Kicking it to the Curb

A couple weeks ago, I did something new; liberating; even brave: I took a deep breath and heaved a large percentage of my clothing into an oversized goodwill bag.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, dreamed of it even, as I stared blankly each morning into a cloth maze of marginal pants, iffy blouses, and unloved dresses. You know the stuff, it’s in your closet, too: the pair of khakis with the grease stain from a hasty drive-thru lunch in late ‘06; the off-shade blouse you’ll find something perfect to wear with “someday”; the misshapen sweater Aunt Lib knitted for you several Christmases ago; the tired T’s.

I’d wade through the sea of fabric, eventually settling on trusted anchor pieces upon which I can always depend: a trio of jeans, dark solid tops, a shapely sweater, or, if the occasion called for it, a staple pair of slacks or skirt.

What with my daily deliberations and reliance on the thin ranks of the tried and true, I was convinced that purging my wardrobe would leave me with nothing to wear. This, of course, is the thinking pattern of those psychotic “hoarders” one sees from time to time on the evening news. The illusion of a vast and varied wardrobe imparted a false sense of security with which I was reluctant to part.

But part I did with a massive heave-ho to the curb on a recent Friday morning. Two factors joined forces in inspiring this bold move: a trip to the antique store and some financial backing in the form of Christmas funds.

The antique store trip was prompted by a do-it-yourself decorating book I picked up on the discount table at Barnes and Noble. According to the text, the antique store was my low cost, one-stop solution to all my household needs. With clothes in all stages of cleanliness spilling from laundry baskets and hampers bursting at the seams, I figured some sort of rustic shelving or chest of drawers would present a decorative-yet- functional storage option. The financial backing served as a safety net against public nudity should I get carried away in my zeal.

Sadly, the book was only half right. While I did find an attractive piece of functional furniture, I can hardly label the turn-of-the-twentieth-century walnut armoire as “low cost.” Let me skip over the droll financial deliberations (I, not my husband, was the reticent party) to say that my decision to limit my wardrobe to what could be contained within the armoire's confines was as solid as the piece itself.

True, I purchased a few new items, and, better yet, salvaged a few with the aid of a seamstress. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit to keeping a few ridiculous items, like the scoop-backed tuxedo tank I’ve always wanted to pair with a classy black jacket for some sort of day/night affair (“From boardroom to ballroom,” my husband mused, when I attempted describe the socially-improbable occasion that would prompt such garb).

As an English major, I’m not much for clichés, but if I did adhere to shop-worm maxims, my current wardrobe would certainly be a case of “less is more.”

Recent mornings, it seems I have more choices than ever, and they’re all good. My drawers are full, but not stuffed, and everything in them makes me smile.

In fact, my style’s so polished I’m looking for ways to extend the streamlined concept to every area of life, and I’m not just talking closets. I’m eyeing bloated corners in every arena and I’m poised to toss.

Friday...

Rain.
No school.
Fingers eager for the keyboard.
Stay tuned.

Musings Over a Warm Mug

Glug, glug, sputter, pshhh…glug glug…the coffee was brewing.

My son, his hastily packed lunch, my daughter, her buzzing cell phone, and my frazzled husband were miles down the road en route to school and work.

I was alone. This is an important fact to file away at this point, because momentarily, you’ll want to foist responsibility for subsequent phenomena upon someone—anyone actually—in an attempt to maintain your sense of structure and order. But I’m going to take that from you here, at the outset, because I never had the sense that what happened inside my kitchen cabinet was normal, so I’m not going to let you think, or even suspect, it , either.

Because it’s simply not normal to reach into your cabinet for your favorite coffee mug, the one you always reach for when it’s clean because your daughter got it for you when she was seven and it makes you smile—it’s just not normal to wrap your hand around the mug and discover that it’s already hot.

I’m not talking maybe-some-stray-sunbeam-seeped-in-though-a-crack-in- the-cabinet hot. I’m talking just-came-out-of-the-kiln hot. So hot that the shelf beneath it is warm to the touch and the surrounding mugs have soaked in its heat sort of hot.

Now, of course, the first thing I’m thinking is fire, because it’s not like I haven’t been right in that very spot of the kitchen, warming leftovers with my walls on fire. It happens. And I’m feeling a little more confident about fires ever since I met a new friend at church who is a firefighter and says he’s totally got my back if I ever set the kitchen aflame, as I'm so prone to do. So I’m kind of looking for the source of the fire, wondering why I didn’t have the presence of mind to put Firefighter Friend on speed dial, when I realize that the cabinet is adjacent to another cabinet containing nothing but--what else--books— in this case stone cold books. All the other dishes in the burning mug cabinet—pots, pans, glasses, and plastics—were all behaving in their typical, cool-to-the-touch manner on the surrounding shelves.

Curious, I cradled the mug in my hands, enjoying the mystery of it’s warmth—which, I must note, did not measurably subside during the entire time I waited for my coffee to brew—even after I poured cream into the bottom.

See, as disturbing as it is to have an inexplicably toasty mug in my kitchen cabinet, I know better than to question the event. No good will come of it. There are no answers, any more than there were during that disturbing incident in the late eighties when I dozed off while watching a daytime drama and awoke to find that a wardrobe—complete with all my clothes, on hangers—had appeared in my dorm room.

It didn’t matter, then, how many times I retraced the events of that afternoon, meticulously interviewing witnesses and establishing timelines like a Crime Scene Investigator on a tricky case—there were no answers to be had. Yes, witnesses could verify that my clothes had been draped over chairs and heaped in corners for weeks prior to the arrival of the Mysterious Wardrobe. Yes, others had been watching the same daytime drama, and verified that indeed, I’d missed mere minutes of the eposode. Yes, everyone could plainly see the large wardrobe and my neatly hanging clothes, situated in the room. But not a single soul knew how, or when, it happened.

It’s the same now, with the mug. It’s one of those mystifying events in life that defies rationalization. I’ve decided to embrace this ambiguity, and count it among the blessings of life. The random, unexplained events of life keep me interested and engaged—on my toes. In fact, if there is an explanation, I don’t think I even want to know. I'd rather spare myself the discovery that life might be mundane, because I’d find the news unbearably devastating.

I’m currently not inclined to view the semi-burning mug as any sort of sign. If I wake up tomorrow to find my bushes aflame, I’ll reconsider.

An Issue of Issues

Kids need to be surrounded by good literature.

My husband and I began our family firmly committed to this shared foundational belief.

Accordingly, our children have grown up in a veritable sea of printed matter. Not only did we both bring every Little Golden Book either of us ever owned into our union, we fervently undertook acquisitions for the Davis Family Library before we even had furniture.

