Listeme

What am I supposed to do ? This situation comes up infrequently but often enough to make me feel like a failure. One child does something. Okay, it is not a good thing. Let’s say it’s five dollars missing. Stolen, we presume. Worse, it’s taken from a sibling. So we have this situation. One angry-eyed teenager, convinced that Nothing Will Be Done about his missing money, and three innocent-looking siblings, all managing to look very very sympathetic about their sibling’s plight. Unless someone confesses, it is unlikely that I will track down the guilty party. I don’t have surveillance footage or exploding ink pellets (or whatever the current technology is). I refuse to play that old elementary school teacher game: “okay, we’ll just all be grounded until the guilty person admits what they did.” I will not punish the innocent. And yet I still have the angry-eyed boy, waiting for his justice. Waiting for his five dollars, actually. This time, I can solve at least one pr...

The Ginger Ale Games are over. (I won.) I woke this morning in a cold panic. I didn’t have enough time to get everything done before Odyssey as it was; how can I recover from losing an entire day? So I made a couple of phone calls, canceled two days of work I’d agreed to do – and suddenly I’m a day ahead! Several things on my to-do list are fairly sedentary tasks, so I managed to pick away at those yesterday. One important task: transfer some of my story ideas from my idea file (okay, file is a very optimistic name for a shoebox of index cards) to an idea document so that I don’t have to lug every single scrap of paper I own to this workshop. I found myself mystified by some of these so-called ideas. Some are full paragraphs. One has a sketch, a map, and a diagram – and I have no idea what any of those represent. One card reads: “you never know when you might find a dead body in a restroom stall.” Well, wise words, I’m sure. Another reads: “lack of acetylcholine make...

Forgive me , but there really isn’t much to do in the middle of the night when one has a desperate case of the flu (or food poisoning?), which is why I turned on the television. That ridiculous show “The Nanny” is on several times, I’m sorry to say. ESPN has semi-interesting things, including profiles of professional video game players (who insisted every 30 seconds that playing video games is a sport.) Paraphrased: “I train for this eight hours a day, just like any other athlete.” Local cable channels have great hearings about zoning: “So we decided to go with the gray cedar shingle…” Very serious, very nicely dressed. I admired the participants. I found myself playing little games. Take one sip of ginger ale. Will the next sip (every 10 minutes, of course) occur before the next commercial break? It was almost exciting.

Next to my bed , I keep a pad of paper and pen (and flash cards and water and ear plugs and an alarm clock…). All the writer’s guides suggest this for writing down middle of the night inspirations. This is a fine plan. I’ve had great results. I’ve come up with solutions to difficult plot situations. Names of evil villainesses. Entire worlds. I’ve remembered doctor’s appointments. Occasionally the light of day reveals something less like a solution and more like the mystery of all mankind: “the plumber trumps! Seventeen children, be aware.” But usually the pad of paper holds something… useful. This morning’s result: One word. Mist. Is it a metaphor for my future? A laundry detergent? A new name for Sprite? A weather report? I don’t remember waking. My dreams remain stubbornly opaque. My subconscious mind obviously felt “Mist” to be of enough import to rouse me to reach for the pen. I even capitalized the word. Hmm. I wonder how many seeds of “great Ame...

Addressing Daniel’s graduation announcements today, I’m not struck as much by Sunrise Sunset type music in the mental background as I’d expected. (That will be during the ceremony itself.) I’m more awestruck. How did this wonderful human come to be? All my mistakes and neuroses, my grumpy days, times I was late picking him up at school or forgot to drop off brownies or offered to pay him cold cash instead of making birthday cupcakes for his class…. He should be a mess. Instead, he is this beautiful, gentle, good man with a sharp sense of humor and a sharper sense of justice. Capable and brilliant, yes, but …. Good. I am so lucky to even know him. (Okay, now I’m hearing the violins.)

Surprisingly, there is more to making a compost heap than just tossing cucumber peels out the back door. (It’s taking a lot of energy to resist making hokey parallels and analogies to writing and/or life in general.) I have to decide such things as do I want to make this a “hot” heap or a “cool” heap. Well. Needless to say, more research is required. The real surprising thing is how much I’m enjoying this project. I’m not exactly the Mother Earth type. I wear Birkenstocks only because they are comfortable. Seriously. I can’t imagine driving a Volkswagen van. I have never owned anything tie-dyed. (There are probably more hippie stereotypes that I’m missing, but those are the biggies. Oh! I’ve never smoked pot, either.) And I am not seeing this as an investment in this land, this specific plot of land that is my backyard, because certainly I won’t live here for the rest of my life and probably not even a few more years. Keeping garbage out of the landfills, enriching the...

Today I am starting a compost pile, my first ever, and it seems oddly appropriate to also begin this journal on the same day: tossing chopped up veggies and old history and scraps of paper into these two heaps. Of course, I am insane to start any new project right now. I am sixteen days away from heading off to Odyssey and nine weeks away from the start of Scrabble Nationals. I should be studying or writing or cleaning closets. Before leaving for Odyssey, I need to complete one more story (I've sent two so far). I'm a little reluctant to just grab one from my rough drafts folder. It's not that I don't have plenty to work with. I suppose I want to just start fresh. Odyssey is in many ways a true start for me. I've done a lot of writing. Editors have liked and bought my work. Writing is important, even vital. But I keep holding back from truly going for it, from saying "This is what I do, who I am." So I say it. This is what I do. This ...