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Heading to Michigan! Back on or around August 8.

Confessions of various inadequacies: I’m afraid of bees. (Afraid enough that I always vaguely worried about driving the convertible; would I panic if one “attacked” me while I drove and swerve off the road?) I’ve never parallel parked, not the correct, official way. The driving test did not require it. Bookstores are sucking creatures that settle on my neck and shoulder and draw out my blood and money. I like the Dairy Queen strawberry shortcake blizzard. Sorry. My dog gets away with stuff she shouldn’t because I think she’s adorable. “Now, Curie, you shouldn’t eat someone’s shoe… but, awww, sweetie, come here. You want that shoe? They won’t mind giving it to such a cute little girl!” Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. I prefer the sheets untucked at the foot of the bed. If they’re tucked, I untuck them before getting in. Feet should be able to move in the night. You know, so you can run away from dream monsters. I write down my middle-of-the-night musings an...

Golly . Busy days. Greg is engaged. He seems very happy. I am happy for him, for them. The kids are all learning how to interact with one another and with Greg and Tina. They’re doing great*. As part of the divorce agreement, I gave up ownership of the house (in exchange for cash, of course.) This was relatively hard for me. That house was the first house I owned. I moved a lot as a kid, and I had a lot of emotional energy poured into that house. Home. I am working pretty hard. My Scrabble rating is now 1783. Daniel moved in with me. His girlfriend Christina from Scotland also is staying with me. They are wonderful to have around. Christina is great (and her accent is, okay, just absolutely adorable.) Curie is thrilled to have them here, too. She yodels at them. My writing fever is still not as consistent as I would like, but I have some plans. *Great = griping and complaining. But in a cooperative way!

Things I think versus things I say: I’m somewhat less confrontational than most people. (I can hear the guffaws from my family and friends from here. Less confrontational? She thinks she’s less confrontational? She’s a wuss. She rolls over and plays dead.) Okay, whatever. It’s just a matter of translating. Owner of UgliestPuppyEverBorn: Wow, look at that; all the hair on your dog’s back is standing up! Me: (nervous chuckle) Yeah, look at that! Translation: Yes, you cretin, that’s because your dog is being very aggressive and leaping on MY legs and barking profanities in my dog’s face. Why don’t you and your inebriated “date” take your dog to obedience classes? Also: And don’t turn your back on me when I’m trying to fend off your dog. It is dangerous and rude. Even later: And, by the way, your dog is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. What the HECK is that breed? How can it breathe with that squashed nose? Even later: Hmph.

Tuesday afternoon at 2:30, I watched my son Aaron march out of high school and into the world. What will he do? Who will he be? He is a man already. He drives. He works. He decides. There are few people as honest as he is, whether the question is “did you spill this soda on the carpet?” or “does this dress look good on me?” He says what he really thinks, even if it is not a popular opinion. He commits. He keeps his word. He looks out for his family and friends. Okay, so sometimes he doesn’t notice things. (We all still tease him about the fact that he didn’t notice that his aunt was going to have a baby even when she was 9 months along and wider than she was tall.) He focuses on other things. When he was younger, cousins and family friends and even sometimes his siblings would bicker over who got to sit next to him. I can see why.

Stamford tomorrow. My rating going in is 1713, near the middle of my field. The last two tournaments in Stamford have not been my best efforts. I hope to play at least reasonably well. I want to make sure I sleep enough and eat healthy food. Modest goals, but those two factors are more than half the battle. My study recently has been haphazard at best: flashcards in the bathroom, at red lights, in odd minutes waiting in lines. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever get back to a regular study schedule. I like the way my life is going, though. So I’ll accept the random flashcard study for now.

At the end of Back to the Future, Marty wakes to find that life has changed. His dad isn’t bent over and scared of the world. His mom is, well, cute and happy. His brother is wearing a suit instead of a fast food uniform. His sister is less… slutty. His dream car is in the garage. Good old Biff is outside waxing George’s car instead of thwapping George on the head. In the theater, we are all thinking, “yeah!” Life has returned to the path it was originally on, before Marty’s parents were brought together by mistakes and guilt and cowardice. This is the way life was supposed to be. But that, of course, assumes that there is a plan. That the universe wants us to have a better life, that our mistakes and evil deeds and, yes, teetering on a branch with binoculars outside the pretty girl’s house - that all these things interfere with what the universe intends for us. That there is a right path. Apparently the universe also wants us to drive cool four-wheel-drive trucks.

