Money, Money, Money

The one thing The Kiddo loves more than spending money? That would be making money.

The Kiddo has always been a saver, and a strategic spender: she spends other people’s money and saves her own. She’s probably got a career in politics ahead of her, no?

Her usual standard operating procedure is to put most of her money in the bank, while leaving a little mad money in her piggy bank at home. But sometimes the piggy bank oinks out a red alert signal.

Such is this case this weekend. The Kiddo wound up falling in love with one of the new “jelly” watches that all the kids are just in love with. It’s a great big man-sized watch, encrusted with rhinestones and graced with a red and black rubberized “jelly” band. She picked red and black because, unlike her dad, The Kiddo likes the Georgia Bulldogs … but she was quick to point out that it was our high school’s team colors, too.

The only problem with her watch (besides the fact that I say red and black DON’T go with everything) was that it absorbed all of her mad money. That being the case, The Kiddo quickly launched a fund-raising campaign.

Before breakfast on Sunday morning, the child had already drafted a menu of awesome opportunities, designed to part pocket change from whomever might wander past. Examples?

Well, she’d sweep three rooms (no carpet, as she hates to vacuum) for 50 cents, six for a buck. She’d trade five minutes of raking leaves for three dollars (she hates raking leaves almost as much as she hates to vacuum.)

A back or shoulder rub for a minute and a half (strictly timed) would set you back just two thin dimes – and she hooked you with free five second samples. Do you have only a dime to spare? No problem. She’d write you a very short story for just ten cents.

If you were of the female persuasion, you could have your toenails and fingernails painted for just 20 cents – you can tell that she likes painting nails, right?

The artistic stuff was the high priced items. She’ll draw a picture of your face for a dollar, and even two people for the same price. But if you wanted your wiggly pet tarantula in for a portrait with you? That will be a buck and a half, thank you very much.

I remember doing much the same when I was her age. I wonder if my mom and dad got as much of a kick out of it as I did when The Kiddo approached me with her first five-second free shoulder rub sample.

So far, she’s got a quarter out of me … that would be for the blue-light special shoulder rub she gave me – 50 seconds of pure bliss for the princely sum of 25 cents. I hope as she goes through life, she won’t forget her willingness to work hard to earn money – and to realize that some things are so fun (those fingernails and toenails, again) that they don’t even seem like work.

First Day Jitters

I write this BEFORE my big day ... my very first day of my new dayjob, after I've been out of a dayjob since August. I cannot tell a lie: I'm a puddle of nervous jelly.

Firsts are always hard for me. I always dreaded the first day of school, the first day on a job, the first time I had to do anything new by myself. Over the years, I've made a conscious effort to turn that negative energy into something more positive. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well, it doesn't.

Authors have a lot of firsts, just like anybody else. I still remember the weeks following my first sale -- I was a complete noodly wreck when it came to how I should approach something as simple as a talk with my editor. Should I call her? Should I email her? If I called her, was first thing in the morning better, or should I wait until after lunch?

No worries -- my editor turned out to be a complete doll who exchanged emails and jokes and was just the absolute dream editor a newbie writer could have ever wanted. I've been really blessed that both the editors I've worked under were open to me calling them up and saying, "Uh, dumb question, buuuut ..."

Then of course came a whole series of firsts: my first book on the shelves, my first book signing, my first book club talk, my first you-name-it. I got myself through those "firsts" by telling myself it wouldn't all be fresh and new the next time, that I would know what the heck I was doing.

Errrr ... not true. Everything changes. And everything stays the same. That feeling of nervous jelly -- the idea that you are a complete and total fraud and that if your editor/publisher/readers ever take a good look at you, they'll figure it out? Well, it's a friend for life -- or maybe I should better classify it as a long-lost relative that attaches itself to you and won't shake loose. It's you -- but not you, if you know what I mean.

The one thing that I've learned over the years is that "firsts" of anything are just plain nerve-wracking. Knowing that, I give myself lots of prep time, so I won't do what I did on my first day of teaching 20 ga-jillion years ago -- leave the house without brushing my teeth. Yep. I forgot to brush my teeth. Lucky for me, it was just pre-planning, so the only people I subjected to Gorilla Breath (freshened with Doublemint gum bought in a hurry at a convenience store) were my fellow teachers.

I'm hoping that my first day, which I'm experiencing as you read this, turns out okay. And I'm SURE hoping that I remembered to brush my chompers.

Welcome to the bouncy season

And so begins the “bouncey” season.

The Kiddo came home this Friday before Halloween with a sackful of candy and a wiggly body bouncing with excitement. It wasn’t just the wind-up of Red Ribbon Week (with its opportunities for her to go to school as a rock princess and a scary witch), but Halloween.

Halloween officially kicks off the holidays – and it gives the carte blanche to kids everywhere to eat tons of candy from then until the last Valentine’s Day sucker is gone. I swear, retailers have gone in league with dentists, and between the two have created a Faustian pact.

Even though I let The Kiddo eat her fill of candy for the first 48 hours after Halloween, and I dole out small judicious amounts every day after that, we never seem to get finished with the Halloween candy until just in time for Christmas – which brings more candy. We don’t get through with THAT candy until Valentine’s Day … and that supply lasts us until Easter. You get the picture. Summer is about the only time her poor tooth enamel gets a break (uh, no pun intended).

But the excitement is more than sucrose-based. Halloween also signals that Christmas is coming at us with the unforgiving speed of one of those oncoming locomotives in math word problems. The Kiddo realizes that she has to make the very big, very important gift decision: what is the one BIG gift she wants for Christmas?

Oh, just so many reasons to bounce.

Years ago, I had the pleasure of knowing a woman who had all her Christmas shopping done by Halloween. (No, she is still alive and well as far as I know. I did NOT dispatch this paragon of virtue to the great Boutique in The Sky.)

Me? Christmas shopping? Isn’t that something to be done after Thanksgiving? You’re not considered a slacker unless you’re in Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve buying something besides batteries, right?

But I have learned that if I don’t take advantage of all The Kiddo’s excess energy, and focus it with laser-like precision onto the one gift she might like, she’s going to be bouncing from one big gift idea to another all the way up to Christmas Eve. And we all know that Santa’s elves need some lead time to get those special orders onto the sleigh.

