A (JC ) Penny for My Thoughts?

I may live in one of the top 40 metropolitan area in the country, but as a girl with a few crisp 20s burning a hole in her pocket, I’d rank my environs somewhere near compost level.

I recently received some bonus spending money as a graduation gift from my parents, and I’d love to spend a nice afternoon comparison shopping, ducking in trendy boutiques, and snagging a few great bargains. In my wildest dreams, I’d even pause to regroup with a fresh brew from a local beanery, but Regular Readers already know why that’s a pipe dream.

Simply put, we have no stores. Perhaps “no” is a bit harsh—we currently have an under stocked and overpriced Macy’s, inconveniently located in the nucleus of a ring of construction. We have a Target, but I’m sad to report that it has been reduced to a ghost town in recent weeks as the store braces for a move. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to having a Wal Mart, but I haven’t voluntarily entered the not-so-super center in the past decade.

What we do have is a relatively new and reasonably well-maintained JC Penny. I have lots of things from JC Penny. You could, quite possibly, go through my wardrobe and see the history of the JC Penny catalog unfold, not unlike the rings on a felled tree. Capris from the summer ’07 collection. Jeans from winter ’08. Tops from late spring. And so on.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate JC Penny; rather the contrary, actually. They have frequent sales, some of which come in the form of a complete surprise when the total at the register comes up shy of the anticipated damage. And they’re good about sending a steady stream of coupons. So I’m not complaining when I say that I’d like a little variety. After all, it’s not reasonable to expect one store to meet my every fashion whim, let alone some of my non-clothing needs, such as specialty art supplies, which can’t be procured in this town, either, ever since the sudden shuttering of our one lone arts and crafts store.

Now, I don’t doubt for a moment that our plummeting economy has a lot to do with the sad state of commerce in our city. I also don’t doubt the influence of some poor urban development in the mix, either. I trace the trouble back to the razing of our mall back in ’06. I’m the first to admit that the archaic structure needed a complete do-over, however , the implementation of the project mirrors another great Virginia scandal, aka Jim Gilmore’s late-nineties elimination of the car tax. Again, a good idea mismanaged beyond recognition. Turns out you can’t take millions of dollars out of a state’s operating budget without some consequences—it just would have been nice if the consequences had been anticipated. Instead, institutions across the state turned up suddenly poor: museums operated on slim and erratic schedules, libraries were hobbled, and free moonlight canoe rides at our favorite state park now came with a cost-prohibitive price tag of $40.00 for our family of four.

Well, it also turns out you can’t level a city’s primary shopping center without fostering a general since of disillusionment, particularly when near-completion of the new Really Big Deal Shopping Center approaches without much to show. The past months have seen some notable developments—the rubble around the Macy’s has been largely contained, the Barnes and Noble returned…and now (drum roll) Target has moved 500 yards across the road, and a full six days ahead of the grand opening date stamped on a recent circular.

All this may sound like progress. until you rewind 3 years and realize that back then we had a (less than 5 year old) Barnes and Nobel. And a Target. And a JC Penny. And an under stocked and overpriced Macy’s, sans rubble. Not to mention a couple dozen other stores as well. And you start to wonder, what new ground has really been covered? And what’s going to happen to the former Target, anyway? And—of most pressing concern—when am I going to find the time to travel to our neighboring town to shop? Because I’m pretty sure I don’t think I want to spend a dime of this particular spending money at JC Penny or Target. At least until I read over the stack of coupons JC Penny sent this week.

No Chance For Lance?

Lance Armstrong’s bid for an 8th Tour de France win is in serious jeopardy. Turns out the cyclist has fallen a full four minutes behind the completion and stands little chance of out peddling the deficit.

Four minutes? Really?

If Lance can’t recover from being four minutes off course then what hope is there for me? At my current pace, I estimate that I’m falling a full 24 hours behind schedule each day. To date, I’ve faced my situation gamely, tacking each day’s list right to the bottom of the one from the day before. I simply watch the list unfurl before me like a well-charted, albeit lengthy course. Before the word on Lance, it never occurred to me that I might be in real trouble.

I’m on full alert now, oh-so-aware of the second hand traveling circles around the clock like so many revolutions of Lance’s wheels.

Lance may still be four minutes behind, but I’ve lost another fifteen just writing this post.

Queen of the Garden

“There’s been another kill!”

The daybreak headlines from around our house have, of late, included enumeration of the nighttime conquests of our jet black Whiskered Wrongdoer, Camille.

Plaintive, still-of-the-night meows typically alert us when a successful night of hunting has occurred. The only element of surprise is who, exactly, has succumbed to the nighttime carnage.

Initially, it was just this guy:



He may look innocent like an innocent designer screen wipe, but to Camille’s predator gaze this seemingly innocuous toy/tool combo is public enemy #1. Making regular prone appearances on thresholds and belly up on carpets, this poor creature has been killed more times than Kenny.

Over time, Camille’s thirst for fluff has rendered her emboldened. She’s been stalking larger prey from higher shelves, putting the stuffed community on notice that it’s open season.

We emerge, then, from our respective bedrooms , stepping gingerly around a trail of carcasses. The body count typically consists of a couple of downed finger puppets, a washcloth folded in the likeness of a baby bunny, and a handful of small creatures of the beanie/stuffed variety.

For several weeks and counting, I’ve been trying to obtain footage of a kill for documentary purposes. I keep my digital camcorder at the ready, prepared to move in at the faintest wail. When readiness alone yielded disappointing results, I’ll admit to baiting the cat by planting favorite nemeses in provocative positions throughout the home. Although the creatures invariably turned up limp in doorways , or out of doors altogether-- as the dogs dutifully drag the kill out to the lawn--it didn’t go down in my viewfinder.

“Just think, Mom, the National Geographic photographers are out in the wild for months, and even they might only get one good shot,” my son consoled me. I suppose he has a point. To date, all I have to show for myself are clips of the after-the-fact variety:




Undaunted, I continued my attempts to film the phenomenon, grabbing my camcorder just the other day when sounds of a rare daytime kill pierced the home. Walk with me, if you will, to witness the crime first hand:




Now, I know there wasn’t much in the way of action, here, but did you happen to get a good look at the perp? Recall from the written description and prior video that our Feline of Interest is solid jet black. Replay the footage, if you must, but the stripy gray hide and white nose of this suspect is a tell tale indicator that what we’re dealing with here is a copycat crime. Worse, according to Wikipedia, my fascination with documenting the delinquency may have encouraged, or even caused it. “Sensational publicity about violent murders or suicides to result in more of the same through imitation,” reads the Wikipedia entry on the Copycat Theory. The entry continues with an even more troubling assessment of my copy kitty’s mental health and stability:

“It has been shown that most of the persons who do mimic crimes seen in the media (especially news and crime movies) have in most cases prior criminal records, prior severe mental health problems or histories of violence suggesting that the effect of the media is indirect (more affecting criminal behaviour) rather than direct (directly affecting the number of criminals. It has also been seen that there is a certain small population of people who are at more risk for harmful media influences than the general audience.”

As bad as the Wikipedia report appears, it fails to cover what is, perhaps, the most troubling element of the whole sordid affair. That green blob that Little Xerox decided to take down? It’s a knitted shamrock.

Remapping Adventurous Terrain

I’ve gone to bed every night for the past month hoping I’ll wake up in a hotel room, preferably in 2007.

Flipping the calendar to the present month and failing to see a large segment of the squares blocked out for travel spawned this irrational wish and concomitant listlessness. The last time I was this desperate for adventure, it ended poorly, in the form of murder at a downtown Ethiopian restaurant .

It’s July, and according to my calendar, I’m only destined to cross the state line once, and that’s just to Maryland. And although the Maryland weekend is a long anticipated and indisputably joyous occasion (a belated graduation celebration with friends and family), it’s just not quite July-caliber on the excursion scale. Past Julys have seen me commune with wildlife in the southern hemisphere,




consume wild berries in a Maine forest,




consume ripe raspberries on a Northwest farm,



enjoy authentic cuisine on a Mexican construction site,



or, better yet, simply disappear into the heart of the country as I did for the entire month in 2007. Waking up to fresh adventures in different states every day—let’s just say I’d still be out there somewhere if August hadn’t summoned.