To my knowledge, neither of us has ever sold a single college textbook, a fact which in itself represents the bulk of our educational shelves, considering my husband has, like, 3 bachelor’s degrees and an MBA, and I’m working on my masters. (Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my daughter just put Don Quixote on ebay.)

In early marriage we were members of book-of-the month clubs—yes, plural—the proceedings of which we read from lawn chairs in our aforementioned unfurnished apartment.

When our daughter was born, we showered her with chunky books, waterproof tubby books, and, as she grew, pop-ups and books with tapes.

Even our son, the poorly read black sheep of a fellow who only reads under the duress of an assigned book report, boasts numerous (and pristine) tomes. He’ll tell you he reads—and, who am I to say, maybe he does, at say, 3 AM, or perhaps in the bathroom.
Our personal collection numbers safely in the thousands, with our holdings typically supplemented by any number of grossly overdue library materials, but we won’t go into that. Off hand, I don’t really know how many book cases we have in the house, but we snatched up another one on sale at Target last week.

And did I ever mention our penchant to subscribe to magazines?

I’ve thought on occasion—and shared freely in this forum—that our magazine situation might be a tad out of control. At least, if you think it’s an issue to have every nook and cranny stuffed with periodicals. Personally, I find it comforting to have a wealth of knowledge right at my fingertips no matter where I am in the home.

Why, consider what happened to my husband one fateful day last spring, when he volunteered to cover an hour of two of our daughter’s babysitting shift. Seemed like a simple sort of thing—until I picked him up, and found him pale and off kilter.

“I forgot my book,” he lamented, “and there wasn’t anything at all to read in that house—nothing.”

“Don’t be silly,” I told him, knowing the mother was a teacher. “There must have been something.”

“Well, sort of,” he admitted, gasping something about a Billy Graham coffee table picture book.

If you’ve ever seen the shaken, pasty pall of a man deprived of meaty literature, you, too would regard a ready stash of printed matter as a medical necessity. (And I don’t mean to elude here that we don’t find Billy Graham meaty—it’s just that it was, well, a picture book.)

However, recent events have caused me to wonder if it’s time for a purge. See, I like a neat and tidy appearance around the home, and, although you can totally decorate with books, the look just doesn’t translate with magazines. They’re spilling out of every conceivable basket, end table, and magazine rack in the house—and that’s after I scooped some of the older ones into a stray laundry basket and hid them in the attic.

Worse, I’m now having some organizational trouble and it occurs to me that I might need the space for, say, file folders, or clear, labled containers like the moms in the magazines use.

I spent the better part of a day last week and a good chunk of the day before that searching though stacks of magazines for my son’s missing school pictures. When I failed to find them where they were supposed to be, I figured they must have gotten caught up in some kind of emergency coffee table sweep and stashed in a basket. I kept thumbing through the stacks, expecting at any moment to see my son’s face grinning back at me from the glossy pages of a National Geographic or Smithsonian.

As regular readers might remember, I tend to get obsessive and weird when things go missing. Adding to my trouble was the fact that every place I looked for the pictures, I discovered the absence of more and more things that weren’t where I expected.

So I decided it might be time to gather up all the magazines and you, know, see what we’re really dealing with. So I emptied all the baskets and gathered up all the stray piles and lined them up on the countertop in my studio area. Here’s what we have, minus the contents of the laundry basket, which have either become deeply engulfed within the attic or fell victim to foul play. Here's an aerial view:
For a few lucid moments, I thought about recycling the whole thing and starting fresh. Then I knew I’d really need to read them before I could part with them in good conscious. After making it through 1.5 issues of National Wildlife in about the same number of hours, I became discouraged with the plan. Besides, the mailman came while I was reading, and now I’ve got three more magazines in my pile.

At that point, I realized that today it’s just my son’s picture that’s missing, but if this thing goes unchecked, maybe one day I won’t be able to find him. That would take the concept of surrounding the kids with literature to the ever-soaring heights of my hastily stacked periodicals.

It could be that this is one of those "less is more" cases, but I think I'll err on the side of good literary caution and just see if Target is having another sale. I’m sure I can squeeze a new bookcase in somewhere.

It's All in the Spin

Six weeks. The words have been running in a constant loop through my thoughts for, well, the past five weeks.

My first semester of masters work ended five weeks and one day ago, after thousands of pages of reading, approximately 24,243 words worth of papers, and couple of last minute saves--including an emergency real-time edit of a presentation in progress (an offhanded comment by a professor exposed a critical misreading of a piece of literature as a classmate and I made our way to the podium to present the merits of said piece. Good thing I wore my hip waders and packed a shovel that day...)

Six glorious weeks between the end of my fall semester and the beginning of the spring term seemed like a Christmas gift that could best the entire contents of Santa's sleigh.

Six weeks! At first, the words swelled in my head like the Hallelujah Chorus. Every morning when I woke up, it seemed like the entire Boys Choir of Harlem sang out the refrain, complete with the backing if the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

No papers!

No research!

No vital up-or-downloads!

No Don Quixote!

You'd think that the last thing I'd want to do during this soul-cleansing time of catharsis would be to write. But write, I did. First, for the newspaper--that's right, I remembered, I used to get paid to write. And then, for my sadly neglected but dearly beloved YA fiction venture, as appeared in my previous post. Yes, I remembered, writing is beautiful, when you write what you love.

But it was more than the joy of writing for profit and pleasure that resonated in between the notes of my Ode to Freedom. There have been so many other facets of my hijacked life that I've been able to resuscitate, such as warm, homemade meals on our dinner table: Tuscan chicken, stromboli, risotto, pots and pots of minestrone--tonight we're having lasagna.

Then there's the world of friends and entertaining, into which I wholeheartedly delved one evening just prior to Christmas. Can you imagine ending a meal for 6 adults and 13 children around a chocolate fountain? I can, and the memories are precious.


Oh, and I can't neglect to mention the nearly lost art of reading for pleasure. That book that's been sitting on my must-read list for the past 6 months? Read it, and relished every word like a the last bite of a Hershey's Special Dark bar.

Looking back, it's kind of hard to believe the amount of things I've packed in around Christmas and a week-long New Year's trip to Pennsylvania. Those professional headshots? Done. Undecorating from Christmas and redecorating for winter? Done. Rearranging most of the major furniture in the house? Done. Book signings and school visits? Done. Done.
(See, here I am looking a little more authorly than I usually do, toting around my stuffed tiger):
Maybe all this activity is because that looping refrain in my head morphed into more of a cadence. The Boys Choir moved out last week, making way for The Corporal. The Corporal is intimately aware of the passage of time, and the parameters of the upcoming mission. Spring '08, I believe they call it. The Corporal is big into belting out marching orders, repeating the whole six week loop with a decidedly do-or-die flair.