So even though it’s not even Thanksgiving, and my body is resisting all impulses to the contrary, Christmas-time, it is a-coming. That being the case, I’m geared up for the bounces.

Some unexpected wrinkles

You know how I blogged about straightening out my office so that I could house my laptop? Well, it's been marvelous for my work ethic -- amazing how much more business-like you feel in an upright position as opposed to a semi-horizontal one with your covers up to your chin.

But it has had one unexpected development that I didn't plan on. I now have company. Scads of it. Loads of it.

Yes, my lovely, loving family wanders in and peers over my shoulder. They share. They talk. They converse about their day. They ask me, "While you're on the computer, could you look up ..." They remind me that the water is boiled out of my beans. They remind me that the beans haven't even made it out of the freezer yet and INTO the water. They make dire predictions about the fate of the universe if I don't get up and liberate the beans from the deep freeze and plunge them into said boiling water.

In the spirit of Linda Grimes, I have done little to make things hospitable for them. The one extra chair in the room is the way station for The Kiddo's puppy blanket that we never finished, and I haven't made any effort to provide additional seating.

But that's okay. My fam, they're understanding. They bring their OWN chairs. Or they simply pull up a square of carpet.

Maybe it's the proximity of the room near the heart of the house -- kitchen as the right ventricle, living room with flat screen, left ventricle. Or maybe I just look more alert and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed sitting up at a computer.

All I DO know for certain? It's flat driving me crazy. And now that the cat has gotten into the act, well, I may be shopping for a strait-jacket sooner than I thought.

Yep, the cat. The other day, when I was blissfully alone, hard at work searching for gainful employment, in walked Max. He was not taking no for an answer. He sat by my chair. He stretched one paw and tapped on my thigh. He cleared his cat throat and gave me a polite, "me-row?" which I ignored the first dozen times. Then when I tried to take his picture, he abandoned "kitteh haz huge appetite" wide-eyed appeal, and instead went for the brass tacks -- the fierce feline stare.

With Max, that makes a full count of the household census laying siege to my sanctuary. What IS a writer to do?

Mad as a Hatter

Although I am mad as a hatter right now, I'd sure like me some mad hatting skills. It would get me out of a hole that I dug for myself last October.

Last year, The Kiddo dressed up as a witch for Halloween. Shortly thereafter, in a move to fend off masquerade ideas that might generate nightmares (that would be zombies, ghosts, vampires, and anything to do with spider webs) and prove to be as hard to find as her last year's witch's costume, I suggested an easier disguise: a cowgirl.

I sweetened the deal with something I knew The Kiddo wanted - boots. She really had her eye on a pair of stiletto boots that were pictured in my Cinderella of Boston's catalog. I did not totally disabuse the notion. I figured we could find her some moderately heeled boots, put her in a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, stick a straw hat on her head, and presto, a cowgirl is born.

Fast-forward to October 2010, past August and my job layoff, past September and the end of my severance pay. The witching hour was upon me, and The Kiddo reminded me of my almost (well, it seemed that way now) Faustian bargain. Boots? Gulp. Well, at least, I thought, the jeans and a shirt that would do were already hanging in her closet, and the hat should be relatively easy.

Ha.

Thanks to The Kiddo's very generous grandparents, the boot were the easiest part of the whole deal. They picked up the cutest little cowboy boots you ever did see, and -- bonus points -- the boots fit me. They'll look great with a pair of my jeans once The Kiddo outgrows them.

So I started trying to find a "cowgirl" shirt. It developed, after much time on the web with The Kiddo, that a "cowgirl" shirt was a red gingham shirt. I finally found one, for a modest ten bucks, and then The Kiddo confessed that she probably wouldn't be caught dead in it as of November 1. Retreat, rethink and forward march.

We found a tee-shirt and denim vest combo that she said she WOULD wear after November 1. I may go ahead and order the gingham shirt just in case it's cold, and then force feed her into it a couple of more times this winter just to get my Return on Investment.

Onto the easiest part of the costume, the hat.

Only, of course it wasn't. The millinery acquisition process had as many provisos and caveats and ixnays as a treaty of peace must. First of all, the hat had to be WHITE. No villain headgear for The Kiddo. And second, it couldn't just be any sort of hat. It had to be a tightly-woven straw hat that looked solid (I've since learned, along with far too many other arcane details, that such a hat is called shantung) or wool felt. Third of all, she wanted one WITHOUT sparkles but WITH discreet decoration: turquoise beads would be good, or concho shells or anything that ran the price up to obscene limits. There were also limits and provisos about the shape of the brim. AAAACK.

I can't seem to find any hat that would actually fit her beautiful little head for any price less than $20, and all the ones I've found for that garner only a thumbs down.

The Kiddo took matters into her own hands today and began googling hats. She found the perfect hat: a 35 buck hat that is exactly like the one George Strait wears. Never mind that she doesn't know George Strait from a hole in the ground -- whoever he is, The Kiddo opines, she thinks he has extremely good taste in headgear.

No, I am not buying the child a $35 hat. I might if I knew she would wear it more than once -- the boots have been a spot-on investment, as they are almost inseparable from her feet. And yes, there are some who might argue that $35 is a terrific deal on a Halloween costume. In other, flusher, economic times, I might agree.

Not now. So that means I am looking for a cowboy hat (child hat size 6 and a half) that is white or very light, that we can add some beads or turquoise or fake concho shells to, and that is very, very cheap.

Somewhere the devil is laughing at me and saying that if I'd let The Kiddo go as a mummy or a zombie, I could have used old sheets ripped into strips.

A clean well-lighted space

I envy people who are instinctively neat. You know, those folks who strike the balance between slovenly slob and OCD freak? I tend toward the messy end of the spectrum, as much as I wish it weren’t so. I was reminded of that this weekend when my sister helped me tackle a project I’ve been putting off for awhile.

Every house has at least one room that is a magnet for junk, or at least the stuff you don’t know where else to put and haven’t yet consigned to the junk heap. The room in my house that had been tarred by that brush was my office.

Years ago, the office/study was one of my favorite spots in the entire house. It’s a tiny little thing, but when we first moved in, it was home to all my books, thanks to a wall of built-in bookshelves, and a drop-leaf secretary.