It’s been a few Julys—circa ‘05, I believe, since I last found myself largely home for the month. That year, I had decided to head off disappointment by adopting a vacation-at-home mentality in which I would do one new thing every day of the summer: I’d go to unfamiliar parts of town, experiment with unexplored buttons on my electronics, sample unfamiliar food. It was mere days, perhaps only hours into my home-style adventure mindset when Ethiopian cuisine emerged as my experience du jour, but to my surprise and chagrin, I couldn’t convince my family to gamble their dinner on Ethiopian fare. The menu I procured was shunned and historical facts about regional famine were cited; in short, it became clear that if I were to sample east African fare, it would be during a solo lunch.

Alas, by lunchtime the next day I received an I-told-you-so-style phone call from my husband. The Ethiopian restaurant, he reported, had been shut down in the wake of violence which erupted the previous evening. In my husband’s opinion, the resulting murder was a cautionary tale on straying too far outside the carefully patterned lines of safe, familiar, and ordinary. Although I am sure I did not agree, I can’t seem to recall much coming from my summer of the experimental. It’s almost as though the Ethiopian meal was some sort of prerequisite that lingered, perpetually unsatisfied.

Which brings me full circle to the current month. I toyed with the idea of Daily Random Adventures 2.0, but wound up retooling the whole package. See, I’m still all about embracing new experiences, whether I make a specific, daily, point of it or not. Perhaps that’s why I don’t have a lot of concrete memories of the ’05 experiment—they’ve just sort of melded into the general hodgepodge of craziness that I refer to as “normal.”

What I’ve come to realize is that the adventures I’m really supposed to be seeking right now are all about enhancing the lives of other people. So I’ve made it a point to volunteer for a few more things than I typically might (or had time to, during my Academic Phase.) I’m taking some risks, picking up the phone and not know what I might find myself into. I’ll going outside my comfort zone, too, all next week when I set the alarm for 5:45 so I can do crafts with inner city kids. I’m switching it up the following week, devoting my evenings to dabbling in the art scene at my church’s VBS. I’m looking beyond what will give me my daily thrill, and finding that I get it anyway.

So I guess you can say that I’m blocking out the second half of July ’09 as a home-based mission trip. I may wake up in my own bed each morning, but I’ll be traveling beyond the borders of my own interests. I’m stretching my definition of adventure, and discovering that it was too narrow anyway.

Optical Illusion

It’s been nearly a decade since 2k specs made their appearance on the celebratory circuit, and my sister and I nearly missed the fashion sensation altogether.

The subject comes up for at least a quarter hour every December 31st, at the apex of our New Year’s Eve festivities as we pause our rented film to witness the descending of the orb in Times Square. With a click of the remote, throngs of revelers crash comparatively muted gathering. Although the distinctions between us and the Big Apple partiers are numerous, in the heat of our disappointment, the lack of decade shades among our number seems the most glaring.

“Sister,” one of us exclaims to the other, “if we were wearing such festive glasses, it would be us having all the fun.”

“Ah, yes,” the other of us replies, “how shortsighted of us. We’ll have to get some next year. Then that will be us,” we say, looking longingly toward the on-screen merriment.

Despite these annual conversations, neither my sister nor I have ever owned turn of the century glasses in any year’s model—until now. Always abreast on the latest trends, my sister was quick to act when she discovered that year-themed eye-wear has gone academic, popping up at graduations everywhere. Within hours of turning in my final final, my sister appeared at my house with—you guessed it—Decade Shades 9.0, the Farewell Edition. (My sister and I came to the sad conclusion on December 31, 2008 that 2010 shades just won’t work, unless asymmetrical eye-wear with awkward nose bridge is unlikely to catch on).

Of course, I was immediately eager to see the view through numerically-rimmed glasses. I expected 20/20 vision, reading my hot-off-the press credentials through designer celebratory wear. But if I’m to be honest, I must admit I ’m a little disappointed in the clarity.

Last week I hosted a somewhat belated graduation dinner for some recent high school grads. Talk circled around careers and programs, scholarships and plans. I’d like to report that I had the same sense of direction when I was their age, but I don’t know if I can ever recall having a similar level of certainty about anything. It was refreshing, actually—at least until the moment the girls asked what happens next for me, and the conversation turned down a vague and meandering path as I admitted that I really don’t know.

As the days pass, I’ve come to the realization that the calendar may say July, but for me, it’s been December 31st since mid-June, with me walking around in my party shades wondering what the next several hundred days may see.

A Taxing Situation

“Will I be getting a bailout?” my son inquired with an earnest squeak.

He’d just completed his first job application, following a tip about a particular fast food joint known for including a token 14-year old on the payroll, and my husband was helping him estimate his post-tax earnings should the job materialize. Evidently, he found the numbers so staggering his thoughts immediately went to bailout.

When my husband explained that he’d get some of the money back when he did his taxes, the poor kid blanched. “I have to do taxes?” he asked. It was one thing to have the government take taxes, but the news that he might have to do taxes exacted quite a toll.

“What if I don’t do it? Will I be audited?”

“Audited? No, you go to jail for not doing your taxes,” my husband informed him.

“I can go to jail over this?” Despair washed over the boy. “What if I just can’t do taxes?”

“Son, it’s a simple one page form. It should only take you a couple minutes.”

Brandon fell silent. “Dad?”

“Yes, Son?”

“If I get this job, I’ll have just as many jobs as you do. What takes you so long?”

Post Post Postscript

It took me four days, but once again I’ve learned that there are reasons why I’ve established certain guidelines for general operation.
I don’t, for instance, eat chocolate in the car, because every time I do—no matter how cold the temperature or careful the consumption—I end up with brown stains in unfortunate places.

I never leave my camera bag open on a table or counter top, because I know the first time I do, one of my five furry creatures will manage to get a paw or a snout tangled in the handle and whatever lenses or gadgets happen to be in the bag will take a hard downward tumble.

After the unpleasant experience of arriving at a remote travel destination only to discover that my glasses case contained nothing but air, I’ve adopted the maxim my sister promotes to her bespectacled brood: “on your face, or in the case.”

And this morning—a full four days after my last post—I remembered why I don’t post at night. We’re all familiar with the disappointment of finding the perfect comeback or clever quip hours or days after it would have been witty. I get that feeling anew every time I post at night. I’ll wake up in the morning with the word I struggled to find the night before just hanging out in my head. The connecting link between two thoughts that I couldn’t quite articulate the night before suddenly appears obvious. Embarrassed, I’ll hop out of bed, hoping I can change the offending prose with my readers none the wiser—only to find a comment or two. I’ll still make the change—but now I know that members of my readership experienced draft-quality copy—all because I didn’t take advantage of the delay feature we’re denied in real –time communication, but should use in full online. The opportunity to sleep on your one-liners and retorts—what a deal! We’d all be such witty people if it were real life.

I, of course, have given up on real-life wit and have tossed all of my metaphorical eggs in a single online shopping cart, so you’d think I’d take full advantage of the chance at a well-oiled delivery. But no, I put Monday’s post to bed with a snoozer of an ending simply because I was too tired to craft a real eye-popper.

I didn’t think about the post again until this morning, when I woke up with the post’s current and rightful ending just hanging out just below the surface of my consciousness, where I undoubtedly would have found it Tuesday morning, if I patiently reserved posting.

Having resolved the issues with my prior post (check out the better ending!), my concern now turns to the one you’re currently reading. I began it on Friday, but have just realized I typed straight though midnight into Saturday. I’m thinking of throwing caution to the wind and sending it off into cyberspace. Oh, I know if I do, I risk ending up with egg on my face when I read it later on, which would leave me just one indiscretion away from having chocolate on the back of my khakis as well. At that point, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of rebuttal you might find here by Wednesday.

The Lost City of Philville, a Missing Memo, and Everything OK Anyway

Issues pertaining to the missing city of Philville—a tannish, mid-sized, dome tent that housed my nephew (Phil, of Philville fame) and son in the mountains of PA and the rainy wilderness of Maine during the summer of ’08—consumed the first leg of our trip to Creation 09. My sister had generously offered Philville to us on loan when an episode of frenzied, pre-trip planning revealed a shortage tent housing in my own jurisdiction. So I left my house with tents for my husband, daughter, and myself, and drove to my sister’s house to pick up my son and bonus son (who’d spent the night at her house), and Philville to shelter them.

Moments before pulling out of the driveway, however, it became apparent that Philville had gone the way of Atlantis. A quick recap of last summer yielded a scant lead or two, but no hard evidence of Philville’s current status. At present, the fate of Philville remains unknown.