The Corporal has me shooting off emails to my friends, informing them that it's now or never if they want to get that lunch, or catch up over coffee. The Corporal rides me hard if I sit, staring blankly, as I'm prone to do when overwhelmed. Don't just sit there, he barks, Six weeks, six weeks, that's all you have, six weeks. The Corporal's responsible for all references to the commencement of my studies sounding like the musings of one reporting for a court-appointed prison term, or beginning treatment in an Iron Lung.

Bad news is, an email from Dr P, a Spring '08 Sergent--er, professor, has now sent even The Corporal packing. Dr. P is teaching this pesky one credit "lab" --a "gimme" my son would call it. In the grand scheme of everything else I've signed up for, I didn't view the lab as anything worth much worry. Something about visiting classrooms. No problem.

Dr. P was kind enough to send her syllabus along early. I got bleary-eyed somewhere around page three, and a few paragraphs after that The Corporal's cadence morphed into a dirge.

Among other things, the syllabus outlined various tasks I am to complete during the course of no less than 15 visits to a local school where I will apparently become something of a fixture. These tasks range in complexity and scope. During the course of my tenure, I'll be expected to participate in parent conferences, attend extra-curricular events, observe student hallway interactions, and, perhaps, attend a PTA meeting. I will also be required to conduct interviews with teachers, substitutes, and--I'm not even embellishing here--bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and janitors. Essentially, I'll be examining the school from the ground up. At this point in my reading, the drone of the mourners silenced even The Corporal's most rousing calls.

The worst of it? I'm not even sure I want to teach, at least not in the full-time, public-school capacity.

See, I am, at once, an appreciative but reluctant student. I didn't really set out to return to school full time. Oh, I always intended to get my masters degree someday...after the kids were out of the house, and I got bored with all of my other pursuits. It's just that seeds of restlessness and dissatisfaction began to sprout in the drear, dank sunlessness of last winter, and one blustery February afternoon found me wandering aimlessly around the campus where I now attend. I thought I might pick up a catalogue, browse some selections, and sign up for a course or two; something to spark some new thoughts, that sort of thing.

I left that day with an offer for a full ride.

Suddenly, someday was upon me.

Some days I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunity. Other days, I'm simply overwhelmed.

I even tried to quit once, when it looked like the timing of certain course offerings were going to tip life too far out of balance, with non-stop course work all summer long. The prof I work for wouldn't hear of it, and is teaching me the ill-timed course herself, just her and me. How could I quit, in the face of that kind of confidence and commitment to my success?

The trouble is, I'm a writer, and although this program will give me a masters degree in English, it's also a teaching program. I have a love-hate relationship with teaching. I love being with students. I love discussing deep topics, engaging them in life and learning. But I think it's a little like being a grandparent--it's great as a part time gig.

I love swooping in as a substitute, keeping things spick and span like an educational Mary Poppins--and flying away on my umbrella when the day is done. I love going into classrooms as a special guest, sharing my novels with students, listening to their questions and interpretations of my work, and inspiring them toward their own aspirations. Go in, stir things up a bit, go home. In and out.

Real teaching kind of looks like the anti-writing from where I'm sitting. Grading papers? No, thanks. Calling parents? I don't even call my friends! Attending staff development sessions? Arsenic seems like a more expedient way to go.

Which is why all this business about interviewing safety guards and grading surplus tests really packed a punch. I'm a writer, darn it, a writer. A writer who doesn't go to her own kids' PTA meetings because she'd rather be home, playing with them. I awoke this morning to the lamentation of the mourners. Six weeks, almost gone, six weeks, moving on.

Writers don't interview lunch ladies, I told myself. They don't do grunt work for teachers. They don't rove up and down hallways listening to students gripe, I insisted.

About this point, the journalist in me kicks in. I'm picturing myself walking all over the school with my digital voice recorder and notebook, making copious notes in hallways. We call that "getting the story."

Then it hits me. I write for teens, and I've been given an all access pass to their daily stomping grounds. This is research at it's best! I'm a writer, darn it, and I'm going in.

Someone had better call VH 1 and find out where the Spin Doctors are now, because I think I'm going to need them to pick up the refrain. It goes something like:

One week until I begin research on my upcoming novel!

A Little Story in the Spirit of the Season

Here's a link to a short story I wrote freaturing the characters from my YA novels.

Enjoy!


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

Whittier, and Why I'm Not

Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
--John Greenleaf Whittier

Thus concludes every email sent by one of the university professors for which I work. Today, these poetic words summon memories of witty, incisive commentary I planned to post but have since been lost to the avalanche of research that descended upon me in violent fashion.

Forever lost to literary discourse are several humorous school foibles, a marvellous Thanksgiving Eve piece (half written) concerning some culinary misfortunes involving several lumps of substandard pie crust, and at least one semi-poignant epiphany of the life-appreciation vein.

I had pictures, too--beautiful photos of fall and food, fun and feasting.

But alas, the sad word emitting from my metaphoric pen is simply that there is but an empty void in cyberspace where words should have been.

Life is Good

“Grab the forks!” I stage-whispered to my sister as I smuggled the pumpkin cheesecake to the back room yesterday afternoon.

Generally speaking, we’re sharing, generous people. Really. Particularly when it comes to our brood of young. But for us, pumpkin cheesecake comes but once a year, a fall splurge of unadulterated goodness that we savor, bite by delicious bite. The thought of the children descending upon the savory circle of goodness, leaving mere crumbs in their wake, is not one we can entertain. Thus the cloak and dagger routine as we settled into the sunroom for pie and coffee. The sun filtered through the stained glass windows, creating pools of colored light on the tiled floor and a warm glow on my face as I scooped a forkful of cheesecake through a puddle of caramel and onto my tongue. Ginger and cinnamon, cream cheese and pumpkin mixed and mingled in harmony—-perfection by the forkful.

Life is good.

Thanksgiving weekend has traditionally been a high-water mark: encompassing all the best of fall, my birthday, and a heralding-in of Christmastime all in one jam-packed weekend of family, friends, food and fun.

My sister and her family have joined us for a week of high-spirited festivities. Over the next few days, we’ll go through bags of flour, pounds of butter, gallons of coffee and sinkfuls of dishes. We’ll toast glasses of Pinot Grigio from the oversized cobalt blue bottle I’ve been saving since September. We’ll write messages of thankfulness across turkey-feather cut-outs and read them aloud at the table over pie.

Life is good.

After the turkey has settled and the dishes are once again back on the shelves, we’ll commence with our fourth annual pumpkin carving contest.

Right now, applesauce is simmering in the crock pot. My husband’s potato rolls are popping out of the oven with a quality and consistency capable of consigning the Dough Boy into an embarrassing early retirement. Soon we’ll begin baking the pies: two apple, two pumpkin. If tradition is any indication, our crusts will look terrible, but taste delicious.