Fast-forward fifteen years, and even after purging a great many books in a quest toward Zen-like bareness, the room bore little resemblance to the place I wrote my first complete manuscript. While you could tell it was sort of an office, the old computer was as obsolete as a dodo bird (it still ran on Windows 95), and in corners were jammed bits and pieces of detritus that was part and parcel of life as the Reeses know it.

An automotive vacuum that didn’t really work? Check. The box of stuff from my dayjob office while I await a new dayjob home? Check. The boxes of leftovers from my personal copies of my books? Check. Usable space and a clean, orderly study? Eh, let me get back to you on that.

My sister had heard my whining and my complaining about this place – and also the whining and complaining of The Husband, who was tired of me working beside him as he tried to sleep. The light from my laptop screen did not a sleep inducer make.

So this weekend The Sister took pity on me and popped the whip. Me? I took one look at the room and threw up my hands. “I don’t even know where to start,” I said.

She shoved the defunct auto vacuum cleaner in my hands. “This. Outside under the garage now.”

And that’s how we did it, piece by piece, decision by decision on each piece of junk, paper, file folder or obsolete hunk of technology we came across. Is it like I want it? Not on your life. Am I typing this on a computer that is not shining in The Husband’s eyes? Oh, yeah.

As usual, I’ve come away not just with a more organized space, but a larger life lesson. Decisions don’t make themselves. People make them, even when they’re busy NOT making them. And so often, the things we put off, whether it’s clearing out an office or deciding what to wear, are choices we’re intimidated about making. By the end of the night, though, I was a pro at giving a piece of “office treasure” a callous glance and saying, “Toss it.”

Exodus of the eggplant

It may be another 20 years before I attempt fried eggplant again.

I am not one for batter-fried vegetables. Give me my tomatoes ripe and sliced, my squash stewed or stir-fried, my okra stir-fried, and my eggplants … well, my eggplants, I’m just not sure about.

My family did not share my antipathy for batter-fried veggies. Hot grease and flour or any kind of batter could only improve a vegetable, in their opinion. I can remember plates and plates of the greasy stuff, passed down to me as though it were some rare delicacy.

I also remember the disgusting grease in the frying pans that had to be discarded afterwards, and it was my job to dispose of said grease. After all, my legs and my back were the youngest and most flexible.

When I got married, I chose a country-boy, more’s the pity for him, because so much of my limited cooking repertoire is not country-cookin’. While my hands can make a mean pan of lasagna and a fairly good fajita, I fall short when it comes to staples such as butter beans and batter-fried veggies. In fact, in 20 years of marriage, I can’t remember any time that I have ever previously tackled fried eggplant. Too much mess for way too little payoff.

But along came a sale on eggplants for a dollar each. And I thought, “Self, that’s a purple veggie, and The Kiddo should be eating purple veggies, at least according to the guilt-inducing info sheets her school sends home.” And then I thought, “Eggplant parmesan – I’ll do it like I do chicken parm, and she WILL eat it.”

Thanks to my favorite cook Alton Brown, I learned that I must first salt and purge the eggplant to get rid of the nasty bitterness. So I prepped the sliced eggplant, let it dry, rinsed all the salt off, and then took the slices through a one-way trip through flour, egg, and a combo of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Into the hot grease they went, and out came a plate full of fried eggplant. I skipped the sauce and presented the plate a la my mom: as though it were a rare delicacy.

The verdict?

The Husband: “These have got too much salt. Why can’t you skip that fancy stuff and just cook southern?”

The Kiddo: “I like the crunchies. Can I just eat the crunchies?”

Hmh. I have since discovered via Alton Brown that eggplants don’t have that many vitamins anyway. That, combined with the lack of enthusiasm – hey, I wasn’t expecting a standing ovation, just a, “Wow, Mom, you batter-fried veggies!” Well, the combination may just render it another 20 years before I batter-fry eggplant again. In the meantime, I have a plate of leftover fried eggplant in my fridge. Any takers?

Silly Business

Curse you, Robert Croak.

Mr. Croak, it turns out, is the guy who invented Silly Bandz, those shaped rubber-band bracelets that every kid is going nuts for these days. And by every kid, yes, that does include The Kiddo.

She has almost a hundred of the little suckers, and the only good things I can say about them are at least they don’t take up much room and they aren’t that expensive (although, I could get her a thousand regular rubber bands for the price of two dozen Silly Bandz, so maybe that’s not quite an accurate observation.)

Trust me, if you want to see a teacher steam, just waggle a Silly Band in front of her.

If the pesky little rubber bands would stay put on a child’s arm, it would be one thing. That’s way too much to hope for, not when kids can string them together in long necklaces and have protracted haggling/trading sessions that would make the brokers on the New York Stock Exchange look like amateurs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud that Mr. Croak found a way to make a living during this recession. And I’m glad he has made a success out of a few cents worth of rubber band materials. I’m not begrudging him his pursuit of happiness.

I’m begrudging him my pursuit of SANITY.

I strictly forbade The Kiddo taking the little sapsuckers to school. Hey, I was a teacher, and I know how hard it is to keep a kid’s attention on math or reading even without the latest fad. I could see in two quick blinks of an eye the aggravation Silly Bandz could cause.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. The Kiddo started in at once on the, “but everyone else wears Silly Bandz!” and “I promise, promise, promise that I won’t play with them at school.”

My response was to give her the steely-eyed, “I’m no fool” look and to drag, from somewhere deep, deep inside me, yet another, “no.”

“But, please, please, Mommy,” she begged me, “just ASK the teachers and you’ll see that it’s okay. We can wear Silly Bandz.”

So I did. After the aforementioned steam stopped hissing, the teachers were able to confirm my earlier suspicion: Silly Bandz weren’t quite the devil incarnate, but they sure beat the stuffing out of studying place values and main ideas, and as such, didn’t exactly complement the Three R’s. In fact, the principal had just handed down a No-Silly-Bandz policy.

I do wish Mr. Croak all the success in the world. But first? Could he serve a time-out of sorts? If I had my druthers, I’d stick him in a classroom replete with 25 students loaded to the gills with the silly sapsuckers and tell him that he needed to teach a lesson on independent clauses. If he managed to get the concept across without confiscating his rubber swag, why, then he really would have earned my respect.