In the interest of time and replenishing our own stock of tents, we decided to pick up a new one enroute. Unfortunately, our pastoral path offered us few options for wilderness outfitting. Our TomTom GPS system assured us that if we overshot our destination by a full 11 miles, we’d arrive at a Wal-Mart where we could certainly hope to resolve our equipment deficiencies. I was immediately skeptical, as our GPS has failed us so often as to have lost credibility with even my longsuffering husband, which is saying quite a bit. Having dumped us repeatedly at the doorsteps of homes billed as Dunkin Donuts and vacant lots bearing no resemblance to desired destinations, my husband has even silenced the system’s sound, using it as sort of a backup directory of suggestions, rather than the voice of authority.

True to form, TomTom guided us to a dilapidated stoop in the heart of a hick burg where we were momentarily buoyed by the sight of a familiar department store sign. OK, so what if it was a Sears instead of a Wal Mart—no matter, we thought, until we stepped into the a one-room showroom not appreciatively larger than the lower floor of my home. In stock were a handful of tools and a state of the art washer and dryer combo, but nothing of apparent use in the field. After equally low-yielding forays into dollar and hardware establishments, the boys waxed grim.

Fortunately, as a child, my husband read a how-to book about tent construction, and was able to formulate a plan C involving some tarps, twine, and a tie-in to our rain shelter. The breezy lean-to that resulted actually kept the boys dry during one of the two storms we encountered, but I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

The hours lost in pursuit of basic shelter caused my prospects for hoped-for press conferences with Relient K and Skillet to go as damp as the boys’ post storm two accommodations, but there I go again on fast forward.

I eventually checked in at the on-site media trailer only to discover that I hadn’t missed any press conferences. In fact, even if our quest for shelter had taken all weekend, I wouldn’t have missed a single one. Why? Because there weren’t any press conferences scheduled for Creation 09. According to a memo I never received, the long-standing press-conference formula was replaced by pre-arranged interviews, of which I had none.

Friendly, fast-acting staff assured me that all was not lost. Although I had no hope of face time with any of the headliners—no follow-up on my mid-00’s Relient K spread in YS this year—I just might be able to speak with some up-and-comers. An up-and-comer myself, I decided that this was a fine idea, especially as I’d be getting exclusive material. I ended up with highly publishable interviews with newly minted Goatee recording artist Stephanie Smith, and The Sunflowerz, a chick-duo from Colorado.

Of course Regular Readers inclined toward the mathematical arts will likely note that two interviews falls short of the six stories I hoped to glean from the event, but I’m OK with that, especially as I may be able to parlay the material into multiple articles with varying angles.

And the boys? Even though their shelter was eventually blown asunder in a swift Friday storm that left them camping in the van, I don't think they'd have traded the experience even if TomTom himself managed to guide us straight to Philville.

Mug Shot

Today, I drink from the mug.

No Beach Balls

On a recent sunny Friday I gathered up some reading material— riveting articles such as “The Eight Components of Sheltered Instruction,” and “Language Acquisition: The Pidginization Hypothesis”—and headed beachward.

It goes without saying, I’m sure, that I found my beach reads so engrossing that I did not immediately absorb the shoreline ambiance. I was focused on fossilized language development, psychological distance, and sundry other hypotheses that diverted attention from my sandy environs.

After awhile, though, I sensed that all was not well on the beachfront. Something seemed decidedly off on the periphery of my secluded haven of shells, shore, and sea. Instinctively, I turned to my right and dropped my literature as a fond dream instantly went the way of low tide. I blinked, but the scene didn’t shift—it was true. Readers, I am sad to report that my Future Studio of Art and Society has been reduced to nothing save a cement slab.

For years running, I’ve been certain that somehow, someday, I was destined to purchase the charming little weather beaten house on the rocky seaside hill. It had only been a matter of when, but in my mind alone, the plan was certain.

By day, the little saltbox habitat would house unbridled artistic revelry. In the mornings, I’d pen lively works in my oceanfront writing studio. After lingering lunches of teas, fruit, and finger sandwiches, I would dabble in the visual arts. Doubtless, I’d have a kiln.

By night, I’d throw terrific, Gastby-esque parties, where friends, guests, and artists would mingle amongst my mosaics, sculptures, and hand-crafted décor sipping spirits and nibbling cheeses before heading shore side for a bonfire that would burn to embers at sunrise.

It was all so good. I loved it so. You would have, too. Under different circumstances, I might be posting little save-the-date-style blurbs, encouraging you to keep an eye on your mailboxes for an embossed envelope. But alas, we are left to gather here in this simple online forum. At this point, I can only hope that the written glimpse into the inner workings of my Past-Tense Future Studio of Art and Society has been at least as absorbing as the literature with which I arrived seaside.

A Little Like Limbo

The dilemma here at Running With Letters for the past couple weeks has been whether or not to lower the bar for the sake of a new post.

I am of the mindset that blog posts should be reasonably well-crafted and at least semi-polished, sort of like pottery with a rustic patina. Of late, I haven’t had time for witty commentary. Writing prose that reads breezily and appears effortless is really a laborious exercise in illusion.

So I’ve let the cobwebs begin to accumulate—a decision that comes with a set of consequences perhaps more lethal to the would-be up-and-coming blogger than slightly off-kilter copy: silence. Whisper-low hit counts, the same screen echoing two-week old commentary. Not good.

Which brings us, real-time, to the current post: hardly groundbreaking, but yet functional; a utilitarian message just to say I’m alive, and that I can still string a few sentences together. But sometimes functional and utilitarian is all you’ve got—and I’m a great believer in working in the tangible medium of the messy present. Even if it is a little rough around the edges.

In Other News:

T-5 days until I drink my morning coffee from the alumni mug.

I’m officially moving the much-desired Art Job to reside among the ranks of Things That Would Have Been Nice, rendering my status as Unemployed and Without Prospects.

Hypochondria is currently at bay, but hovering slightly beneath the surface

I secured my press credentials, and will be covering Creation East June 24-27. I claimed in my official paperwork that I “believe I can reasonably expect to place about half a dozen articles” based on this year’s press conferences. Fulfilling this ambition will require a significant hoisting of said bar to accommodate the raising of my game.

A Midterm Report

I'm interrupting the extended awkward silence with a word of explanation. I'm smack in the middle of one last, stiff dose of academia in the form of a month-long pair of summer classes that are as intense as they are swift. I'm holding my own, but suffering some pretty nasty side effects which include an inability to perform intellectually-based tasks outside of class.

In other news:

My recent publishing portfolio is so slim as to have called into question my ability to secure press credentials for an upcoming event I hoped to cover.

No word on the aforementioned art job at the desirable locale. I'm actually starting to think the whole notion was just a vivid dream.

These days, I don't read anything that isn't written in a dry, jargon-esque tone capable of inducing instant slumber.

I signed up for a summer painting class at the local art gallery.

I recently underwent the penultimate procedure in my staged hairstyle reconstruction plan

Summer can't get here soon enough.

Foolproof

"One of my life’s firmest principals has been this: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us."

--Stephen King, from On Writing

Oh, the shame of it all…layers and layers of pure, unadulterated shame. Readers, I’ve been had again by my own personal arch nemesis, and, what’s worse, my adversary bested me using all the usual tricks. Nothing new in the arsenal, no unforeseen twist or shocking spin—I simply proved myself more gullible than a third grader in a bad lunch swap.

Regular Readers know of my propensity to fall victim to severe bouts of hypochondria. You may even recall the 54 I once scored on the Whiteley Self Test for Hypochondria. (In the interest of perspective: a score of 44 +/-11 indicates a positive result; 55 represents the Top Score). If you’ve been with me since the beginning, you’ve met Dr. M, my long suffering General Practitioner, and been introduced to The Crazy Herb Lady, my wonderfully eccentric homeopath.

I used the above phrase “since the beginning” in acknowledgment of the fact that I haven’t blogged much about my hypochondria recently. Graduate School was many things, but one of the most beneficial was its ability to keep me focused and, frankly, too busy to respond to the taunts and insults of my Inner Hypochondriac.

But I’ve had a full 10 days of near-complete inactivity preceded by a nearly 3-week stint of moderate occupation which apparently rendered me ripe for the picking when a visit with The Crazy Herb Lady--a long overdue (haven’t been in nearly 2 years) check-up in the interest of continued health and vitality-- took an unexpectedly grim turn. Seems I have some frankly alarming systems on the fritz, due no doubt to my breach in medical vigilance during my graduate studies. And—bam, gotcha—just like that hypochondria captured my metaphorical flag. And I didn’t even know it.