Life is good.

Don Quixote, RIP

OK, so I finally made it to the end of Don Quixote and--at the risk of spoiling the end for any of my stalwart readers who may have chosen to share in the experience and read along—he dies. I must admit to being inexplicably stymied and even saddened by this turn of events. After all, I have spent nearly three months traversing alongside our well-meaning knight as he battled flocks of sheep, bludgeoned wineskins and pontificated upon the merits of chivalry astride Rocinante, his trusty steed. At several points today, I cancelled mental reminders to check in with Mr. Quixote—Oh, no need, I’d remember, he died yesterday. And then I’d feel oddly bereft for a moment or two.

On top of all this, things aren’t looking very promising for my planned outing to see Man of La Mancha, either. Among other impediments, I discovered that it is, indeed, a musical, and, as I’ve already indicated, I find this problematic. The risk of getting Quixotesque tunes stuck in my head for days on end seems just too great, particularly in light of my ambivalence concerning his recent passing.

It appears that I must now simply get to work tidying up the affairs of his estate, in the form of the 10-page dossier I must prepare. Before I can really move on, it is my duty to ascribe meaning to these long chapters of his life, and, by extension, my own.

The key, of course, is to delve into this scholarly analysis of a character driven to madness through the reading of too many books without succumbing to the same fate. Stay tuned.

Ghosts

I once heard it said that people seldom recognize the last time certain things happen in life.

When I was a little girl, for instance, my father used to put me on his back and "hop" me up the stairs to bed each night. I have no idea when the last time was that happened. There was no grand finale, no recognizing that the tradition had run its course...it just somehow faded away. Getting "hopped" to bed simply went the way of watching Sesame Street and reading Nancy Drew, and other things I don't do anymore.

As children, we seldom recognize the significance of this parade of endings, change and growth—for that is the real process these passings represent –but as I get older, my senses have sharpened, and I’m keenly aware of the fragility of the things we cherish in life. This is particularly true as I watch as my own children slowly shed the vestiges of their respective childhoods.

My son has this amazing giggle. When something really cracks him up, he succumbs to peals of high pitched giggles that take the wind right out of him. I had no idea, a week or so ago, that it would be the last time I’d hear him laugh in quite the same way.

For all the friends and relatives who may be reading, let me assure you that the little chap is fine—thoroughly happy and more normal than even I was able to recognize, as the following vignette will illustrate:

“What’s wrong with your voice?” I asked, Monday afternoon when he got into the car after school.

“My voice?” he answered, in strained and fractured tones.

“Yes, your voice. When did you get laryngitis?”

“What’s that?” he squeaked and rumbled.

“It’s when you lose your voice,” I explained, patiently. “Can’t you hear yourself?”

He seemed mystified. I dismissed the incident, chalking his altered tones up to damp conditions on a church campout last weekend.

Later that evening, he greeted the girls who come to our home for a couple hours each week to discuss their concerns about life, study the Bible, and eat brownies….roughly in that order. My son typically emerges when rattling in the kitchen cabinets alerts him that he’d better get his share of chocolate before the girls descend upon the pan.

“Little Brandon’s a man!” they all shrieked, seconds into conversation with him.

“What!?” I screamed, in horror.

The girls first regarded me with the same mystified stance my son had demonstrated earlier, before patiently explaining the facts of life. Evidently, twelve year old boys commonly develop cases of “laryngitis,” persisting for weeks or months, after which their voices adopt the deep inflections of manliness.

My son knew what was happening all along. He just didn’t want to be the one to break the news.

Of course, it shouldn’t have been news. I knew all this, intellectually. I just somehow forgot that my son was so close to losing his little boy giggle, that each time he laughed I needed to pay attention, and listen with the reverence with which one regards the fleeting and temporal.

This was the first October that we didn’t spend inordinate amounts of time constructing elaborate Halloween costumes. Halloween has always involved costumes that invariably required tools, trips to Home Depot, yards of fabric and the occasional altering of laundry baskets or other household wares. The kids would begin planning the next year’s costume around 9 PM October 31st, right after we revived them from their sugar comas. I used to impose an October 15 deadline for reporting final changes in costume choices, to allow time to sew, alter or construct the components necessary to transform them into miniature literary figures, superheros or machinery, such as the year my daughter became a life-sized, candy-dispensing vending machine and was subsequently mugged and toppled by a rabid gang of preschoolers.

Tonight was eerily normal. Not that the children were disinterested in Halloween —we hosted a costume party last Friday, and bought a lot of candy and watched a scary film—-but it was different. Ghosts of Halloween past haunted my thoughts.

Of course, life changes aren’t limited to the growth of children. Embedded in each moment are wonderful, amazing things we all take for granted. I try to recognize them as I go through my day: the smell of wood each morning as I walk into the sunroom my husband built for me, the way the sun intensifies the colors in my stained glass windows at certain times of the day, the sound of my Labradors barking too loudly and frequently in protection of me when I’m home alone.

My son still giggles. It just sounds a little different, and from now on, it always will. Our family still gathered around the TV with a big bowl of candy and watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. These moments, too, are special, and likewise, destined to become spectres of memory, in time joining the ranks of all that used to be and isn't anymore.

Recognize your moments as they parade past. Salute them. Acknowledge their significance, for each one represents a page of a story that with a plot that moves all to quickly…and that story is your own.

The Engine is Running, but No One’s at the Wheel

“I don’t have my keys!” I said in alarm to my friend Kathy as we started out of the fabric store last week.I don’t often have my keys, making me the only one that’s ever alarmed by the fact.

I gave my pockets the usual pat down and whirled around in alert surveillance as though the keys might miraculously materialize mid-aisle.

“Did you set them down somewhere?” Kathy asked.

“No, I never had them,” I said, slowly realizing that I must have left them in the car. I was already reaching for my cell phone so I could alert Onstar of our plight. Inherent in this course of action is the assumption that if, indeed, I’d been so remiss to have left my keys in the car then, of course, I’d locked them in.

Instinctively, I reached for the handle, and the door popped open. “Look at this,” I scolded myself, “I left the keys in an unlocked car!”

Kathy jumped in the passenger’s seat while I scoped around for the keys.

“It’s running,” Kathy observed.

“What?”

“The car is already running.”

I’d like to say that it wasn’t so, that’d she’d merely misinterpreted the situation; but as a journalist, I’m committed to factual representation of events. In the spirit of full disclosure, it is my duty to report that all of the evidence indicates that I simply existed my running car and proceeded to shop for upwards of twenty minutes. I should also probably mention that said events played out in a tired shopping center in the middle of the Homeless District.