A new generation of plotters

After a 20-year hiatus, I found myself back in a classroom.

Two decades ago, I was a very young, very SHORT teacher trying to teach 150 kids art and spelling, whether they aspired to more than drawing a stick figure or could spell more than C-A-T. I thought I'd failed those kids (and in a way, I had), so I left the classroom. I was determined to dig ditches before I ever darkened the door of a classroom again.

But you can't NOT be a teacher if you're a parent, and I am first and foremost a parent to The Kiddo. Teachers are so swamped these days that often at least a quarter of the teaching of content subjects is left to the parents. I'm not saying teachers intend for that to happen. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. But I can assure you that I've been mighty proud of all those education methods courses I toiled over in college. They've come in quite handy as I've shepherded The Kiddo through her elementary school career thus far. I honestly don't know how parents who don't have that background knowledge do it.

Between that homework-at-the-dining-room-table time and my previous successful (if I do say so myself) stint as a college English instructor for remedial students, I realized that I wasn't a half-bad teacher. I realized that I loved showing people how to do things. And the thing I especially love? The high that won't quit? The moment the lightbulb dings on for your student, whether she happens to be a 50-year-old returning college freshman or a 9 year-old Kiddo who finally understands the difference between conduction and convection.

In the midst of my job-hunting, I counted up my blessings, and one of them happens to be a defunct teaching certificate. In order to renew it, I'll need some time with the books (10 professional learning units or six semester hours of college courses), but it's doable.

But was it right for me? Would I be okay in a classroom? Would I even like dealing with whippersnappers all day long? Or would it be an utter failure like I thought I'd experienced two decades ago? The questions led me to volunteer in The Kiddo's school. No, I'm not in her class, but Tuesday was the first day that I served as a sort of reading coach to a third grade class.

And you know what? I had a ball! I learned a lot about classroom management from the teacher I was with, and I got to try out the skills I'd been honing on The Kiddo on a new crop of unsuspecting guinea pigs. They didn't seem any more the warped for it.

On Friday, I get to teach a writing lesson. Imagine! Me! Teaching third graders about writing! No, I'll spare them the lectures on deep POV and conflict (for now!). But I'm rubbing my hands together in glee at the prospect of turning the lot of them into -- gasp -- a whole class of plotters! Linda Grimes and Tawna Fenske will probably organize a protest!

Pleading with plastic wrap

I wish I could think of knots and plastic wrap in the same way.

When I was little, I'd often accompany my dad on errands in his big white 60s-something GMC pickup that the family had christened The White Elephant. He'd pull up somewhere, a parts store, a hardware store or the like, and hand me a roll of knotted surveyors twine.

"Here," he'd tell me, "I need these knots out of this twine. Otherwise it won't hang straight when I use it to lay a foundation out."

I would go at that job with the tenacity of a fire ant. While my dad conducted his business, I'd be clawing and scratching and tugging at those knots.

It taught me patience and persistence and focus, traits that have served me well as a grown-up. It also kept me out of trouble, which was probably the entire reason I was given the knot-detangling job in the first place.

Because of that early experience, I've had a huge respect for knots. I will not cut a knot. You ask me, that's the ultimate in quitting. Nope. I'll hang in there, set my jaw, and keep at it until I have liberated the two ends of string.

Plastic wrap has never evoked a similar respect.

For years, I banished plastic wrap from my house. The Sister could not understand it. She said I could outfit Pharoh's army in my supply of zip-top bags, which I admit, I have an inordinate fondness for. What's not to like? They're easy to use, quick and convenient.

Unlike plastic wrap, which clings to you like the stink of a skunk. It sticks in all the wrong places, and, even more aggravating, doesn't stick to what you want it to stick to. And yet, with enough of it, you could probably bind and gag a person to the point she couldn't get free -- always my fear when getting too close to a roll of the evil stuff. I can just imagine that plastic slithering out of the box, up my back, around my wrists and tying me up.

The old axiom holds true, though: you can save money or you can save time, but you can't save both. Right now, while I'm job-hunting, money is in short supply but time? That I have.

So at the grocery, I picked up a roll of my nemesis to wrap about 10 pounds of pork chops that I got on sale. And this morning, I declared war.

I wish you could have seen me and the plastic wrap. For awhile there, it looked as though the plastic wrap, the devil's own invention, was going to win -- I was going to lose all my religion, and the pork chops were going to remain nekkid.

But I remembered those knots that I tackled in the cracked vinyl seat of The White Elephant. I got mad. I shook my finger at the blasted roll of plastic wrap.

"I will not let a piece of polyvinylidene chloride whip me!" I vowed.

Maybe it was my tenacity. Whatever it was, I managed to get all 21 pork chops wrapped and tucked in the freezer -- without contaminating the roll of plastic, dropping a pork chop or smothering myself. That's progress ... even if I still don't much like plastic wrap.

(Note: the cute picture of the Plastic Wrap captive? It came via Rubyreusable.Com, and is the brainchild sculpture of Mark Jenkins.)

Facing the mom brigade

It is 2:22 as I write this, and in -- ye gads -- 38 minutes, I need to be out of my yoga pants, out of my THE STORY NEVER ENDS tee shirt that was my sole recompense for stepping in and rescuing a desperate conference organizer and agreeing to speak to a herd of only slightly interested teenagers about writing.

I need to be OUT of these and IN something presentable that wouldn't get me aired on TLC's WHAT NOT TO WEAR ... and most importantly smiling (but not too dementedly) at the elementary school teachers and (whisper this) the other moms when I pick up The Kiddo.

The Husband usually has this afternoon pick-up duty, and he could care less what he looks like when he picks up The Kiddo. He has no idea how merciless women can be on each other. They rival vultures when it comes to efficiency in picking things off the bone.

So, since I have been job-hunting, I have been getting up in the morning, showering and putting on make-up, and instead of something dry-clean-only, I put on a cute casual outfit and take The Kiddo to school. Then I come home, presto-change-o into yoga pants and T and job hunt on the internet. Thus, every afternoon, I have to rip off such comforting duds and pull back on my protective haz-mom gear.