I spent a couple too many days in a semi-fog of anxiety, gloom, and general dread before I realized I’d been played. It was as though I walked right into a trap. Almost invariably, my most gripping episodes of hypochondria have unfolded during “lulls”—times when I have just a few too many unstructured hours in the week. Often this happens in May, as the hustle and bustle of the school year ends and before summer hits its full stride. Something will seem a little off, a symptom will appear—some seed, something real enough to give structure to an impending certainty that my anomalies signal outcomes on the far awful end of the range of possibilities.

A cough? Lung cancer, guaranteed. A burrowing tick? A rampant case of highly aggressive melanoma. Stomach ache? Colon or ovarian cancer, if not both.

It goes down like this every time. And I fall for it. Again and again, each time convinced of merits of my new symptoms, solidly certain that it won’t turn out as good as it did last time. Or the time before that. Or that.

Never scoring well on those portions of standardized tests which call for pattern-recognition prowess, I floundered for some time before recognizing the blueprint. But I’ve got it now. Really. My nemesis may have no shame, but now that I know how the fiend presents I can implement some early-detection screening. Because it would really be a shame to let myself get fooled again.

Organizing the Corner Shelf, Part 1

My stint as an avid reader was severely hobbled almost two weeks ago by the sudden and sobering realization that I’d deceived myself into believing that I was far closer than I really was to completing a project I heard alternately referred to as a “work sample” and the more chilling “masters thesis.”

It was easy to keep turning page upon page of leisure material when I thought of this project as a benign and friendly “work sample,” a simple accounting of what I’d been doing over the preceding months. Hearing the project later labeled as a “masters thesis” proved somewhat of a literary show stopper.

With the capstone project now just a fading memory, I’m back with a breakdown of what worked and what didn’t in my recent corner shelf selections.

I was excited to read Sarah Dessen’s YA bestseller The Truth About Forever after a high school student favorably compared my writing to Dessen’s—a fact that I probably wouldn’t have admitted prior to actually reading the book, thinking it unseemly to compare myself to a New York Times best-selling author in a public forum. However, after reading the book, I’m not feeling nearly as flattered by the remark as I formerly may have been tempted.

As discussed in The Portable MFA (a current corner shelf pick), when it comes to fiction, questions perform the all-important function of engaging the reader-- and the sooner the better, if you want your reader to keep turning pages. Trouble was, Dessen’s novel didn’t prompt much in the way of inquiry. From the dust cover forward, I had a pretty solid bead on what I’d find clear through the final paragraph. I found myself on page 177 before any real complication presented itself, and made it fully to page 315 until I felt so much as a flicker of real concern. I understand that it’s a character-driven novel, and I’m fine with that, provided I’m invested enough in the character to really care.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t.

To really pull off a character-driven novel, the author has to work doubly hard to render a compelling character—because, let’s face it, the protagonist now has the burden of carrying the whole story. Oh, I’ll admit to a baseline level of general concern for protagonist Macy, and I’ll concede that the cast eclectic New Friends she meets through her accidental catering job had a lot of literary potential. Based on early impressions of Dessen’s cast, I might have been tempted to say that the novel committed no greater crime than to be a member of the rabble The Portable MFA fingers for “introducing a wonderful character, but little drama or action.” However none of Truth’s characters quite make it to wonderful status, due, I would argue, to never reaching full development.

I got a taste of who these characters might be, and the shame of it is, I might have really liked them. Dessen effectively employed the technique of giving all her characters unique, instantly identifiable mannerisms—and promptly brushed her hands and called it a wrap, at least in the case of the support cast.

But what I found most disturbing was that Dessen’s idea of bringing her character out of a prison of perfectionism and grief to ultimately embrace life, in its flaws, imperfections and uncertainty relied so heavily on the late night party scene. Perhaps what’s most puzzling is that the party setting almost seemed gratuitous—the New Friends who introduce Macy to the party scene come off as offbeat, quirky kids that you wouldn’t expect to find at a kegger anyway. You picture them as independent, free thinkers that wouldn’t fit the stereotype.

And the big truth about forever? Is simply that--brace yourselves—it’s always changing, as in “for any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now” (p 135). Dessen’s weak spin on the death as a catalyst for life theme fell flat for me, largely as a world view issue. Viewing forever as a concept that bridges this world and extends into eternity makes it tough to see through to what was probably her real point: live in the moment, the future is uncertain.

I’ll post some (shorter) comments about my other corner shelf selections in a later post. I’m not really accustomed blogging book reviews, but there was a fair amount of interest when I posted the link to my original corner shelf post on facebook, so I thought I’d continue the thread.

Spoiler alert for next week: look for a swift unraveling of literary commentary and a return to our Regular Programming (long awkward silences followed by equally long posts documenting various fiascos) as I begin the month-long finale of my masters program. Five weeks until I drink my coffee from the alumni mug!

Pots and Plans

Today I performed my penultimate act at The Office. Regular Readers may be shocked to learn that my days of jammed copiers, botched filing, and general clerical mayhem have run their course, effectively drawing to a close an entire subplot here at Running With Letters. Readers may also find it fitting that I spent my second-to- last shift building an office blog. Endless days of editing, formatting, and jury-rigging an online newsletter using a program no one in the office really knows-- and is meant for designing print publications, anyway--ended poorly when the communications department feigned a near total lack of knowledge of our department and said they couldn’t possibly convert our humble file into html in less than 4-6 weeks.

Dr. S. lamented that there must be a better way—and let’s face it, when you’re talking about posting 6-month-old news online, there’s ALWAYS a better way—which led to what may be my first, last, and only bona fide good Office Idea—why not blog? So I spent an hour or so making attractive little posts out of all our newsletter items. From now on, the new Graduate Assistants will be able to post news, hot off the press, in seconds flat. Tomorrow I’ll type up some instructions on how to keep it rolling—passwords and the like—and just like that, my days as a Graduate Assistant will be over.

Which doesn’t mean we’ll be lacking in material here on this blog—just as The Office subplot draws to a close, an exciting new possibility may be waiting in the wings. It seems--in what could prove to be the world’s shortest job search-- that I may have stumbled upon a part-time Art Job at a most desirable locale! I almost hesitate to even mention it at this early stage, but it’s hard to avoid the topic as this post finds me surrounded by a heap of application-esque paperwork…

…second only in mass to the potted plants huddled in sad little clusters around my property, following a foliage-buying binge last weekend. These plants—several purchased in a mini-binge the previous weekend and already languishing—were to have been planted on Sunday afternoon. However, in an Uncharacteristically Responsible decision I opted to spend an hour typing research before going out for a long, sunny stretch of gardening which I saw extending into the evening hours.

Unfortunately for a sad group of limp limas, teetering tomatoes, and peaked peppers, this hour of so-called responsibility may prove fatal, as that single hour I spent typing represented the final moments of stable weather we Virginians last saw. The skies went suddenly black and poured with a vengeance. The sun re-emerged, then dissolved into torrential rain, dark skies, and odd mists, which have persisted in a loop of continuous Instability. We lost a full quarter hour of a particularly intense episode of House on Monday, as our local weather man gave a street by street breakdown of various apparitions of hail, wind, and potential tornado activity. The weather man eventually stopped talking, although I saw no change in atmospheric conditions that should have prompted an end to his newscast.

Which leaves us waiting, the plants and I, to see what comes with the sun, or wind, or mist tomorrow.

What's in Your Pocket? -or- An All Points Literary Advisory

Consider today’s post as an All-Points Literary Advisory, with a splash of fashion advise. It’s National Poem in Your Pocket Day, and official organizational literature indicates that the general public should be on the alert for clustered groups of troubadours, bards, and average citizens assembled for readings in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. I’d hate to think of any of my readers turning up with empty pockets should an impromptu Unfolding break out at your place of business.

I realize that perhaps I’ve failed to get this out to you in time for much advance planning. Perhaps you’re reading this right now at your desk, poemless, sans pockets even, and panicking ever so slightly as you see a small gathering forming at the water cooler. Relax. Let’s work through this together. If you’re fortunate enough to have a favorite poet, go online and print off a poem. If you have no poetry preferences, just google a poet—any one will do: use a name you remember from freshman comp, go back mentally to high school if you must. Frost. Dickinson. Pound. Just pick one, and print off something vaguely pocket sized—don’t worry if you don’t have an actual pocket, I’m sure a purse, wallet, or shoe will do, in the spirit of the thing.