There’s really nothing one can say in this type of situation, so I just made a beeline for the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru, which I later discovered was an ideal response. Turns out, all the latest research indicates that coffee in excess of three cups per day wards off dementia. Not having read that report at the time of these events, I can only assume that my most basic biological urges kicked in to compensate for my failing faculties.

Apparently the coffee didn’t have time to kick in before we were finished at the next store. Upon finding the ideal fabric, I had it measured and cut and, feeling done, headed for the exit.

“Aren’t you going to pay for that?” Kathy asked as I started out the door.

Sadly, the afternoon mirrored the rest of my life--a well oiled machine generating due dates, projects, family needs, and social commitments with the precision of a surgeon and the speed of Marion Jones on steroids. Trouble is, in the midst of all this accuracy and regularity, I’m browsing the metaphoric aisles of life, whistling and loitering while the engine of reality hums along with no one at the wheel.

Anyone up for a coffee break?

The Sound of Music

I thought I had the upper hand in the ongoing combat in which I’m engaged with my ever present Spanish adversary, Don Quixote.

I was feeling pretty smug, due to a secret weapon I deployed several weeks back that has resulted in my not actually reading any of the text in say, 300 pages, yet still yielding a high rate of return on measures of evaluation.

Now, lest you jump to the conclusion that I’ve stooped to the shallow depths of Cliff’s Notes and their ilk or even some graver slight of hand, let me assure you that I have absorbed the text on a word-for-word basis. Let me further offer that my arsenal bears the stamp of approval of my sister, the essence of purism.

I gained command in the battle over this dry tome when my resourceful husband gave me a 36-CD audio accounting of the exploits of my armored foe. With the power of multi-tasking working for me during otherwise wasted commutes, I quickly overtook the forces—over 900 pages strong—that promised to seize control over my waking hours.

In my initial reveling over the success of my racket, I forgot that battles are costly to both sides. No one really wins.

The toll extracted from my person began in such an innocent, yea even uplifting, manner that I didn’t recognize what was happening. I found it a mere curiosity when in the middle of random Thursdays and Fridays I had the choruses from whatever praise and worship song we sang in church the previous Sunday running a continuous loop through my head.

When one particularly virulent chorus persisted well into its second week, I identified the problem and attributed it to its proper source—the Quixote CDs, which replaced the wide range of music I formerly enjoyed on my daily commutes.

Resilient, I laughed the problem off. I embraced the chorus, singing it aloud to dull the effect of its merciless grip. Not to be beaten, Quixote redoubled his efforts and struck back, this time taking advantage of an otherwise harmless gaming episode with my husband.

Following an evening of virtual boxing combat with our wii, I awoke the following morning to a disturbing loop of the tinny, computer generated notes from the wii background soundtrack. It goes roughly like this: Da da da-da-da…dat,dat. Over and over and over.

And over and over and over.

And…

Bordering on a level of insanity that rivaled that of my knightly nemesis, I chose to rebel today. Tossing aside the disk of droll Quixote verbiage, I listened to music....selections of jazz, nearly forgotten favorites, random clips from the radio.

The fact that I actually wept with joy and relief I find at once embarrassing and necessary to report. The horns! The piano! The percussion!

With The Big Project looming, the war wages on. But I’m already planning to have the last laugh. Turns out, Man of La Mancha is in town, and I think I’ll drag my husband to see it. I figure if I can still celebrate the story, then I will have truly won.

As long as it’s not a musical.

"The Family" Tree

Last week, I received a newspaper assignment that sent me digging into my mafia heritage.

Which wasn’t quite as exciting as it sounds, but was still pretty interesting nonetheless.

My editor wanted an up-close-and-personal look into the activities of the Genealogical Society Library. This worried my daughter, since I announced that she’d be accompanying me on the investigation, and she didn’t think genealogical research held much in the way of promise either for her morning or my story.

I took this as a good sign, as most of my best stories begin this way. There’s some kind of ironic inverse relationship between the perceived potential of a lead and the story that results. I’ve come to take it as a challenge—the less I have to work with, the better. Often in these situations, the expectations are low, which gives me the freedom to find my own angle and surprise everyone—especially myself—with what my editor calls a “good read.”

I decided that the most interesting way for me to approach the story would be to test the capabilities of the library’s computer data bases by doing a little background check on the Italian side of my family.

Now, I knew there were some, shall we say, associations between my great grandfather and some gentlemen I’d heard referenced as “Italian businessmen.” There was also the specter of “Uncle Icy” that has long loomed in the backdrop of family lore. The stories most commonly connect him with some sort of hijinks involving large amounts of cash stashed behind a loose brick in the fireplace.

But I must say even I must that even I was surprised by the ease at which a clear, crisp portrait of Mafioso developed like an old school Polaroid right before my very eyes.

According to 1930 census records, “The Family” apparently resided in several improbably assessed pieces of real estate in New Jersey, the highest price tag undoubtedly belonging to a property that's always been referenced as “the castle.”

During a time in which the rest of the Patterson county, NJ residents were paying rents of, say, $25 to $35 per month, my clan owned real estate valued well into the 5-digit bracket.

There were the familiar names of my grandfather and his siblings listed on the 1930 report, but beneath their names appeared a mysterious other head-of-household with whom I share a name….not my generically American married name, but my real, thoroughly Italian family name.

By all accounts, the man listed as the head of this other household was my pseudo-apocryphal Uncle Icy. The Genealogical Research staff may or may not have located a photograph of Icy. If the photo was, indeed, Uncle Icy, then it my duty to report that Icy was, well, hot.

All of which I find rather alarming, because the actual identity of Uncle Icy has always been shrouded in an air of mystery, not unlike the fabled “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame,-- although I doubt my peers will recall that historical entity, as the Watergate scandal is just one of the dozens of news stories I was prematurely exposed to in my preschool years.
At this point let me pause to insert a photo of my daughter with a member of the Genealogical Staff:



Note the bored look of disinterest.

“How do you always know I’m going to like your stories?” my daughter lamented in mock chagrin upon leaving the library.

We came home from the visit armed with reams of documents and more stories than we could pack into an entire Genealogical magazine, let only one paltry newspaper article. My husband logged on the home version of the library database we’d used. After a lost night of sleep and a grilled dinner compromised by neglect while he followed a hot lead on a great grandmother, he’s managed to compile an impressive amount of data for our collective family forest.

Meanwhile, with the genelogy feature safely put to bed, I've moved on to a feature story on a 70-year old lady who has been golfing the same course for 55 years. The uneasy panic at the idea of crafting a “good read” based on that scant data really has my juices flowing. I can’t wait to read it.

Winter Girl

“What’s with the shrine?” my daughter asked as she came down into our sunroom and observed the gathered assemblage of Yankee paraphernalia one will witness throughout this post’s illustrations.