I’ve felt at loose ends most of this weekend. Aaron had his wisdom teeth out on Saturday (all FIVE of them), and I neither drove him nor sat by his side nor did any of the things “Moms” do. (I did, however, drive his siblings pretty much crazy all day Saturday by asking them to look in on him about every 20-30 minutes. “Is he breathing?” “No, should he be?”) Memorial Day weekends have been traditionally family weekends for the past 20 years. Wedding anniversary, Greg’s birthday, picnics with in-laws. So it has been weird. I struggle with perceptions. People think it’s unnatural for a woman to voluntarily live apart from her kids. There is an flash of “those poor abandoned kids” sometimes in people’s eyes. Or at least I imagine so. My reasons are good and right and my children know them. Importantly, they don’t feel abandoned. They know that I want them to thrive, to feel strong in their home, in their schools, with their friends and, yes, with their dad. They are getting to ...

So I went to see the new Star Wars movie. It was an action-packed night. First, I met everyone at the house. Daniel and Christopher both grabbed seats in my car, which left Emily and Chris trying to figure out who would ride with us and who had to ride alone with Dad and Tina. (Tina is Dad’s girlfriend. She’s a very nice person. Long ago, we used to go on vacations with her and her boys.) But none of the kids want to be alone with them, which is pretty funny. Neither did anyone want to sit in the middle of my backseat. Nor did they want to ride together in the other car, which seemed like a logical solution, at least to Daniel and me. So there was a standoff in the driveway. (Aaron was smart and took off with his carload early.) Eventually Chris got exasperated and slammed out of my car to ride with Greg and Tina. We all decided that he would get shotgun on the way back. Then we headed to the theater. Lines were already forming, but we had time to eat. Some people wante...

Gloria and I played a million variations of the same game. “Let’s be Pixie and Dixie.” Dixie was a marginally better name. It sounded cute, which was part of the point, but it didn’t sound too shallow. You got the sense that Dixie was a bit more competent than Pixie. Sometimes Pixie and Dixie were superheroines, with terrific animal sidekicks. It was implied that they were very glamorous, with various skimpy (yet tasteful) outfits. They had a lot of magic. They could speak and understand Animal. They could heal. I don’t remember them ever flying. They were twins, of course. Well, except for the times they were triplets with the invisible but powerful Trixie. Trixie was cool even before we read the Trixie Belden series. Then she was cool and could solve mysteries. Trixie could do a lot of things that I couldn’t do. She could talk to strangers without stammering. She could beat up bullies. She was very fashionable. She was funny. She got Pixie and Dixie out of many a jam....

I miss singing. When I was a kid, my parents always sang in the car with us. Church songs, songs from Fiddler on the Roof, folk songs. Christmas carols. When my dad had rheumatic fever, he taught himself to play the guitar and then we would have family singalongs. I didn’t do that with my kids so much. For one thing, their dad is a bit tone-deaf and that discouraged me. But I should have anyway. It’s not like I gave up a career in music or anything. My singing voice is, well, adequate. I can carry a tune. I can harmonize. I am not a soloist, unless one counts shower-bellowing. Music writes itself into our brains. I can hear the first notes of an old hymn that I haven’t heard in decades, and my brain calls up all the verses. I find myself whistling commercial ditties and camp meeting choruses. Maybe those songs helped form a framework in my mind. Maybe it is a positive thing that I can’t get the Gilligan’s Island theme song out of my head. Or the kajillion verses of “The C...

Anybody want to know what divorce mediation is all about? This is the language from the draft mediation agreement, but it sums up my motivations for going into the process pretty well: “We agree to treat each other with respect, to speak respectfully to and of each other in the presence of our children as well as in their absence, and to require all others, including friends and family, to do the same. We agree not to do or say anything that would undermine our children’s affection and respect for the other parent. We agree that each of our children needs each of us as much as the other and that neither of us is more important than the other in the life of our children. It is with our children in mind, that we enter into this Agreement.” So today I sign this agreement. I don’t feel sad or upset. It is a necessary thing. It is not on some master checklist on my calendar: get oil changed, sign mediation papers, pick up margarine. It is bigger than that. Of course.

I planned to write about the tournament as soon as I got home, but the kids stayed over Monday night, then I worked and had mediation meetings and more kid time and then worked some more… very good and busy week, really. So here I am, finally. The tournament was great. My record (8-7) doesn’t sound great. I did make some boneheaded errors. In fact, it looks like -- as much as I can’t believe it and hate to confess it publicly -- I probably missed the word BASENJIS. For a kajillion points. I have gone back over my score sheet with disbelief and creative rack leave analysis, and I am pretty sure that’s the rack I had. So that was indeed a terrible miss. But in that same game, I also made one of the better strategic plays I’ve made in my scrabble “career” and was rewarded by being able to play out with ESTUARIaL from the ES and win the game. From low to high in one short game. I’ll resist making comments about metaphors for life. I had a lot of good luck and a lot of bad luck. ...