As for me, I’m a William Carlos Williams enthusiast, but a quick online check doesn’t summon my favorite of his works, The Flower, but no matter—that’s a little larger-than-pocket sized anyway. Today I’ll go with:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

And, see, just like that, I’m prepared. I’ll have Williams at the ready to brandish at will should the need arise. You should get prepared, too--I won’t keep you. And just in case you’re afraid of going through all the trouble of arming yourself with literature only to suffer the disappointment of not stumbling upon a Great Unfolding—fear not. You already have! Let’s see what you’ve got…

All Tied Up And Not Sure Where to Go

“There’s something about a school that just ties up your heart.”

These words, a quote from Generic Middle School’s founder, are displayed on a banner inside the school’s main entrance. From my art teaching days, I already knew the truth behind the sentiment—I understood how teaching puts your heart at risk for serious investment in the lives and successes of the kids we spend so much time with each day.

I always knew that during my internship—completed exactly a week ago—I would grow to care for my new students, and from day one, I understood that my last day would likely be bittersweet. But knowing from the start that my time in this classroom was destined to be brief, I wasn’t sure how attached I’d become to my temporary students.

When I was in high school, I recall having a student teacher in my English class, but matter how hard I try, I can remember only one or two vague and insignificant details about her. I seem to recall that she spoke in a small, mousy voice—no doubt she was scared to death—and that she said “spur-IT-ual” when she meant “spiritual,” which I found a little odd. I think her first name was Kelly. Remembering this at the beginning of my own student teaching experience made me feel a little sad. I was about to invest myself in teaching some kids who were likely destined to forget all about my time with them. However, another thought popped into my head that I decided to embrace as a challenge: be memorable. Form that moment forward, I determined to invest fully in my students and strive to be someone they’d remember for having a positive influence on them, even if it was just for a short time.

I passed out copies of my books like they were worksheets (I didn’t pass out many of those. Worksheets you must grade. I’m adverse to grading). I held a lunch time literature circle; we drank tea and ate cookies, and I discovered stories that I’d written all over again through their eyes. It was fabulous. I implemented a vocabulary voucher system where students earned coupons that they could spend on all kinds of perks: candy, quiz points, custom Crayola crayons. The kids spoke in strictly vocabulary words for an entire week. They wove vocabulary words into journal entries so long that I had to modify and, eventually, phase out the program because I couldn’t keep up with the paperwork (remember my aversion to same?). All day, every day, I made it a point to make the events in our room memorable.

Last week, it all came to an end. There was cake, and gifts—a really classy leather notebook, a hat form my university, and an alumni mug, which I’ve decided to refrain from using until I’ve really earned it in a few weeks. There was also the discovery that now former students are actually afraid that I will forget them. They presented me with a notebook full of notes and cards expressing all of the things they’ll remember about my time with them, with so many of the letters ending with the plea, “please don’t forget us!”

They have nothing to worry about. Those kids will be with me for some time to come. The tears I shed on the drive home served to reinforce the accuracy of the school founder’s statement: you risk losing a piece of your heart every time you step in a classroom. I know this is true—heck, I even love that it’s true. Moments like these make me wish that all I ever wanted was a classroom of my own; that I could find complete professional fulfillment in being a teacher. That I didn’t feel the desperate urge to write, that I didn’t have to swallow down annoyance every time I hear someone refer to me as a teacher (I’m a writer, dang it, a writer!). Life would be so much simpler.

But maybe it isn’t as complicated as I seem to make it. I remember one my first newspaper assignments, when I interviewed a regionally prominent glass artist. Before her success as an artist, my subject worked as a real estate agent. But real estate, she explained, “wasn’t enough.” This I understood, the refusal to “settle” for a standard career when the obsession, the passion to create was so intense. She didn’t work with glass because she wanted to: she created art because she needed to. What I found fascinating, though, was that even after building a durable career working in a fragile medium, my artist didn’t let go of the real estate. Glass alone wasn’t enough, either. Without either one—the glass or the real estate--she claimed she wouldn’t be complete.

I, too, am learning to embrace this concept of dual-identity, that you don’t have to be identified in singular terms; that you can be wholly artist and wholly real estate agent, or teacher, or writer, just like you can be wholly wife without losing ground as a mom. Perhaps, then, life has a little more “give” than I expected. Maybe it can expand to hold more roles than I thought. It could be that I don’t need to get so hung up on whether I’m a writer who teacher or a teacher who writes. Figuring out how it all plays out is likely for another day, a different post. Maybe for now it is enough to know that really digging school life doesn’t have to diminish my prospects as a writer.

I went back to visit my students yesterday. I breezed in, gave so many hugs my arms nearly hurt, and then it was time to go. It felt good to be in the classroom again, but today is all about the writing. I will always write because I have to—I teach when I can because my heart got a little tied up somewhere along the way. And it’s all pretty good.

Apparently I Am an Avid Reader Again

Currently in vogue: the world of print. I've been reading voraciously, and have added the Corner Shelf feature to the left to share my picks while the trend continues. Think of it as a virtual lending library, of sorts. Except that you'll have to track the books down yourself.

Here's today's literary snapshot:

In My Hands:
The Truth About Forever-Sarah Dessen

In My Car CD Player:
The Friday Night Knitting Club- Kate Jacobs

On My Coffee Table:
Adventure Travel, April/May 09
National Geographic Traveler Nov/Dec 08

Recommended Read for April:
A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khalad Hosseini

Worth a Look:
Holy Discontent-Bill Hybels

I'm even thinking about tackling another classic via My Daily Lit Care to join me?

Art Day

It’s 7:55 one morning late last week and I’m perched atop a wheeled step ladder in the middle of an inclined hallway taping mixed media self portraits to the upper reaches of the walls. Not exactly a routine day in my rotation at Generic Middle School. For me, it was Art Day.

With my student teaching experience all but complete, I was loaned out to the art department for the day, a turn of events not nearly as random as it may sound. Weeks ago, I let it slip that I actually might not be interested in teaching English; that I’ve been plodding along the whole time with a double agenda. See, I chose to pursue English certification, well, for the English credentials associated with having a master’s degree in the field. Basically, I wanted to be able to teach an occasional freshman comp course at the local Community College with a view toward boosting my stock as a writer. Just check out the dust jackets of any best sellers you happen to have kicking around your house. I’m willing to wager that, to a book, all that literature has been penned by an author who--as the jacket blurb will attest-- moonlights at some university or other. Feel free to test me on the theory. As I write this, I’m reaching for a New York Times best seller I picked up at the library mere hours ago. Knowing absolutely nothing about the author and never having read a word of her work, I’m confidently cracking the spine and—lo and behold—I’m about to read a Booklist top pick written by a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who now teaches creative writing at said alma mater. See, that’s how it works. But I digress.

With my attention solidly focused on becoming a Serious Author with a Standing University Gig, say, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, I haven’t spent much time thinking about the state teaching licensure that comes with my masters program. It’s not that I’m adverse to middle schoolers—rather the opposite, actually—it’s just that I find the job I’ve been performing for the past 10 weeks to be a little, um, overwhelming. From morning attendance to afternoon dismissal, papers are flying across my desk in all directions-- all needed to be graded and logged; hands are shooting in the air, invariably attached to someone needing a complete lesson review, medical attention, or counseling; and—most alarming of all—there’s the perpetual stream of state-mandated assessments, assessment “predictors,” or post assessment assessments requiring immediate administration. It’s an environment frankly not conducive to creativity.

But on Art Day? The minute I stepped through the door beside the faux stained glass window, I was Home. Flooded with natural light from a bank of well placed windows, the studio was a showcase of color and life. Color wheels! Plants! Large reproductions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Colorful masks. A kiln firing in the back of the room. Students gasping in wonder at an optical illusion. This—this I could do all day, in any school, anywhere—and still have the mental fortitude to craft prose.

Which brings me to my double agenda. I’ve known all along that after you secure state certification of any kind, it’s a relatively simple matter to tack on an additional endorsement area to your license, provided you know the subject and can answer a hundred or so questions on a standardized test. Which is why I was sent to spend a day in the art room—to see if I still feel like returning to my pre-masters program role in which I thrived, part-time for 6 years.

