Life's A Beach

We're on vacation in Los Angeles. We've made an itinerary. Going to the beach is on there for the second day. But it's funny how the ocean draws you. We're staying in a hotel in Santa Monica, a few blocks from the beach, and a few blocks from the Third Street Promenade, a trendy shopping and restaurant district where we used to hang out when we were dating. That's where we planned to meander the first afternoon, after we'd checked in. But we wound up walking right past, and on down to the water.

Our daughter immediately shed her shoes and went wading in, which was fine, as long as she didn't get her clothes wet. Then she fell, trying to outrun a wave to shore, and got her bottom wet, which was fine, as long as she didn't get any wetter. Then she sat down in the sand to dig, and got swamped by a wave. She was soaked, head to foot. Then she rolled around in the sand, so she was covered with sand too. And really, what did we expect? And really, what more could we have hoped for? What a great way to spend a beautiful afternoon.

Summer Reading Program

Here's a shout-out to Half Price Books. They have a really cool summer reading program for kids. If a child reads 15 minutes a night every night for a week (at least that's what we tell our daughter, it's really only 5 out of 7 nights required) then at the end of the week, Half Price will give the child a $3 gift card. Kids can do it every week until the end of July.

During the school year, my daughter had to read 10 minutes a night, four nights a week. It was a struggle to get her to do it. We'd wondered how hard the fight would be to keep it going during the summer. Now, she's reading more, and she's really motivated to do it. Way to go Half Price Books!

I Guess I Need a Job

My seven-year-old daughter just handed me a help wanted ad that she tore out of the paper.

Huh.

Day Count: 12

Soul Mates

I just finished reading a good book - Knit in Comfort, by Isabel Sharpe (my new favorite author) - in which there's a group of women who get together periodically to knit. One character always shakes up the group by asking a very personal question that everyone has to answer.

In real life, that character is my friend Holly. Whenever a group of our co-workers get together, she will interrupt the ordinary chitchat at some point, and ask a provocative question. Once it was to share the most useful advice someone gave you before you married. Once it was to tell about a woman in your life who was an important role model and why.

I am lousy at these kinds of questions, and generally wait until close to the end, to give myself time to think of a reasonable answer. But in the meantime, there are funny answers, and poignant answers, and we all wind up being terribly moved, sometimes even teary, and feeling closer to one another by the time we're done. The questions are simple, on the face of it.  But they draw the conversations into new territory, thoughtful territory.  These wind up being the best get-togethers. (Although there is one woman who stopped coming to these parties, because she just hates being put on the spot that way. So there's the down side.)

But it doesn't always work. I just heard this story from my friend Kathy, who came back from a weekend up north. She was sitting around a campfire with her husband and kids and the extended family of some friends of theirs, when an older aunt asked everyone whether they're married to their soulmates. And all those poor souls had to go around the circle, in front of their spouses and kids, and answer the question.

Kathy said that one of the most common answers was "sometimes," which is as close to a safe answer as that question will let you get. That's what her husband answered. Kathy managed to get out of answering at all, which is a skill I would like to learn from her. But then she thought about it more that night and came up with her answer. She said that her husband is like her right arm. Most of the time she doesn't give it much thought at all, although when she thinks about it, she knows it's important. But if she were ever to lose it, she would miss it just terribly.

After close to 20 years of marriage, that's really not a bad way to think of your husband.

Day Count: 11

Writing from the Middle

I've discovered that I like to start writing a story in the middle. I'll start with some compelling, strongly emotional scene. (And that's not a euphemism for love scene.) Then I'll start pushing at the edges of it to figure out what would happen next, or what would happen before this to bring the characters to this scene. Once I start thinking about those things, I start to see the characters more clearly. And then the entire story arc starts to form.

When I've tried to write a story from the beginning, I've gotten bogged down. Too many background details. Too much slogging through introductory stuff to get to the interesting stuff. Of course, that's bad for the reader too. But I'm finding that when I start in the middle, then it's easier to go back and create an interesting beginning.

I was just talking to my friend Gaby, who's an artist, who says she approaches paintings in the same way. I found that interesting, and surprising, because I'd never seen a similarity between writing and painting before.

Day Count: 8