The Boston Area Tournament is coming up this weekend. I feel very unprepared. I guess that’s understandable. The other things going on in my life are pretty overwhelming. I’m trying to decide what to do when I grow up. I’m trying to find work to do while pursuing those life goals. I’m in the middle of divorce mediation. These things are pretty big. If I could look at my life from outside it, like a best friend or a sister, I would tell myself that I’m doing okay, that I should take more baths, that I should enjoy spring walks, that I should have a glass of wine or an ice cream cone. If I’m to be responsible for all the grownup things, I should also take care of myself. Right? So I’m armed with flashcards and optimism. It is a tough division. The games will be hard and require concentration and intelligence.

From the warnings in the back of the Life textbook: If one sleeps over at one’s old house to take care of one’s own kids while their dad is on a business trip, and if one is pleased with how calmly and smoothly everything is going and has gone and seems to be likely to go in the future, one should not be surprised when one’s silly dog decides to have -- oh, what should we call it? diarrhea? -- in the master bedroom on the white carpet. One should be careful not to say anything too terribly vile to the dog while scrubbing away at germy spattery spots with old white gym towels. Note: one should be especially alert to the smirking meanness of the universe. The universe has been known to send along vicious wasps to sting one on the ring finger of the left hand, causing one to nearly faint from anxiety.

Do people really mean it when they say they just want what's best for everyone?

I feel a little disloyal to my genre roots, but I’m increasingly drawn to so-called literary fiction. Some of my stories for Odyssey barely qualified as science fiction and probably could pass for mainstream or literary. Whether or not they are GOOD is another matter. I guess I will keep doing what I have been doing: writing the stories that I must write. I can figure out how to categorize the stories later. Pretty rocks for my Scrabble slingshot: Umbellet, brunizem, whimbrel, bigeminy.

Cue soundtrack from Sound of Music… These are a few of my favorite things this week: Half-price Easter candy on Monday. Sunshine-y walks with Curie around the “lake” (it’s a man-made pond/puddle, but it is big enough for geese and ducks, which are very entertaining for Curie.) Finding my favorite pair of socks which I’d thought were lost. They were tucked into the last duffel bag from Odyssey. This was not the best find in the duffel bag, but it was a nice surprise. Discovering the notes I’d taken during Odyssey are not as full of drivel as I’d feared. Avocados. Playing half-decently at club on Tuesday. Finding a bunch of stories that Daniel wrote in first and second grade. (The first was called Apple Story, and it is riveting.) Raindrops on roses…

This will be my first “major” holiday alone. Ever. I’m watching it approach like I’d watch a bouncing doorknob coming down the highway toward my windshield, with a mix of “hunh, would you look at that?” and “I wonder if that will cause a big dent?” Mostly I’m wondering if the northern Virginia Scrabble club meets on Easter. Of course, I’m remembering past Easters. (That’s the whole point of holidays, neh?) I never have decorated eggs. Eggs weren’t a part of the tradition of my childhood. One year about ten years ago I bought one of those cheapo kits at Rite-Aid or someplace like that, but somehow I forgot to use it. I think the dyes ended up being used for one of Em’s great works of art. I like cooking the Easter dinner, although often we ended up going elsewhere for this holiday. I like the chocolate. The music. That is my favorite part. For several years, the family took part in the huge musical celebrations that our (then) church put on. Even when I wasn’t a part, I re...

At club on Thursday , I played two phoneys. This makes me very happy. I have felt for a while that I worry so much about playing phoneys that I forego perfectly good words. “Take more risks,” I have jotted on more than one scoresheet. Neither word was obviously bad. Neither was on the list of “phamous phoneys”. Neither word was challenged off. Take more risks, indeed. Okay, so I’m never really going to be a hang glider. I hope that doesn’t disappoint anyone. (For one thing, it takes a lot of hand-holding to get me up in the air in the first place; it’s hard to hang glide with one hand.) I can fly kites, which is almost as nifty! But I digress. These days I’m doing a lot of scary things, a lot of stepping out on faith. Maybe other people wouldn’t find them as scary as I do. But the important thing here is that I find them scary -- and that I’m doing them anyway. So what if it isn’t usually considered brave to argue with utility companies? It is brave of me.