She awaited a response with the same sort of vague wariness with which I’ve been regarded since what we’ll simply refer to as The Events in the Bronx last evening.

See, my relationship with the New York Yankees goes back to the baseball-card collecting, back-yard-pick-up-game days of my youth. These were the days when the Bronx was Burning and the Son of Sam commanded headlines. I remember it clearly, despite my tender, single-digit years, what with the constant news of murder and mayhem. I recall one afternoon in particular when my father went into the city to catch a game with a group of Sunday School students. I was certain that I wasn’t invited because of the strong likelihood that the party would meet their demise at the hands of the serial killer.

Nevertheless, I do have memories from other trips to Yankee stadium, during safer times, documented in blurry images from my 110 film camera. There’s Bucky Dent running past the dugout, Billy Martin in the middle of one of his famed temper tantrums, and some sort of a post-game scuffle outside the stadium.



According to the team checklist of the back of my 1979 NY Yankee team baseball card, I have—or at one time had—cards of the same year for Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Lou Piniella and the rest of the roster, save five. I’ll have to take a look for those cards.



I also have an entry in an embattled journal for August 2, 1979 which reads, simply, “Thurmon Monson dided today.” I remember that day.

Considering the thematic matter of yesterday’s post, I should point out that it would be a mistake to read too much into the title of today’s missive. My team’s unraveling has not sent me plummeting into a premature “winter.” I have no plans on emulating Hunter S. Thompson, the deeply troubled journalist who offed himself after the 2005 Super Bowl, unable to face the bleak specter of another icy off season.

Today’s title is actually a reference to Fever Pitch, a movie I shouldn’t like, on principal, due to its pro-Red Soxs-theme, but I do, because it’s great baseball. In the movie, Drew Barrymore’s character refers to Jimmy Fallon’s character as alternately “Summer Guy” or “Winter Guy” depending on whether or not it’s baseball season. She fell in love with the versatile and attentive Winter Guy, but was less impressed with the ultra-focused Summer Guy, whose attention was riveted to the historical events that went down during the 2004 post-season. You can hardly blame him—as I mentioned, it was great baseball.

Which brings me to the current state of things in New York, what with manager Joe Torre’s job on the skids for his failure to pilot the team into the second round of the play offs. Sure, it’s a let down—but really, when the options for evaluating the season are pass/fail with the World Series earning a pass and all else is failure, that’s a fail-proof recipe for disappointment. Sure, it’s been six years since a World Series appearance, and seven since a win, but what about the Indians, who haven’t made it since 1948? The sold out crowds, the dramatic come-from behind games, the season’s second half comeback—it was great baseball.

Problem is, I’m a lot more like George Steinbrenner than I’d like to admit. I set my standards so impossibly high, the only direction I can go is down. It doesn’t matter what area—grades, home life, writing—I’ll accept nothing short of superlatives. It’s perfect or it’s failure.

When I was a psychology student, I participated in an in-class exercise involving some type of evaluation of how real life compared to our standards. Mine didn’t. Essentially, I gave myself an “F”. Part of the assignment was figuring out how to fix the gap between where we were and where we wanted to be. I calculated, I mused, I grasped at straws—nothing seemed to fit. Frustrated, I told the professor that the only thing I could do was lower my standards. This was offered as an admission of failure, not as a viable option. The professor wrote in big, red pen, something to the effect that I’d better lower my standards or understand I’d die striving.

For a long, long time I didn’t understand what I heard as a lot of mixed messages. On one hand, we’re supposed to “give our all” on the other hand we’re supposed to know when something is ‘good enough.” How can anything be good enough if you know better is possible?

I’m getting it now, in little bits. You do the best you can with what you have in front of you, and you move on to the next thing. If all you ever do is one thing, ever, I guess you can take the time to make it perfect. But if you want to do many things in life, at some point you have to say, “this is as good as I can do with the time and resources I have now.” And you move on to tackle the next thing.

Of course, my fall break didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted. I had two months worth of activities and projects I wanted to cram into four days. But you know what, I did the important stuff. And now that baseball season is over, Winter Girl is going to have one less thing vying for her attention. School starts back again tomorrow. There are papers to write, and much more Don Quixote to read. Plus, there are all those unfinished projects. Winter Girl is on it.

Full Bloom in October

“Don’t forget those drum lessons.”

I said this in parting to the woman sitting next to me at the Wynton Marsalis concert I attended with my son a couple weeks back. I’ve discovered that a college ID is a gateway to free and cut-rate culture, particularly when your university has just erected a multi-zillion dollar arts center striving to put itself on the “national and international arts map.” But I digress. During intermission, I learned that the woman sitting next to me had always wanted to be a drummer—sadly, social conventions of her time were not on her side. Her high school band director turned her away, explaining that “girls can’t be drummers.”

Aghast, I suggested that it wasn’t too late, that it didn’t matter that high school was decades past, that she, in fact, was facing senior citizenship; her dream could—and should—still be realized.

I hope that lady went home and made some calls. I hope she’s poking around an instrument rental shop even as I type these words, selecting the perfect drum kit to sit in the middle of the garage her grand kids cleared out last weekend. I hope it goes down like that, because way too often, it simply doesn’t.

Way too often people hit the brakes on their development as soon as some randomly selected birthday or milestone rolls in and suddenly the shadows seem to lengthen and the crisp snap in the air is mistaken for a deep freeze that ushers in a state of stagnancy marked by could-haves and should-haves and what-ifs.

I know people that don’t like October—the month when our physical world takes on long shadows and a cold snap. These colorblind folks see autumn in shades of grim-reaper-grey, missing the red-hot message embedded in the warm tones of the earth to live with vibrancy and urgency.

My New York Yankees understand the need to live urgently in October, and, facing elimination, they finally woke up and played like it last night. I know baseball is just a game, and it’s just another October, that the Yankee organization, win or lose, will have other chances, other years. But not with these Yankees. Not with this group of players, most of whom are my age, many of whom may not be back for another season. This is the team I’ve cheered, the team whose ups and downs have so eerily mirrored my own over the past few seasons, the team who has so much going for them, but just can’t quite pull it together.

Facing elimination once again tonight, I hope they can pull off a historic October rally—a tale that will live long and large in Yankee lore. I hope these guys, in the Octobers of their own lives, can bask in World Series glory this once before they hand the team over to the younger, leaner boys of summer already nipping at their heels, ready for their own time in the sun.

I love October. I number myself among those who look forward to autumn, who embrace it. When you love autumn, it’s not because you don’t know that winter’s coming—you do. You feel it intensely, but you also recognize that some of the best days of the year are sandwiched between the calendar page with the pumpkins and the one with the crystalline void of the next season. You love it because you understand that a well spent autumn of harvesting and planting can make for a better winter and a better legacy.