Which means that my new, post-grad school life would ideally look a lot like my former, pre-grad school life. A healthy dose of art, spilling seamlessly from the canvas to the printed page. Except with better pay and more opportunities. And that might even sound better to me than that University Gig, no matter how it reads on a dust jacket.

Which was all well and good until a couple of my English students found me in the art hall and threatened to take my duct tape, bind me to the wheeled step ladder and deposit me back in the English room.

Interesting as that might be, I fear it might be an exercise in futility.

I sense a renaissance coming on.

Peeking in My Classroom Door, Part II

If you happened past my classroom at Generic Middle School around 2:30 a couple Fridays back, you would have heard me concluding a lesson on “signal words”—you know, verbiage like, "on the other hand," "first," or "finally," which serve as structural tip-offs about, say, the comparative or sequential nature of a given text.

“So,” I said, by way of a lesson wrap-up, “who knows a signal word that might come in handy the next time you encounter an unfamiliar passage?”

A hand shot up at the back of the room. I was pleased to see that it belonged to a student who wasn’t a typical responder and I took his enthusiastic spirit of volunteerism as a sign that I was on my “A” game.

At least until he sincerely and confidently offered his three-letter response: “SOS.”

Out to Lunch

"What do you mean, New York?” my daughter said as she slumped into a pathetic little heap on top of her duffel bag and other assorted travel items. “I thought we were going to a birthday party!”

I explained that we were celebrating my grandmother’s birthday at Little Venice, a restaurant with which my daughter is well acquainted from my childhood lore and a single visit of her own over five years ago. My daughter listened in disbelief. “So we’re driving over twenty one hours this weekend--for lunch?” she asked, weakly.

In a nutshell, yes. Yes, we spent nearly half of a 48-hour period in the car with the sole purpose of gathering around a table with thirteen family members—most of whom had traveled over 2 and a half hours themselves—to enjoy some traditional Italian fare.

But oh, it was worth it! I’ve sucked down slices of piping-hot pizza in Rome, eaten pasta in Padova, and indulged in gelato and tiramisu in tiny out-of-the-way Italian eateries, but I’ve never tasted sauce equal to what they’ve kept simmering in a little kitchen in New York’s southern tier for my entire lifetime. The unmistakable aroma! The tangy tomatoes! According to restaurant literature (OK, so what if it’s just the place mats?) only 6 people have ever known the recipe and just 3 remain today. Three! In light of Coke’s current Two Guys commercial in which their secret formula is shared by a pair of guys in lab coats who fall ominously prone, I’m frankly concerned, despite the fact that sauce today tastes the same as it did when I was ten.

The faithful and consistent reproduction of this Very Special Sauce affords me the opportunity to travel, in a single bite, to the days when my grandfather would summon our family over the Ham radio and tell us to get dressed for dinner. We’d pile into his Lincoln and a half hour later the table would be laden with bread and pasta, a meal that was never complete until it was topped off with a crème de menthe parfait.

But about that pasta? Let’s talk manicotti. Outside of Little Venice’s thin, homemade crepes overstuffed with light, fluffy ricotta smothered in said sauce, that baked pasta dish simply does not exist. There is no equivalent, no close approximation. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that you’ve likely never had manicotti, and if that is, indeed, the sad state in which you find yourself, please run, don’t walk to the phone. Make some reservations. Plan a culinary weekend road trip of your own.

As I explained to my daughter—citing a group of people I remember from my days at Philadelphia’s Eastern University who used to drive to Chicago for pizza as evidence—it’s not without precedent to drive all weekend for a single meal, anyway.

Maybe Italian isn’t your thing, but I hope that there’s a meal out there somewhere that you’d drive all weekend for. Better yet, I hope that memories of enjoying that meal in the company of family and friends make the flavors all the sweeter and that your experience is shared with people with whom you will savor new memories for at least as long as you crave the flavors.

If you’re lucky enough to have a 700 mile meal, I hope you’ll share it in a comment—even if you haven’t actually logged the miles to order it. I’d love to hear what you’d be willing to drive for if given the opportunity.

Back on Real Time

If you happened by today looking for a Flashback Friday piece, I hope you won't be too disappointed to learn that Flashback Fridays have run their course: we're back on a strictly real time format.

Accordingly, I'm blogging live from a Writers' Conference where I'm soaking in all the literary trends, talk, and tips I can get as my masters program is about to go the way of Flashback Fridays. I'm 10 weeks shy of a whole new chapter as I exit academia and re-enter a cut-throat world peopled by agents and editors and polluted with trails of crumpled rejection slips. But as presenter Alex Kershaw established moments ago here at the conference, writing is an "unhealthy addiction" of which I will most likely be afflicted for the remainder of my life.

Which means that there will be so much bloggable material unfolding in the coming weeks, there's no need to rely on flashbacks.

Peeking in My Classroom Door, Part One

If you happened to be wandering past my classroom at Generic Middle School this afternoon, let’s say around 2:00, you would have seen me at the overhead projector discussing the merits and drawbacks of various narrative leads. Using a vignette concerning a boy named Scott whose tranquil camp breakfast was interrupted by his father’s announcement that a car was in the lake, I showed my students multiple ways to draw a reader into the action, while avoiding the drab, “ho-hum” style opening plaguing many a student essay.

One opening featured Scott abandoning his breakfast and running at breakneck speed to the lake. Another began with Scott’s father frantically calling him to the shoreline. A different lead took us straight into Scott’s thoughts as he wondered what caused his dad to disrupt breakfast with a lot of shouting.

Throughout the lesson, I remained in close proximity to one of my more, um, spirited students who did not appear to be engaged in the material. When I asked the students to try the different leads out on their own stories, I wasn’t surprised that this particular student wasn’t eager to participate. What did surprise me was the reason he cited for not wanting to go proceed.

“What happened at the lake?” he demanded.

The lake. What lake? Oh. Until that moment, I hadn’t thought of the paragraph leads as anything more than a curriculum-supplied exercise—a means to an end. But here, my student was looking for a story. And why shouldn’t he? We’re studying narratives, after all.

Not missing a beat, I answered, “Well, I guess the writer really did his job,” explaining that the paragraphs were just examples of how a writer might begin a story. “He drew you right in, didn’t he?”

“Did his job? Did his job?” my student sputtered. “How can you say the guy did his job if he didn’t even finish the story?”

Good question.

Just Another Cake-on-the-Head Day; or Flashback Fridays, Week 3

The following piece was woven together from 2 similarly-themed articles than ran in the religion column I used to write for the Daily Press. I plan to include some incarnation of the following in my upcoming book.

It was not a cake a rookie should have ever attempted, that much was clear. Three made from scratch layers sandwiching mounds of freshly whipped filling and covered in frosting hand whisked over ice, it required seventeen different ingredients, an intimidating array of kitchen appliances, and, as the recipe title ironically indicated, a “perfect” result.

In a tactical error, I had decided to bake my daughter’s first birthday cake in the kitchen of my grandfather, the master chef, as we were in the middle of a move and I didn’t have any of the aforementioned fancy gadgets, anyway.

The trouble started while layers one, two, and three were in the cooling stages and I began to whip the filling. It was a warm day, and the cream was a bit touchy. I managed to curdle the first two attempts, and I believe that the third carton of heavy cream that the corner market sold me was probably their last. Grandfather, the master chef, desperately wanted to get involved. I desperately wanted to do it myself. My grandfather dissolved into a stream of rapid-fire Italian. I muddled on, wondering how Perfect Chocolate Cake had gone so horribly wrong.

It’s hard to pin down exactly how it happened. It may have had something to do with the cream, but I think more likely it was the icing. A miscalculated gesture brought the entire process to a screeching halt as one of the cooling layers tumbled from the counter and on top of my daughter’s head.

Metaphorically speaking, cake-on-the-head days are pretty much status quo. It’s the chaos in which we spend the majority of our lives: the deadlines, the unfinished projects, the clutter, what we have to do, the things that didn’t turn out the way we expected, all that might turn out later.

We’re working toward some sense of accomplishment and we end up surrounded by the flotsam of unread memos, looming deadlines, the pressure of balancing work and family, and a sneaking suspicion that we’re further from our dreams than we were just yesterday.

The truth is we all want to rise to the top of whatever heap in which we’ve found ourselves. We’re all looking for the fast track out of the trenches.

