Greg

My brother-in-law died this morning. He was a great guy. I could rattle off a long list of his good qualities, but one thing far outweighed everything else - he was crazy about my sister.

There was this cute thing they did. They'd started dating on a Thursday, so every Thursday since then, they would wish each other a happy anniversary. Only they treated it like a race to see who would remember to say it first. One of them would remember first and say it, and the other would pretend to be mad about losing the race and say, "I hate you."

This past Thursday morning, when my sister walked into his room in the ICU, he wished her a happy anniversary. My sister put on a pouty face and said, "I hate you."

But he said, "No, let's say it together today." When she asked him why, he said, "Because this is the last time."

The doctors had told them it was likely just a matter of days, but they didn't know when. Then last night he told her that he felt different, and he knew it wouldn't be long. She crawled into his hospital bed, and spent his last night sleeping in the crook of his arm, where she'd always slept.

There's going to be a really big hole in my sister's heart where her husband belongs.

My Cheeks Were Red

I stopped into Victoria's Secret the other day. It should have been fun. I mean, what's not to like about buying yourself something a little bit fun and frivolous?

Well, you know that classic nightmare that people have, about standing in front of a large audience, dressed in nothing but their underwear? I would argue that the real-life version of that nightmare is standing in a crowded lingerie store and having a clerk ask, "So how did that thong work out for you?"

Really, what's the right answer to that question? What came to my mind was, "None of your damned business." But she was just being helpful, doing what she was trained to do, which apparently involves making a grown woman squirm with embarrassment. And sadly, as much as I wanted to turn and flee, I really needed her to tell me where to find a matching bra.

I managed to grind out the necessary words, only to have to decide, out loud of course, while flanked on one side by a 19-year-old whose thong probably worked out great for her, and on the other by an entire family buying a bathrobe for Grandma, whether I preferred the demi or the push-up style.

Sad to say, I've managed to reach middle age without having the first clue how to answer that question. So I had to go try on some bras, but only after the clerk whipped out a measuring tape right there in the middle of the store, wrapped it around me, and then told me and everyone else my measurements. 

I was reminded of a time years ago, when I was working as a part-time sales clerk in a department store, and I had to cover the lingerie department for an hour. A nervous husband approached me for help. He wanted to buy something nice for his wife, but he couldn't remember her size. He thought I was about the same size, though, and so he asked me my bra size. There are very few situations in which that is an OK thing for a man to ask a woman, and this wasn't one of them. I waited a beat, but he was too far gone with nerves to see what was wrong with his question. Lucky for the guy I felt sorry for him, and I helped him out, without telling him my size, but without making him feel any worse either.

He should have just followed me into Victoria's Secret. He would have had his answer. Hell, everyone in that store now has the answer. And I knew exactly how he felt, because I swear I felt exactly like a poor, clueless man, trying to buy underwear for a woman.

I don't know if most women are born knowing how to do this kind of shopping, or if their mothers or older sisters teach them the ropes, or if I missed a critical day in school. I'm pretty sure it helps to drink first.

At least I came away knowing everything I need to know about these matters. Really. Ask me anything. For example, I know enough about bras now that I can say definitively that "demi" is just code for "padded" and "push-up" is code for "very very padded." I mean seriously padded. You could easily use one of those babies for a throw pillow. A very expensive, lacy throw pillow that looks like a bra, but still.

Blushing smiley face image from Bruno Maia, IconTexto

Remedial Bake Sales

I just don't get bake sales. You have to spend about 5 or 10 dollars on ingredients to make baked goods that will raise about 3 dollars in sales. Of course, if you factor in a mother's labor (which we never do) then you're spending more like 50 or 100 dollars to get those 3 dollars in sales. And of course you're not done, because you still have to give your kid money to buy something at the sale.

Decorated cupcakes - how much would you pay?

Back in college, I once took a class in the business school. I remember walking into the building one day to see a sign advertising a bake sale to raise money for the Entrepreneurs' Club. That still makes me laugh.

We would all come out ahead if the moms skipped the baking, and just wrote out checks for 10 bucks. But that's something only a bad mother would do.

OK - I can see benefits to bake sales too, besides the (little bit of) money that they raise. They can generate some publicity, and that's good, right? And there is the whole community-building aspect, which can be nice - people pitching in to contribute to something they value, people getting to know each other by volunteering together. And sometimes it's even fun to turn the baking into a project - planning with my daughter what to make, and then making it together.