The picture at the beginning of this post was taken in my back yard last week. In August, a couple of weeks after returning from the x-country trip, I began to lament that there would be no sunflowers this year. The back of the seed package suggests April planting. I’ve already learned that leads to a late-June bloom. As I’m usually away that week, I typically start my seeds in May or early June and get July or August flowers. So I already knew there was some wiggle room in the suggested planting schedule. I just didn't know how much.

This flower exists simply because I said to myself in mid-August--a full third of a year past the perscribed sowing season--what have I got to lose? and started some seeds. These flowers grew sturdy and strong and beautiful, simply because I gave them a chance. From now on, I plan to stagger my seedlings so I can have sunflowers blooming for several months each year.

So here’s to fall gardens and drum lessons at any season in life.

Here’s to Joe Torre and the boys from the Bronx.

Go Yankees.

Fall Break

Readers, I am basking in the delight of four and a half days with nothing more on my agenda than focusing on all the important things that have fallen through the cracks over six weeks of school. I'm going to shovel out my desk area, finish some art projects, and add some posts to my neglected blog. There's a backlog of topics I'm planning to write about here over the next few days. Expect pictures, pontifications and some thoughts that will hopefully make you smile and think. Although my fall posting schedule has become a shadow of the summer schedule to which you may have become accustomed, don't give up on me. I have no plans to let this forum become part of the flotsam and jetsam of my current post-school existence. We'll talk more soon.

It Wasn't Just a Dream

“It’s due today.”

Spencer’s normally affable grin was reduced to a grim flatline.

You know that recurrent dream that persists, long after high school or college graduation, the one where you show up for class and everyone’s handing in "the big project," the one you never knew existed?

If so, then you’re familiar with the clammy panic that becomes as much a part of the dream as the images of the concerned faces of classmates and the grey blur of syllabus pages fanning through your fingers as you frantically search for documentation to somehow validate your ineptitude. You know the how-could-I-have-been-so-wrong horror, balanced by the relief upon waking up to discover “it was only a dream.”

Readers, I have been to the other side of that dream, to the dismal realms of human experience that serve to inspire these night frights. And not only have I lived to tell, it’s quite possible that reality has conspired to shatter the power of these nightmares.

Here’s how it went down. Last week, a nameless professor had us pair up to produce a joint piece of homework—now I know homework doesn’t hold quite the same weight as “the big project” but indulge me for the sake of the story.

After class, my partner Spencer and I exchanged e-mails, made plans to meet at the coffee shop and the like. Midweek, everything was going according to plan—our plan, which evidently had nothing to do with real life, as evidenced by the panic on my partner’s face as I entered class.

“Who said?” I demanded as I scrambled for my notes.

Spencer made a sweeping gesture across the room. “Everyone.”

He then dissolved into a lament about his ruined grade, his past failures, and his dismal future.

Although stunned to be in the middle of a situation that had never failed to be anything but a dream, I retained my faculties.

“Don’t worry,” I assured my distraught classmate. “I’ve got this.”

Now, fortunately, I had a little something working in my favor. Seems a couple weeks back, Professor Nameless had asked me to do some volunteer work, which I’d heartily tacked. He asked for my aid because he was impressed by my study habits and contributions to the class.

Now, if I were a sane individual, I probably should have succumbed to the dispair that felled my partner. After all, arriving to class with incomplete work, and worse, being unaware of this fact isn’t the mark of the studious person Prof N had taken me for.

What’s more is, we still don’t know where we went wrong. Spencer and I evidently attended some sort or parallel class, where Prof N. said things to which only we were privy. No one else can attest to the existence of that class.

By no account should I have felt empowered by these events, but, nonetheless, I went for it.

“Prof N!” I exclaimed as he came through the door. “Such and such isn’t due today, is it?”

Now, Prof N. may have been startled, but he didn’t show it. He coyly dodged my question, leaving a general sense of mystery in air, while simultaneously conveying through the merest nuance of tone that everything was going to be all right.

By the end of class, he was referring to “those who finished early” while reiterating the essentials for “those who were turning in on Friday”—all two of us—in seamless fashion.

Ironically, the topic of the assignment concerned the lowering of stress levels in the classroom environment.

“Did you have a high stress moment there in the beginning?” Prof N. said with a laugh as he exited the room after class.

“Oh just a little bit,” I laughed.

Spencer was stunned, but he's fully recovered. I think we both got an A.

A Tale of Two Lists

There's a post in the works, I promise.

There are things I must do today, and there are things I will do today because I must. Today I must edit a paper, draft another, and go to class. Today I will go for a run, re-pot some herbs, play with my children, brush my dogs and finish the post I'm working on--because those are the things I must do, the things that give life substance.

Don't confuse the things on your to-do list with the things you really must to do. Bump a must-do item or two to tomorrow's list if that's what it takes to make room to laugh with a child, make pumpkin bread or plant some flowers--because that's the list from which you'll draw your memories when you're eighty or ninety or even forty five.

Go...play, read for pleasure, take a walk...then check back here later for a longer post. If you come back here before I do, leave a comment about what you did today--not from the must-do list, but from the do-because-you-must one. And if you make pumpkin bread, save me a slice. I'm on my last piece.

Foreign Affairs

Exiting my "Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages" class yesterday, I had no way of knowing how quickly I’d find practical use for the theories jotted inside my notebook.

Who knew I’d find useful application for notions such as comprehensible input, or the conversation between Josh and Miguel, which my textbook lauds as exemplary communication between a member of the native population and a new arrival?

What would have surprised me the most, had I known what awaited me at the office that sunny afternoon, was that circumstances were about to cast me into the role of Miguel, and I’d need every ounce of that lad’s pluck and fortitude to chart my path through the foreign territory that lie ahead.

Blissfully unaware, I strolled across campus, glad that I could enjoy the walk, unlike last week when I waited too long line for cheap Wynton Marcellas tickets and had to sprint across campus clutching my lunch cooler like a medic en route to surgery with a fresh organ or detached limb.

All pretense of leisure vanished as I arrived at the threshold of my office. Ominously huddled around the computer were Dr. S, Professor F and the One I Knew to be Samson.

Now, the arrival of Samson was an event that had loomed large since my own arrival, weeks earlier. Known as a Computer Guru with a penchant for inadequate explanations of Computer Phenomena, Samson’s presence was also indicative of an event I’ve heard referenced as the Vital Upload, or perhaps Download, invariably spoken of with a shudder.

I thought of excusing myself, not wanting to rudely barge into a meeting obviously well into its prime, but Dr. S. ushered me in with enthusiasm, introducing me in a tone I felt should only be reserved for someone with Key Player status.