Dr. Phil would have a field-day with this, I'm sure, plumbing into the dark recesses of my inferiority complex about getting laid off. But honestly, it has zip to do with that. I'm absolutely petrified of the professional SAHM. This is the creature that always pays for yearbooks the minute the notice comes in, sends gourmet goodie bags for all holidays including St. Patrick's Day and remembers to never, ever send anything with nuts as a class birthday treat.

Speaking of birthdays, this creature sends out cute little birthday invitations to the entire class BY MAIL a month ahead, inviting the children to frolic at some exotically themed party. Before you ask, yes, The Kiddo goes to public school. Do you think I'd be idiot enough to send her to a fancy private school where I'd never measure up?

It's not that these moms don't mean well. They do. They're wonderful, and a great resource. Ask them for anything from a Kleenex to an epi-pen and they'll pull it right out of their handy absolutely-this-season's big designer tote slung casually over their shoulder as though it doesn't weigh 15 pounds. Me? I'm lucky if I have a spare Band-Aid or a dusty Life-Saver in the recesses of my tiny purse.

Always before, though, I had the excuse of being a "working mother." They'd forgive so many of my many, many lapses because I worked.

But now? It's becoming clear to me that I am NOT cut out to be a professional grade SAHM.

Take for instance the other morning when I was running late. I'd noticed a rank smell in the car that I couldn't place. It had been mild the night before, horrid the next morning. The Husband commanded me to open up the trunk, which I did. Voila! A bag of garbage that I had no recollection of having put there, and that The Husband had no intention of admitting that he forgot.

"I'll drop it off after I take The Kiddo to school," I told him. Over my shoulder to The Kiddo as I backed out, I gave her this solemn promise: "Sweetie, I know I'm not wearing make-up this morning, but I'll wear my sunglasses so that no one will see, OK? And this afternoon, I'll wear make-up."

She looked relieved, complained about the garbage, but otherwise we made the trip to school and I dropped her out.

Then disaster struck as I was about to make my getaway. One of the Professional SAHMs recognized my car and made a bee-line for me. I sat there praying mightily, "Please, God, no, no, no!" but the Lord did not see fit to intercede.

So she popped open my passenger door and stuck her head in, only to give me some insider piece of knowledge : "You know," she said, "That end door is open until 8 a.m., and you can just drive right over there and drop her off. That's what I do with (name omitted to protect the innocent). Easy-peasy."

To which I'm thinking, Please don't draw in a deep breath. And please, please, please don't make me have to call your name because I know you're (name omitted's) mom, but I have absolutely no clue what your GIVEN name is.

I didn't say any of this, of course. I smiled. Said something like, "Really?" Added a few inane comments about school. Hoped I made some sense and didn't blurt out the word "garbage" because it was so omnipresent on my mind.

In all of this, I realized that I had -- oh, my ever-lovin' goodness gracious -- slipped off my sunglasses. This woman had seen me without make-up. I had been caught without cosmetics in the school drop-off line by a woman wearing the coolest little cotton top (without a wrinkle, I might add) and denim capris (which meant the blasted woman had to shave her legs that morning) and wearing make-up down to lipstick.

She moseyed onto her car. I peeled out of there as if I were a getaway driver at a bank robbery. First thing I did? Toss the garbage. Second thing I did? Say a prayer of thanksgiving that at least I had taken a shower that morning.

Have I told The Kiddo? Are you kidding?

OK. 2:46. The count-down is on and I probably have to refresh my make-up at this point, too.

Anti-Christ seeking virtual personal assistant

OK, so those of you who follow my blog regularly know that in early August, I got slammed with a curve ball right outta of left field: my dayjob position (along with those uber-important extras like health insurance) was eliminated.

So I joined the ten percent of the Georgia population looking for work. It has been, to say the least of it, an eye-opening experience.

A friend of mine reminded me not to forget the telecommute option and to search Craigslist in major cities for jobs that I might be qualified for that allow telecommuting. Off I went to Craigslist.

Since my strengths are in writing and in marketing and PR, I looked there first. Boy, did they leave more than my ears pink!

I had no idea ANYBODY was looking, for instance, for a sex-toy blogger. I mean, come on. How do you blog about, erm, sex toys, without blogging about ... oh, man. I'm reaching for anything to fan myself with. Shoot, I suspect in some southern states, sex toys are still illegal.

Plus, almost every major city has a few "customer service rep" positions listed for telephone call centers and chat rooms with really suspicious-sounding names, listings that brag how "the right person" can make a quick thousand bucks a week. 'Scuse me, but even my MacBook is blushing at the thought of what "the right person" might be saying or typing.

(Insert more fanning now.)

And then there are the ones that pretend to be legit, but if you look at them with even one eye open, they make you worry for the impressionable young people out there. For instance, a hip-hop independent label was advertising for a marketing PR person -- and the pay? That would be T-shirts and the chance to hang around with Hip-Hop stars. Uh, yeah. That'll pay the electric bill.

Plus, there are the truly outlandish ones, such as one that said, "The Anti-Christ really needs your help!" I mean, gracious, I'm a motivated job hunter, but a Faustian bargain so soon? Get thee behind me, Satan!

Craigslist has a bounty of contract work, and some of them just make me laugh. For instance, today on Craigslist I found a perfectly WONDERFUL opportunity: Personal Appearance Booker sought for Nat'l Media Personality & Author.

It's a commission-only position, but they're quick to point out that it has the potential of unlimited reward. Uh, right. I'm an author, and I do my OWN personal appearance bookings, because I know exactly how lucrative those book signings really are.

To be fair, I've found a few seemingly legit opportunities for uptight prim and proper types like myself, and I've applied for them. But, uh, the sex toy blogger? And the Anti-Christ's virtual personal assistant? If you want 'em, they're ALL yours.

Annnd right outta left field

The year that The Husband and I got married was a banner year. There were huge thunder boomers every night that summer, until two or three in the morning. Our well pump got struck by one of those lightning bolts. My car burned up. I was diagnosed first with arthritis (nope) and then with lupus (nope, again) and finally fibromyalgia (check). And one evening I came in from work to find that the freezer compartment in our ancient, single door fridge had come loose and fallen into my eggs and my butter.

It was just not a good year for the roses.