Thinking about the positive bits helps, because the fact is that most of the time you can't get out of bake sales. So I'll pass along a few survival tricks I've learned through the years.

• Ghiradelli Triple Chocolate Brownie mix makes better brownies than any I've ever made from scratch, and they go together in about 7 minutes.
• Brownies are easy to slice if you use a plastic knife on them, after they're completely cool. I just learned this one recently from my mom. It's like magic.
• Food on a stick - this is a tip from my friend Annette. If you want your items to sell out quickly, just put them on a stick. One time she made cookies and put them on sticks. For the last bake sale she did something even easier - she put marshmallows on skewers, then dunked them in chocolate and sprinkles. They all sold. She says people can never resist food on a stick.
• More about food on a stick - also from Annette - you have to display it right. Don't put the food on a stick and then just lay it in a pan, or you don't get the benefit. You need to stand the food up, so it's obvious it's on a stick.

I'm guessing you all have some of your own tricks to share. I'd love to hear them.

When Herbicide Has a Name

Maria the mum

This fall we finally broke down and hired a landscaping company to do something with our yard. After a decade of gardening attempts and failures, and I'm sorry to say that I'm not putting too fine a point on this, I finally, officially gave up. My compost heap is filled with the evidence of the plant carnage I have wrought through the years. It's safe to say that I don't have a gift for gardening. At all. And after a decade of failure, I don't even like gardening any more.

So, we hired a company to fix things. And fix things they did. For the first time since we moved in, the yard looks great!

That's the good news. The bad news is that the pressure is on. We paid a talented professional a good deal of money to draw up a plan, and to do the work, and now we have to keep it up. And that's a lot of pressure.

Decorative grasses Grace, Greg and George

But then today, the stakes got much, much higher. Today, my daughter went through all the flower beds, and gave names to all the new plants. I couldn't believe it. I would have been plenty happy to keep the yard looking nice, and the flower beds weeded. I would have been happy to learn a thing or two, like the types of plants we have, and suggestions for care. But it turns out that's not enough any more. Now I need to be able to address them by name. Just to give you an idea - we have a shrub named Sarah and another named Leana, a day lily named Amanda, some creeping flox named Tommy, Jonathan, and Samantha, and a hosta named Kayla.

It's a given that some of these guys aren't going to make it. It's a sad fact that I don't know how to prevent the widespread death and suffering of the plants in my yard. And now it just got personal. I have a horrible suspicion that there are going to be dozens of little plant funerals in my future.

Halloween Costumes

My daughter decided three things about her Halloween costume this year. First, she wanted to be a black cat. Second, she wanted me to be a black cat too. Third, she wanted us to make the costumes.

I was delighted, and not just because she wanted us to match. Face it, I'm a sucker for my daughter wanting to match me. Plus, I know the window for that happening is pretty narrow.

No, I was delighted because I believe, sincerely believe, that Halloween costumes are meant to be home-made and not store-bought - in part because I value creativity, and in part because I value being cheap.  So, for the first three years of her life I made her Halloween costumes. In retrospect, that may just have been overcompensation for being a full-time working mom. Whatever.

Then, when she was four, she decided to be a princess, no wait a ballerina, no wait a fairy, no wait all of them, and I didn't have a clue how to make that costume. When my sister-in-law sent a picture from a catalog that met all those requirements, I considered it a miracle, and bought it, along with some pale pink tights, and some sparkly fairy shoes, and the pink turtleneck and pink sweatshirt to wear under so she wouldn't die from exposure during Trick or Treat. What I spent on that year's costume was obscene. In retrospect, it may just have been overcompensation for being a full-time working mom. So sue me.

Sometimes I think sternly that she doesn't need a new costume every year, that as long as it fits, she should wear the same costume from year to year. When I was growing up, that's what we did. But that thought is usually swamped by the awful memories of that awful costume that we had to wear from year to year, an awful, baggy, pink nylon costume that said "Princess" across the chest in sparkly blue lettering, which we wore over our jeans and our winter jackets. It came with a cheap plastic mask of what appeared to be a grimacing woman wearing a tiara. We used to long for a different costume. Anything our friends wore was better. So if my daughter wants to pick out a different costume every year, I find I'm willing to take out my credit card and make that happen. No doubt it's just overcompensation, yadda yadda.