Both Samson and the Vital Up-or-Down load are associated with a program that, they tell me, “doesn’t let you fix your errors.” Dr. S, Professor F. and the outgoing graduate assistants—perhaps I failed to mention that the other two grad assistants are leaving, and it’ll be down to just me in mere weeks?—are all understandably tentative of this system, thus the summons of Samson.

I know my readers will agree that a rigid system of Tough Standards is not one that seems a good fit for my skills, and every day that passed without mention of my involvement was chalked up to the "no news is good news" category.

I was hastily handed some literature and guided to a chair near the terminal. Samson’s lips were moving, but he wasn’t saying anything to which I could connect meaning. His literature was equally incomprehensible.

In a wave of understanding, I suddenly realized I’m Miguel.

Quickly summoning the particulars to memory, I realized that I was in an ideal situation for foreign-tongue acquisition. The lesson indicated that “situationally-bound” interaction—I think the book had activities such as the construction of model cars, or baking cookies in mind—lended itself to learning new language.

The text also made mention of an idea known as comprehensible input, or vocabulary with which one is familiar, mixed in with language that is slightly out of reach.

Focusing carefully on Sampson’s speech, I came to realize that we, indeed, possessed some shared vocabulary. I could, for instance, pick up words like “computer” and “internet.”

What would Miguel do? I wondered. Bringing the printed conversation to mind, I recalled Miguel contributed only two utterances to the dialogue: “Huh” and “OK,” as Josh prattled on endlessly about colors and shapes and crayons. And the authors of the text seemed to think he did just fine.

In the tradition of Miguel, I fell silent, nodding only occasionally.

I realized I was beginning to gather meaning when I clearly picked out my name in the conversational flow. From context, I was pretty sure the Vital something-or-other was the topic, and there seemed to be some concern over this business of the non-correctable program with which someone had to work.

Dr. S seemed pretty convinced that not too many people should get involved, in fact, she seemed to want only one person to handle this tricky situation.

And then she said my name.

Yes, readers, it all became clear. It’s an Upload. Of significant data. Scores. Social Security numbers. Student Records. Into a no-compromise program unforgiving of even the common typo.

Did I mention that I really can’t spell or type?

Reeling, I leaned heavily on the structure provided by Miguel’s discourse with Joshua. I had only two responses from which to choose.

All eyes on me and all I can mange is “Huh?”

Office Hours and Minutes

I’ve decided that I’m not suited for office work.

Of course, this really isn’t a surprise, considering that I’ve held one office job, ever, for a few months when I was 20-- a colorful patch of employment that ended in a spectacular inferno fueled by so many missing memos and lost message slips.

If she doesn’t already, Dr. S may soon regret that she didn’t ask for enumeration of my office credentials before taking me on as her graduate assistant. At the time, last winter, when she selected me for this opportunity, she was wooed by my creative writing pursuits, and by the fact that I’ll be around for awhile, considering that it’s going to take me an unnaturally long time to obtain my masters degree in English, having done all of my undergrad work in psychology.

I’m two weeks into the gig, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my particular graduate assistantship is likely going to wind up light on teaching, grading and literary pursuits, and heavy on the messages, copies and secretarial skills.

Too bad I don’t have any.

A typical shift—two hours, twice a week for me this semester—consists of taking messages, filing, making copies and sundry tasks.

Nearly 45 minutes into my Wednesday shift, I was still attempting to communicate vital information from the three messages I found on the voice mail. I had to replay each one any number of times, as the callers had random names with ambiguous spellings and a collective tendency to mumble. Ten post-it notes and five message slips later, I took at look at the filing. The folders were topped with notes containing ominous instructions such as “remove from program.” Quickly determining that no one’s academic future should be tossed to the erratic winds of my organizational guesswork, I moved right on to copies.

By this time, I was two hours in and ready to go home, but I had to put in an extra hour to make up for the shift I missed on Labor Day. I was pale and fighting the effects of vitamin D deprivation. My muscles were succumbing to atrophy. I was thankful for the opportunity to travel to the second floor copier, a fickle, computerized monstrosity with a tendency to die as soon as I cross the threshold.

I’ve never personally made copies. Generally, I look so confused, poking and peering at the copying device that some kind soul within the department takes the papers off my hands, and performs a little smoke and mirrors routine with the machine that I never seem to be able to replicate. The single time I attempted a complex, two-sided job, the machine instantly jammed and I stood there saying helpful things like “That’s not a good sign” as office personnel pulled shredded paper from deep within the inner workings.

I spent the last hour of my extended Wednesday shift attempting to impress Dr. S with my detective skills and web acumen in my attempts to dispose of a surplus piece of computer equipment I was asked to have removed. I scoured the campus directory for listings from three departments--IT, Housekeeping and Plant Operations—looking for the mysterious “warehouse” to which I was to banish the unwanted equipment. I came up empty, and finally had to ask for help. Wouldn’t you know, there’s a whole department called “Warehouse,” listed right under the W’s.

Of course Warehouse needed some forms before they’d even think about coming for the computer, so I had them talk me through a trail of links so I could download all the forms and have them ready for Dr. S. I spent no less than 20 minutes trying in vain to make the forms print. When Dr. S happened by, I casually mentioned that I was having a bit of trouble with the printer. Turns out, the computer is hooked up to three printers and a simple click of the mouse sends the printed matter right where you need it to go.

Of course, Dr. S. had already filled out the forms. They were sitting, all signed and dated right on top of the surplus computer.

On Friday, I made up my other missed Labor Day hour by attending a free lunch with Dr. S and taking the minutes of the Important Meeting that transpired over the sun dried tomato wraps and lemon cake. It was my duty to sit with my laptop like a court reporter, noting the details of key events.

Not knowing the names of the key players posed a bit of a challenge, but I soldiered on, typing up important quotes from “guy with the green tie,” “Justin, the student” and “Artsy guy in black.” Which would have all worked out just fine if my computer hadn’t frozen up just as “Important Person from the School District” made some fine observations that made Dr. S nod deeply in agreement.

I began making hasty notations on scratch paper with the pen I’d had the good sense to borrow just before the meeting began, but quickly discovered that I couldn’t keep up. Turning back to my computer, I discovered that my document was frozen, but the computer in general was not. I opened a new file and carried on, until THAT file froze as soon as I attempted to save it. By the time the meeting ended, I had the account thereof recorded on three unsaved files I hoped to keep on life support by plugging my computer into the outlet in the back of my van.

By the time I got home, my entire computer had locked up, and the annals of the Really Important Meeting would have been lost to history were I not married to a resourceful computer guy who managed to save two out of the three files.

Thank goodness for all that creative writing experience. Dr. S was right on. When it came to filling in the information from the missing file, it really came in handy.