This past year has been that way, too, since October when my mom got sick, and then in November she passed away. That seemed to unleash all manner of torment, from little things like our kitchen floor getting ruined by a cantankerous, tired old dishwasher, to really big and awful things.

It seemed like every time I would get a handle on things, another curve ball would slam past me across the plate. In fact, I was just emailing Tawna Fenske earlier this week that I was about due for another curve ball, because I was beginning to get settled in over my latest misfortunes.

Sure enough ... I was called in for a meeting with two other ladies at my dayjob on Tuesday and told, "You do good work, we hate to lose you, but this economy is making it impossible to keep you."

I freaked. I have been working a public job since I was 17 years old, even before that at my parents' business, and I'd never, ever been let go. Plus, I am the one who carries the health benefits.

The cold hard truth about writing for a living is that you have to sell a LOT of books before you can give up that dayjob. Think about it. Your royalty for a paperback comes in roughly at a quarter a book, depending on the cover price. That's gross pay, before your self-employment taxes, before you pay for private insurance, before you pay for your writing expenses (and they do add up.)

The health insurance is the real kicker. At least in Georgia, there's not really a good alternative to group plans through an employer. Private insurance can set a family back $1,500 a month -- and that's with a $5,000 deductible on each family member. I know that, because my optometrist was recently bewailing the high cost of coverage for his family.

This post is not meant to discourage you unpublished writers out there. It's just to put it in perspective how much of a loss my dayjob is to me, despite the fact that I am published. Keep that dayjob, unless you are lucky enough to have dependable coverage through some other option.

As for me, I've shed a few tears, the numbness is wearing off, and I'm getting myself in gear for a job hunt. We're better off than some folks in our position: our house, never that expensive to begin with -- is now paid off, our cars, which we drive until the wheels fall off, are paid for, we have a little savings, and very little consumer debt. We tend to be frugal, mainly because I've always been paranoid about this very thing happening.

I have some leads for job opportunities. I've dusted off the resume. And in between filling out applications and (hopefully) going for interviews, I'm going to be working like mad on the edits for the book I'm trying to revise. I'm not waiting for luck, any more than I'm waiting for that ol' Muse to come staggering in with her feather boa and her stilettos. Nope, I'm going to tackle this with the same faith, hope and optimism (not to mention hard work) that got me my first publishing deal.

But if you're the praying kind, please, please, keep our little family in your prayers.

An all-over body ache

The best exercise program in the whole world? Simply lie down in the floor, and get back up. Repeat about 60 times in one day.

It doesn't sound like much, but trust me: the next day, you'll be ready to hunt me down and shoot me. You won't be able to, though. You'll be suffering aches and pains in every major muscle group. Shoot, even my hands hurt.

No, I was not trying to get in shape. I was merely trying to put in my laminate flooring. You may recall having read about the Mountains In My Kitchen, courtesy of a dishwasher past its prime. This past Friday I took off a vacation day to install said laminate.

I'd watched YouTube videos to see how it was done, and I swear, one of the guys said you could do a room in two hours.

Two hours! It took me two hours to get the blankety-blank underlayment cut around all the door openings and the first tricky pieces of laminate down.

There were times when I was about ready to give up. For instance, about noon on Friday, when I was starving, and I realized that I had moved the fridge up against the table, where I couldn't open the fridge's door. The table in question is a heavy marble-topped behemoth that I couldn't move if my life depended on it. The fridge was equally impossible, as I couldn't move it back on my workspace for fear of tearing the blankety-blank underlayment.

Lunch for me and The Kiddo turned out to be two peanut butter sandwiches each. It was all that we could get to. We couldn't even grace the peanut butter with a little jelly.

By 2 PM, I'd gotten maybe a quarter of the kitchen laid ... a far cry from the "two hours and you'll be done" pronouncement of the YouTube handyman that I wanted to hunt down and clobber by then. It occurred to me that the room he was talking about was (1) empty of all furnishings and (2) blissfully lacking in tricky built-in cabinets. I couldn't lay any more flooring until I had muscle ... so I texted The Husband about my predicament and then rested my aching back as I watched a half episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats.

The Husband moved the fridge and I worked on, with his assistance. We got the last of the tricky corners cut, and I started making real progress.

Only, I was starving, my back was KILLING me, and it was (by then) 7 p.m.

I started back afresh on Saturday morning, making real progress as The Kiddo decided that it was more fun to help than to drag around the house repeating the refrain, "I'm boooored." She learned the business end of a rubber mallet and how to measure and mark boards, while I learned that I really HAD been helping my mom all those years ago when I stood on the ends of boards as she sawed them off.

By 11 AM, I'd gotten as far as I could (the beastly table was in my way again), so off I went to grocery shop. I returned, got The Husband to move the table, and I started in on the floor again. This time, the end was in sight, and by 7 PM, The Kiddo was banging in the last piece of flooring.

Yes, I still have clean up to do (everything's moved out to the garage) and yes, all my baseboard has got to be put back in, but I am done. And in pain. And joyful. And -- oh, gracious! Look at the time! I can take two more ibuprofen tablets!

In need of an idea -- or frequent flier miles

Yesterday (pre-migraine) a college professor/writer that I am acquainted with tricked me into coming out of my shell.

OK, really, truly there were no tricks. He merely asked me if I would be willing to teach a seminar on writing to high school students and a class or two to college students on creative writing.

I said yes before I could really think about it. I love talking about writing, and I love teaching writing. If I had the dollars and the time, I'd go back and get the parchment that would say I could dayjob by teaching creative writing. Alas, the idea of doing more post-grad work makes my head ache worse.

Also, these commitments were blissfully out in the future -- the high school one is not until February.

Then Dr. Writer (who shall remain nameless) told me the kicker about the high school seminar: the time block is two hours, and in that time, the students have to produce a sample of writing that is judged for an English scholarship.

Yikes! Back I retreated into my turtle shell.

Usually when I'm asked to do something like this, I focus on something useful -- query letters or synopses or just a general overview of the writing/publishing biz. But these kids will be nowhere near submitting for publication (well, most of 'em, anyway), and I don't think even the best query letter could be good enough to base an English scholarship on.

So onto my quandary: what component of writing can I teach to high school students that I can teach in, say, an hour or so, and leave them enough time to craft a good sample of their writing?