Looking for the short cut that would deliver my manuscripts from the slush pile to to polished desk tops in the Big Apple, I turned to the successful format of Fox's American Idol for inspiration. Wondering if the successful format of the show could do for writers what it has for music industry hopefuls, I hatched the idea for a spin-off I like to call American Author. A panel including blockbuster authors Dean Koontz and David Baldacci along with a representative from a large New York publishing house would preside as budding wordsmiths make weekly forays into various literary genres. Horror week with Stephen King. Legal thrillers with John Grisham. Romance novellas with Danielle Steele.

I thought the idea was entirely original until I learned about the show my father created called American Programmer. Here, Bill Gates and a panel of high-ranking Microsoft representatives critique the work of a bespectacled cast of young hackers...

Face it, twelve kids or not, real life easily looks more like a scene from Cheaper By The Dozen than anything commanding an agent and a six-figure contract. Too much of our time is spent anticipating the future to have a real strategy for today. We go through the day treading water, convinced that there's an amazing utopia somewhere at the end of a long to-do list--if we can stay afloat to get there. Life spirals into a scene from the pilot of American Programmer: a series of if/then statements: if I can get through this, this and this, then I’ll be able to do something important.

If you’re anything like me, the list of stuff to “get through” just keeps growing. We’re so busy striving for Perfect Chocolate Cake, we forget the joy of the baking process: the nibbled chocolate chunks, the snitched sugar, the beaters waiting to be licked clean.

Life, then, must not be the the end result of the recipe. It must be found on the list of ingredients—in each and every item. Every day the most incredible things pass right through our lives, and too often we don’t recognize their significance until they live only in our memories. Magic moments fly by unannounced. Life just keeps moving, carrying with it the people and opportunities that inhabit our todays. I am reminded of this fact every time I look at my beautiful daughter, who is no longer a baby with cake on her head, or when I feel a pang of longing for my Grandfather, who is in heaven. Babies and grandfathers, and other precious ingredients in life, are to be savored for their role in each today with which we are we are blessed.

Most days aren’t “Perfect Chocolate Cake.” They’re just crumbs from an exotic recipe concocted by The Master Chef. And each one is good.

Sniffing Out a Story

“So what you’re saying is, you can actually smell a story?” Bubble Boy leaned back in his seat, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, I suppose in way you could,” I said, pleased that my lesson on sensory details was making such an impact. We’d just concluded a reading of Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks, a narrative detailing the particulars of a decidedly alarming culinary episode involving gutted prawn, bulging eyeballs, and dried fungus—a veritable feast of sensory stimuli which I was now using to encourage my seventh graders to “enter” the story. “Can you see those black veins being pulled from the prawn?” I asked. “How about that slimy cod? Can you hear it squish?” The students were eating it up—figuratively, so I thought, until Bubble Boy followed up his query with: “Well that’s good, because I just caught a whiff of something.” He waved a hand vaguely through the air, giving several curious sniffs.

“Good! Good!” I encouraged, really impressed to see him engaging in the literature.

“No, not good,” he replied. “It’s burning.”

“Burning?” I turned my gaze back to the text, scanning for any mention of flame.

“Yes, it seems sort of—rubbery.”

“That’s not the story,” another student piped up. “It’s tar. They’re working on the roof.”

Like Cheese and Wine; or Flashback Fridays, Week 2

Today's Flashback Friday post is a much-maligned piece I originally wrote as a contest entry. My hopes for a contest win, however, were crushed by a snarky judge who suggested the article would be truer to its theme if it were to "simply dissolve into nonsense" at its conclusion. Bouncing back from the setback, I retooled the piece as an introductory chapter for the aforementioned abandoned book project I plan to resurrect upon graduation.

Like Cheese and Wine

From an early age, I understood the second law of Thermodynamics. I may not have known it by that name, but I did notice that my music would last longer if I dubbed my record albums onto cassette, and even then, the ones I liked most would need to be taped again after the cassette succumbed to repeated rewinds. I noticed that Barbie’s best gowns would become frayed and wrinkled and pop their seams, until eventually they became castoffs for the Cinderella scenes. I noticed that even my most fantastic cardboard forts could not withstand more than three days of serious play or a single cloudburst.

It wasn’t long before I began to apply my dire observations of entropy to life itself. Hit a certain age, somewhere around thirty by all appearances, and it seems people begin to buckle under repeated use. Creases form, seams pop, and after a long day at work, some folks lack the fortitude to withstand any recreation at all. A cloudburst called time seemed destined to drown the spirit of youth. As I catapulted into my thirties with little more than a windblown umbrella of optimism to shield me from the forecasted deluge, my grandfather and my aged dog departed in the same year, passing me a torch that leaves me completely at odds with Newton.

As any grade school science text will tell you, Newton’s entropy promises nothing short of a total downward spiral. The Second Law confidently assures us that all things eventually return to baseline, leaving no impression, creating no change. Confronting my third decade, I was running scared from Newton and his empirical absolutes. Left to reflect on two radically different lives that each touched mine in seemingly incomparable ways, I discovered common denominator. Within the lives of my grandfather and my pet, I found an affront to Newton, a rejection of his Second Law, and a call to live my story rather than count its pages.

An American-born son of Italian immigrants, my grandfather was a high spirited boy of mischief, who dipped pigtails into inkwells and played pranks along with his trusty steed, Mr. Don, who was both his ride to school and his best friend. As a young newlywed, he cooked his way through World War II on a Navy ship, and when the war ended, he helped his father run the family spinning mill. I’ll never know if his adventurous tales peopled with shady Italian businessmen and ancestors with names like Uncle Icy were more family history or product of his well-honed affinity for spinning another type of yarn.

What I do know is that faster, quicker, sooner were the words by which my grandfather worked and lived. The mill was typically abuzz with excitement as Gramps single-handedly battled stray shipments, overdue accounts, or botched dye lots with an army’s arsenal. His visits to our house were frequent, brief, and sudden in nature. He’d blow through the front door, stir things up a bit with guessing games, cash prizes, and a few rash promises about purchasing ponies, then jingle his pocket change to signal his imminent departure.

Trips to the movies followed a strict blueprint. Waiting—either in line or in theatrical suspense—was not an option. We’d arrive at the theater while our chosen feature was already in progress, secure tickets for the next screening and then proceed directly into the darkened theater to view the final twenty minutes of the movie. After a brief intermission while the crowd and the reel changed, we’d watch the beginning straight though to the first familiar image that flashed across the screen. At that point the soundtrack would invariably shift to the subtle jingling of pocket change and we’d slip out the back. Sure, we had to piece the story together like a patchwork quilt on the way home, but we avoided the crowds.

With Gramps, everything was done both in bulk and with gusto. If a little was good, then a lot was far better. Food in general and whipped cream in particular best illustrated this point. A particularly memorable stomachache in the late seventies was traced to a piece of cake slightly smaller than a breadbox and topped off with a quart or two of cream. He bought in gross, cooked in surplus, and shared in abundance. A local food distributor promoted him to caterer status and gave him a corporate account. To this day, after visits with my grandmother I still return home with several of his industrial sized cans of tomatoes. Never mind the can is four times the size that my family of four really needs—in their excess, the tomatoes are a reminder of the largeness of my grandfather’s generous heart.

A man of adventure, travel, and action, Gramps would leave for his Florida house or a western dude ranch at the mere mention of snow. Things would quiet down a bit. My father needed the winter months to repair relations with the folks at the Dye Works. At home, we kept busy with the ill-behaved ponies Gramps purchased before one of his departures.

As he grew older, doctors worked to stay one step ahead of his failing heart. His adventures changed. Considering his history, I can do nothing but marvel at the things that captured his focus in his later years. Canvases transformed by color and life with scores of brushes and dozens of techniques. Carved furniture protected by coats of varnish totaling in the double digits and each needing a full day to dry. Carefully strung beadwork.

When he could no longer make car trips west to visit his beloved dude ranches, he learned to surf there instead. The Internet took him where he could no longer drive, and he took his zest for life into those journeys as well. An entire forest was sacrificed as he began a campaign to print out every page of every website west of the Mississippi. I smile now at the card on my dresser, reminding me of the trees that were planted in a great western forest, a touching memorial from a dear friend who had no way of knowing the irony of the tribute. In his honor, may they grow tall, strong—and quickly.

