. Chances are that by the time you read this, the whole point could be moot and Boston will be celebrating in their clubhouse. But what’s baseball about, anyway, if it isn’t long shots, larger-than-life dreams, and dramatic twists of fate?

So I choose to savor the dream of a final World Series in the House that Ruth built, knowing that by definition, dreams are fleeting and subject to sudden disruption from harsh sounds such as cracking bats in Boston.

But for today? The dream lives—

Play Ball.

Planting

I know it’s mid-September, but I’m still planting seeds—as in outside, in the ground, 60-70 days until maturity kind of seeds.

Call me an optimist, but I don’t consider this experiment an exercise in futility—I’m fully expecting some incredible November sunflowers—bold, gorgeous flowers that might even play a starring role as a bouquet on my Thanksgiving dinner table.

My unorthodox gardening habits took root a little over a year ago when I realized it was early August, and I still hadn’t planted any sunflowers due to the fact that I’d been traveling all summer and hadn’t been home to tend them. A few days after my return, I tore open a seed packet printed with verbiage which clearly suggested that I’d missed the sowing window by at least three months. Since the packet was also stamped with a disclaimer that the contents were intended for the 2007 planting season, I figured I had nothing to lose and went ahead and planted them.

I was rewarded with big, June sunflowers in the heart of October—an experience that cast some serious doubt on the calendar’s jurisdiction over growth and beauty and life.

This year I decided to push the seed envelope even further past recommendations, partly because I have leftover seeds and the last of this year’s flowers are fading in the yard, and also because I just want to see if I can.
So I planted some seeds the last day or so of August. All but two succumbed to the whims of a vicious predator whose oft-seen MO involves severing the thin little stems of sunflower seedlings. Dismayed but determined, I started more seeds just a couple days ago.

Why? Because this year, more than ever, I need to believe that vitality, strength, and beauty can survive into deep fall. I need to know that blossoms aren’t the sole domain of spring, and that just because the calendar says something isn’t likely doesn’t mean that it is so.

I need that reminder, and I need it on my Thanksgiving table because two days after that I’m celebrating a biggish sort of birthday, the one that says summer’s over with the certainty of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. I need some bright, yellow confirmation that life unfolds in all seasons and that surprises can bloom any time.

Grow, little fall seedlings…grow tall, and strong and healthy. Show us how it’s done.

Ker-plunk

I scrolled past the Facebook notifications, newsletters and general SPAM in my inbox this weekend, homing in eagerly on a message entitled “ker-plunk”-- mostly because it was from a friend I’ve been waiting to hear from, but also because I seldom, if ever, receive email in which the author employs onomatopoeia in the subject header.

Opening the email, I found the following assessment of my communication skills:

“That's the sound a pin makes when it's dropped. Why so quiet out there? How's life? Talk to me!”

Now, I fully acknowledge that my last post may have read like a grim elegy, no doubt fueling speculation among my friends and readers that I simply withered away at the end of the summer season. With a twinge of guilt, I’ll also allow that there have been more than one or two emails and Facebook greetings that seemed to float off, unanswered, into cyberspace. And, yes, the dust got a bit thick here, too.

Life has been very, very full for the past three weeks. I have taken—and rocked—two major proficiency tests while studying for an even more important third. I finished my hang gliding lesson. I helped my daughter get her driver’s license and buy her first car.

And then school started—oh, did it ever! The semester began with a two-week full time stint in a 7th grade classroom that I will return to at various points throughout the year (most notably, February, when I will teach these students for 10 weeks). This two-week assignment was rough because I also had to attend my normal classes—two of which go until 7 PM. I don’t like to run the numbers much, but the whole thing involved a few too many 12-hour days and even more coffee than I’m used to drinking.

Things have settled down a little now that my two-week rotation is complete, and my guess is that everyone will probably be willing to overlook my recent negligence and I’ll start showing up again in all of my favorite places (online and otherwise). Although I’d love to mirror the professionalism of other successful bloggers who post like clockwork on set days, that’s a feat I can’t pull off as long as I’m in grad school. I can, however, feel pretty safe speculating that you’ll find at least four or five new posts here each month. For those who appreciate a helping hand with the math, that averages to at least one new post each week, a consistency rivaling numerous major publications but with the added advantage of being absolutely free!

So the next time you pull up this page and think that the plinking sound you heard was the fall of a stray pin, it’s probably safer to bet that you’re just hearing my fingers at the keyboard as I type my next post.