My thoughts so far? Let's go all James Joyce and stream-of-consciousness for a moment.

Eeek! Can I get out of this? Maybe an unexpected trip out of the country? No, no, my word is my bond ... two hours! Not even two, because they have to write and how can they write anything in two hours that will give them a good shot at writing and what if I can't shut up about writing and take the whole two hours and they have zip to show for their scholarship? Two hours! TWO HOURS! I can say no, sure I can say no, no, no, I can't say no, say, how about dialogue?

Once I hit the brakes on the runaway train that is my thought process (ain't pretty, is it?), I tell myself to define the problem and get on with finding a solution. I have to teach a bite-size chunk, and dialogue is something that could be bite-sized.

Other possibilities:

1) Setting and imagery

2) First pages

3) Show, don't tell.

So you tell me. Back when you were a high school kid who thought all romance writers were rich and ate bon-bons all the live-long day and wore feather boas and stilettos and resembled Barbara Cartland, what could you have listened to in sixty short minutes and then turned into some sort of work product?

Because it's either you help me come up with this, or I'm hitting Tawna Fenske up for some of her frequent flier miles out of the country.

Wherein I discover a few things about myself

Saturday night I talked books for three hours.

It was that Literary Ladies Night that I mentioned in a previous blog, the one where I said I had to choose my favorite book to share.

I was more than a little nervous about the evening. For one thing, since I'm a true introvert, I'm not a joiner. I'm not a mixer. I have been, all of my life, painfully shy and awkward, and inclined to blurt out things that come out entirely wrong. Maybe that's why I prefer books and writing to social functions -- at social functions there's no such thing as a delete key.

For another, two of the ladies to be at the event were college professors. Okay, so once upon a time I was a college English instructor, but one of these ladies had a master's degree and the other was the proud possessor of a Ph.D. To say that I was psyched out was an understatement of British proportions.

The third reason is that I had offered to bring chicken salad before I remembered that I was a Bad Cook. Sure, it's awfully hard to mess up chicken salad; after all it's just chicken, mayo and loads of sweet salad cubes (chunky relish for all you who reside north of the Mason-Dixon line.) But I'm terribly self-conscious of my cooking.

We wound up with six ladies, with six books, as well as egg-salad sandwiches, hummus and chips, pesto, strawberries and cantaloupe and brownies, plus my chicken salad. Round-robin we went. I was fifth, and glad of it so that I could Monkey-See-Monkey-Do.

Of course I had nothing to worry about. The college profs both brought very accessible stuff -- an English cozy and a book that was an out-of-print memoir that could actually be a targeted at a younger audience. I realized that when they meant favorite books, they meant comfort books -- the things you rested your soul with.

Each book sparked discussions about other books -- and one woman confessed she'd had to plod through WUTHERING HEIGHTS, as she'd felt inclined to slap the characters. It was a refreshing let-your-hair-down sort of evening, with no pretensions and lots of sharing -- and I came away with at least five books I hadn't read, but definitely wanted to after their thumbs-up.

I recommended GODS IN ALABAMA, and read a favorite scene (where Arlene Fleet loses it during a bout of home-sickness in a Chicago Wal-Mart). They all listened, asked intelligent questions, and seemed to be genuinely intrigued by the book.

Oh, and my chicken salad? They went back for seconds.

So yanno what? Maybe I've just been letting the wrong people eat my cooking, and maybe I've been going to the wrong social events. Because I'd go back there in a heartbeat, and I'd bring my chicken salad.

Auld Lang Summer

Today (and yes, I know I'm late again with the blog) I'm taking a Mental Health Day off from the Day Job.

Nope. I'm not writing (except for this.)

Nope. I'm not gonna Twitter (not much, anyway.)

Instead, I'm going to take The Kiddo to her last day of swimming lessons, because this summer she has gone from terrified of water to swimming like a fish, and I have yet to see a stroke of it.

And then I'm going to let her play at her friends' house, while I do something supremely important.

Absolutely nothing productive.

Yep. No projects. No grocery shopping. No back-to-school-clothes shopping. No cleaning. No de-cluttering. No writing. No research on a WIP. No research on agents or publishing houses. No research on DIY projects. Or getting organized. Or chasing down that 25th hour of the day.

I intend to have a summer day like I had when I was ten. Unstructured. Unproductive. Because I've been waaay too productive lately when it comes to my life.

I was somewhat lucky growing up. My mom was at first a stay-at-home mom and then a work-at-home mom. Summers were an endless string of come-what-may days, where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss.

We were productive, don't get me wrong. My mom was always one to have a project going -- usually building herself yet another kitchen on our hill. Summers also meant produce -- corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, okra, squash. We grew it and picked it and shelled/husked/peeled/cut it, and then we canned or froze it. It was hard work, but it was fun work, and I don't remember any deadlines save for food safety ones.

I remember one day, very clearly, that we'd spent the morning shelling purple hull peas (for you Yankees, think field peas, but much, much better) outside by our pool, where we wouldn't make a mess in the house. Even in the morning, the Georgia heat and humidity sweltered. My mom took one wistful look at the pool, set aside her big pan of shelled peas, and jumped in the pool, clothes and all.

If there was one thing that I could give The Kiddo, it would be a single summer like that: a summer where I didn't have to get up and put on dry-clean-only clothes and go work with my brain all day in an office, while she had to get up early and go to the sitter's. It would be a summer where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss. And if we had a pool, we would jump in with our clothes on.

Thank you, Alton Brown

I owe a huge thank you to Alton Brown -- you know, the half-chef, half-food scientist, all fun sort of guy on Good Eats? Well, thanks to him, I was able to cook a ribeye for The Big 2-0 for The Husband and me.

Yeah, we could have gone out to a fancy restaurant and had someone else do all the cooking. But then we would have added:

1) The stress of getting the reservations (for me and The Husband, it's a battle of wills. He doesn't want to do it, and I don't want to do it, so it usually doesn't get done.)

2) The stress of getting to the restaurant on time (I'm always late coming home from the dayjob. He's always the last one to the car. 'Nuff said.)

3) The stress of spending waaaay too much money.

4) The stress of getting back home at a semi-decent hour.