In his later years, Gramps learned to put his energies into fighting only chosen battles. He forgave old grievances and let go of past hurts. I think even the Dye Works received a full pardon. Gramps mellowed as maturity gave him the courage to expand and adapt his adventures.

Disease weakens muscle, but time strengthens the spirit.

Surprisingly, my pet’s life followed a similar pattern. An abandoned husky wandering busy streets, Kelly was a high spirited dog of mischief, boasting a long rap sheet on any one of her carefree days of puppyhood. She’d snatched sandwiches from the hands of innocent children. She chased mailmen. She chewed furniture and ate college textbooks. One romp of reckless abandon through my parent’s living room was mistaken for a burglary and the police were nearly summoned.

Like other dogs with a penchant for trouble, Kelly was expected to bide her time in a crate while the family was away. Mistress of Escape, Kelly chose instead to baffle us with her Houdini-like ability to elude confinement. We’d come home to find her crate completely intact while she lounged on some forbidden piece of furniture.

Thoroughly stubborn, Kelly was quite possibly Italian also, preferring to sup in the ancient Roman tradition of reclining on something soft. She’d transfer her meals in large mouthfuls, scatter the pieces across her favorite carpet and delicately pluck and consume each savory morsel without so much as raising her head. Today, stray dog food bits scattered by her offspring, two ill-mannered, genetically improbable Labradors, remind me that some things aren’t meant to be changed.

A dog of intellect, she reveled in new experiences. An unfamiliar walking route, visitors, car trips: things needed to be barked at, sniffed, investigated. As a pup, those traits amused and at times frustrated me. She required supervision, guidance, and discipline.

When she surprised us with a litter of labs halfway through her ninth year, her history made us fear that she would be a disastrous mother. Despite the one groggy moment when she got up after her emergency C-section and scattered her formerly nursing pups across the bathroom floor, she was a great mom.

Her life took on new dimensions as she became an old dog rediscovering the thrill of senseless puppy play. When a new walking route took us to the beach, she found out that the ocean is really a big game of tag, and that the best romps were ones that ended with sand and sea salt between her paw pads.

Maturity transformed my furry menace into a perfect companion. She wanted my company through thunderstorms, reveled in long brushings, and wedged herself in the doorframe to prevent me from leaving her behind when it was time to pick up the children each afternoon. But I didn’t want to leave her, anyway. She had mellowed. Time with her was pure pleasure. Even as veterinarians worked to stay one step ahead of the deterioration of her health in her advancing age, nothing could lift her spirits as high as an adventure. Our last years together are the ones I treasure most and have mourned the hardest.

Years wear the body, but experience makes us whole.

Learn new skills. Discover new games. Extend forbearance. The best times are together times. Grow. Mature. Improve. These are the lessons embodied in the stories of two adventurous souls who taught me that time is to be cherished, not feared. Their legacy is mine now, to nurture as my own story refines.

A high-spirited girl, familiar with mischief, I choose to remain at odds with Sir Isaac as the chapters of my life unfold. Wrinkles will mark the pages where rough edges have been softened. Wear and tear will tell of lessons learned and challenges conquered. I need not fear the evidence time will etch on my body, I must, instead, choreograph its signature on my soul.

It may seem tempting to buy into Newton’s law. One look in the mirror may convince you to accept the notion that the creases, wrinkles, and popped seams revealed therein are the grim but inevitable work of entropy. If you’ve read the right fairy tales, though, you already know that mirrors don’t always tell the truth. Science books don’t either.

Flashback Fridays

Inspired by last month’s foray into the archives in search of contest entry material, I’ve decided to feature a few weeks worth of Flashback Fridays—previously unposted oldies I’m pulling put, dusting off, and potentially re-working into an upcoming project. Today’s piece is from a proposal for a book that got prematurely abandoned. (The project was entitled Defying Physics: What Newton didn’t tell you about stuffed animals, deep dark fears, and women over 30—by way of explanation for the later reference to the book’s title.)

Biff and Alice

Circumstances forced us to spell out the raw facts of life to our eight-year-old son.

In support of a family-fundraising-slash-spring-cleaning event, Brandon had obediently collected his outgrown assets. The process had been thoroughly uneventful until it became time to price his wares.

There was some back and forth. Things lost their value, my husband was explaining, citing specific items from the gathered assemblage as evidence. Then the conversation turned to Biff and Alice.

I was curious how my husband might handle the query. A refresher look at the title of the book you’re reading should soundly argue my qualifications for tackling the sticky issue of depreciation with the younger generation. The concept has eluded me since my own youth.

In grade school, two classmates and I assembled some odds and ends in front of Sunshine Flagg’s house in a mildly successful attempt to fund an evening at the traveling carnival that had set up down the road. As Sunshine’s mother described it to mine later, managerial conflict was largely limited to disagreement over the pricing of merchandise. I wanted way too much coin for too little bauble, while Sunshine, on the other hand, seemed content to haul our treasures to the curb and simply give them away. (The third party, a neighborhood ruffian named Rob, was a late arrival to the venture and had to be included due to a distant relational affiliation with Sunshine. He somehow wound up taking a cut of the carnival goods in spite of the fact that his sole contribution to the venture was siding with whatever position was more controversial.)

The summer of the yard sale, when I learned the necessity of driving a hard bargain against the ravages of depreciation was the same summer I found out that, unlike my classmates, I did not care for Shawn Cassidy. It was also the summer Sunshine’s aunt Joan taught us the maxim “every cloud has a silver lining.” (My mother thought the observation to be sage, hard wrought advice from the voice of experience, but in truth was merely Aunt Joan’s response to getting to spend time with her boyfriend while supervising us at the aforementioned carnival.)

Thus, I have spent the intervening years in blissful rebellion against the laws of nature, the silver lining here that I can write witty, tongue in cheek prose about my aberrant tendencies. I am, however, tentative about inflicting my own children with such wanton disregard for what I’ve heard others describe as the way things are.

I was, therefore, relieved to hear my husband’s response from the other room. “Biff might be an exception,” he conceded. “What did I pay for Biff? Seven dollars?”

Yes, I agreed, seven dollars.

“I’ll bet you could still get seven dollars for Biff.”

Biff is an old, working class bike that my husband picked up at the thrift store after our daughter Allison’s fifth birthday when she was having difficulty learning to ride her birthday present—a shiny pink model she christened Alice.

We tried, with limited success, to create the scrapbook moment oft used as fodder for life insurance commercials where the father of a young rider runs down the road grasping the back seat of a shiny new two-wheeler. In the ads, the smiling dad slowly relinquishes his grip as the small rider gains speed and confidence and breaks into a toothless grin upon realization that she’s flying solo.

Dozens of such attempts had failed. My husband fatigued. Allison remained stiff, uncertain, afraid to tumble.

“She’s not afraid to crash,” my husband wheezed, “she’s afraid to crash Alice.”

Allison, my husband explained, did not need a support father to learn to ride. This was something she’d have to conquer head on, by herself and for herself –girl vs. front walk, the hard way. It made sense. That was, after all, how I’ve learned just about everything I know.

“You don’t need an Alice right now,” he explained to Allison after returning from the thrift store. Biff, my husband explained, was tough. Well aquatinted with pavement scrapes, Biff could handle the bumps and bangs of the learning experience. Biff, the heavy-duty pick up of the cycling world, wasn’t around to look pretty. Having spent his rust-free youth, Biff had moved on to a higher calling.

Biff’s tough-stuff, no nonsense reputation was never questioned, despite shades of pink and purple still visible beneath myriad scuffs and blemishes-- not even when he was deployed for Brandon’s own training days.

With the aid of Biff and several months’ growth, Allison became a top-notch cyclist. Astride Alice, she pedaled many happy miles, grew even taller, and is now tooling around on Slice, a hefty mountain bike. Brandon eventually grew into his own sleek ride.

Alice, having served her time parading around in streamers sporting little woven baskets and flashy wheel jewelry, is ready to get down to business. There’s a little girl out there somewhere who’s ready to take her scrapes and lumps and conquer the open road. A little shiny around the edges, Alice is still a rookie. She’ll go to a new home at the entry-level rate of $7.

Biff, however, is a seasoned veteran, having gone head to head with both my children’s most spectacular road wars. Survivor of training missions, tested on asphalt, gravel and forest floor, Biff has weathered wind, rain, ice and mud. It’s a wealth of experience he’ll take into his next assignment.

Biff’s not going anywhere for a penny less than $8.