With all that possibility of stress, I decided that what I really wanted was a low-key anniversary. I wanted us to cook together. So Saturday I brought home a couple of six buck ribeye steaks, some red potatoes and some frozen brussels sprouts. (The Husband asked the potato soup and the sprouts.)

The Kiddo had supper with some friends, and The Husband and I talked more that evening than we probably had in the past six months. Having three jobs between us (his job, my dayjob and my writing), plus being parents, isn't a recipe for conversation.

Granted, I did most of the cooking, but The Husband stayed in the kitchen with me for most of the prep, and even washed a few dishes for me. The steak turned out perfectly, and for once, I got everything on the table at about the same time. For a bad cook, I didn't do a half-bad job -- salad, steak, potato soup, brussels sprouts, and rolls. I was going to do dessert, but didn't have time, and besides, we were stuffed with what we had.

We took a long walk, and talked some more. We talked about inconsequential things. But we talked. And that, after 20 years, is a mighty big deal.

No green thumbs, not even out of a bottle

First off, thanks for so much warm support on Friday's post. Every comment lifted my spirits. I try not to be a downer, and I don't intend for my blog audience to be the recipient of all my moans and groans. Thanks for being there.

It's a definite sign that plants rightfully fear me.

I'm not so good with green and growing things. Either I get too much water on them or not enough, so usually I stick with the silk versions.

However, you can't slice and eat a silk tomato, or chop up silk basil and oregano. So this spring, I decided that I would plant three tomato plants, two pepper plants, and add to a window box of oregano I hadn't managed to kill last year. They reside on my back deck, save for one of the tomato plants, which is one of those Topsy Turvy planters I had to have after I saw it on TV. Why, yes, I am the living incarnate definition of gullible.

My plants have managed to limp along, and I've even gotten two knotty little ripe tomatoes from them. But no one could mistake my horticultural efforts for a green thumb.

Saturday morning, I found the whole passel of 'em wilted beyond belief, practically coding on the table. I rushed water to them, hoping I wasn't too late.

Off I went to town, for shopping, which included buying two cans of hunter green spray paint to resuscitate a patio furniture set I'd inherited from my mom.

It's a overgrown bistro set, one that my mom had since I was probably The Kiddo's age. Back when she bought it, she paid the earth for it, and I thought it was so cute in its black wrought iron state. It was Mama's pride and joy.

Over the years, Mama repainted it white to match with the changing styles. But as she grew older -- and sicker -- the thing rusted away in her back yard. I’d no idea how rusty it was, or how much it needed a face-lift, until The Sister and I were examining it.

The Sister suggested that, since it was small, it would be perfect for my back deck. We loaded the set up on her truck and hauled it to my house. Saturday was The Day that it was supposed to be turned from rusty white/black to a more stylish hunter green.

The Kiddo and I scrubbed away the biggest pocks of rust, sanded off the legs and seats until they felt fairly smooth. I kept thinking about Mama, and how I should have done this chore for her while she was still alive. The sanding finished, we dragged the chairs out onto the grass and I took the spray cans to them.

It took a lot more paint than I'd bargained for to cover the chairs. Two cans later, I still had some white spots and black spots and rusty spots shining.

Midway through, The Kiddo observed, "Hey, Mommy! You've got paint on your fingers!"

Sure enough, green speckles covered one hand. I suspected that I had green paint on other skin surfaces as well. As we inspected my hands, The Kiddo brightened. "Hey! Maybe this is how you can get a green thumb!"

But we looked closer, turning both of my thumbs this way and that. Alas ... not one fleck of green paint had landed on either of my thumbs.

The Kiddo gave me a sympathetic look, shook her head, and said, "Or ... maybe not?"

I nodded. "Or maybe not."

Yes, we still have mountains in our kitchen

OK, so no mountains, but definite foothills. I exercised some literary license. I'm a writer. Sue me.

Since June 19, when I discovered that my dishwasher's water pump had exploded, I have been living with rumply laminate flooring.

At first, I thought, "OK, so, it's not nice and flat, but it could be worse. Live with it. The insurance guys will come through soon."

But after a few times catching a heel on one of those peaks and being launched into movement that could go along with the lyrics to "I Believe I Can Fly," one ceases to be patient. Especially when one also has a pot of tea in one's hand when one is shrieking, "I believe I can touch the sky" (okay, the ceiling.)

My insurance folks told me that, why, yes, they would cover the floor. All I had to do was get an estimate for the damages.

I had no idea this was some sort of inside joke, kind of like the suggestion to bell the cat, at least not until I tried to get an estimate.

It took me nearly a week to get the first estimate, and I had to pay $51 for the privilege for the first estimate. (No, apparently free estimates are about as common as pink elephants these days, as they SAY it's free, but what it REALLY means is they credit your "account" should you use their labor.)

That guy totally muddled things up by saying that he thought my dining area was messed up, too, though to be honest, I had to really squint to see what he was talking about.

I reported this (including the squint part) dutifully to my insurance agent, who frowned and said, "Hmh. Now we'll have to get an appraiser out to look at it."

I told her that I would get a second estimate. This contractor came out, said, "Nope, your dining area's a-OK. I'll have the estimate for ya tomorrow."

He did. Along with a lovely little postscript that if I didn't use his services, his fee for the estimate would be $75. (See? Like I told you about the pink elephants.)

I forwarded the estimate FOR THE KITCHEN PART ONLY onto my insurance company who forwarded them onto the claims people who were supposed to get in touch with me within 48 hours.

That was Friday. And at least a half-dozen stumbles ago. No phone calls. No appraiser dude. No nothing but the oncoming Fourth of July when contractors all seem to take vacations.

So I called The Insurance Lady back to find that she was Out Of The Office (yes, when the receptionist answered, it DID sound like she said it in caps). The receptionist lady said she would call the claims people and get back to me.

Finally she has called me back. Appraiser Dude has decided to cut a check and not show up. Which is fine with me. But I could have already scheduled Contractor Dude to come in and start ripping out my Kitchen Mountain Range if Appraiser Dude had just called me back.

As it is, with the Fourth coming up, it looks like I'll be tripping over The Kitchen Mountain Range until I can actually con a contractor into actually reporting for duty. Which means I'll be needing back-up music for "I Believe I Can Fly" for the foreseeable future.