Then this year, out of the blue, she decided it would be fun to make our costumes, and I was delighted. But the funny thing is that it turns out to be at least as expensive to make a costume as to buy it, because it turns out we aren't actually black cats, and we don't have black cat stuff around the house. She had head bands and pipe cleaners, and I had black pants and shirts and shoes. We had to buy a black turtleneck and black sweatshirt for her. They don't even sell them for girls, so we had to buy them in the boys department, which caused a certain amount of drama, which was appeased in part by buying her black boots. And we needed black mittens. And black fleece for the tails and ears. And pink fleece for the insides of the ears. And stuffing for the tails. And face paint.

So we spent a small fortune, and we hot-glued ourselves some tails and ears, and we donned our black clothes, and we painted each other's faces. She was inordinately proud of our fairly crude results. People seemed to able to tell what we were supposed to be. She was happy. I was happy. I know the window for the two of us being happy about the same thing is fairly narrow, and I'm enjoying it while I can. And for a whole glorious day, I can feel like a good mom.

How to Become a Famous Blogger

I saw this and I loved it:



Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

My Little Fashion Genius - Revisted

In May, I wrote in my blog about the day my daughter decided that she despaired of my wardrobe, and took me shopping. She was actually quite helpful to me, and I thought I was doing pretty well. For example, earlier today, before I changed into the navy blue sweats and white T-shirt that I'm wearing now, I was wearing a pink T-shirt with my khakis.

Apparently she doesn't agree with my positive self-assessment.

The other day she emerged from her room dressed like this. Note the boring monochromatic color scheme - the boring black pants and the boring white collared shirt. (She didn't have any shoes as boring as mine, so you'll have to forgive her for improvising there.) She claimed to be dressed like me.

She thought she was pretty funny. For the record, I think she looks pretty good.

Internet Porn for Children

My daughter was introduced to Internet porn the other day. It wasn't a voluntary thing - on her part or mine. I guess that's probably obvious. Anyway - suddenly there it was, and I had to figure out how to talk to her about it.

But first let me just say this -- it's not fair!!!

I wasn't being a bad parent on that particular day. My daughter and I were snuggled together on the sofa, using the laptop to find pictures of Scooby Doo and the Gang for a little project she was working on. The timer rang on the oven, so I left her for a moment to take some home-baked muffins out of the oven. I'm not making that up -- home-baked muffins, from scratch. I swear I was being a good mom that day!

But the problem is that sometimes people like to dress up as Scooby Doo and the Gang. Only they neglect to put on underwear. And they have to bend over for some reason. And then they get their pictures taken.  And then they post them on the Internet.

Sigh.

So, my daughter was looking at pictures of Scooby and the Gang when she saw some pictures of naked people, and she was pretty shocked. I knew something was wrong when I went back into the living room and found her sitting completely still, not moving at all.

So, here's a question - how do you talk with an 8-year-old about porn? (Just for a frame of reference - she doesn't know about sex yet, and she thinks kissing is gross.)

The answer is that there are lots of things to say to an 8-year-old about porn.  We talked for a long, long time.

At first she didn't want to say much, and just seemed to want a lot of reassurance.  So I talked in a very matter-of-fact, very calm way.

Then after a while, she wanted to make some sense out of what she saw. We had to start somewhere that she understands, so we talked about bad guys. One way to be a bad guy is to take naked pictures of people and post them on the Internet. Another is to let somebody take naked pictures of you.

But it's more complex than that, because, even though it seems bad to her, people are actually allowed to do those things. And she's old enough to understand some level of complexity. So we talked about how, weird as it might seem to her, naked pictures are actually legal, as long as it's grownups in the pictures, and grownups taking the pictures, and never, ever kids. And as long as everyone knows it's happening, and has agreed to it.

That led to questions about whether there should be a law against taking naked pictures and posting them on the Internet. Turns out 8 isn't too young to start thinking about freedom of speech, and starting to understand both sides of that issue.

And it led off on the tangent of understanding that's why you can't use a cell phone in the locker rooms at the Y. Because maybe somebody isn't talking on the phone, but is actually taking secret naked pictures of people.

Now she gets why young kids don't get to use the Internet by themselves, for exactly this reason - that sometimes they might accidentally see something on the Internet that wasn't meant for kids. She immediately vowed never, ever to use the Internet without her dad or me right there, because this really freaked her out. But that issue is more complex, and the situation has changed for us now, because she was clearly able to tell when she'd come upon something she wasn't supposed to see, and she had done the right thing, which is to do nothing until I came back and helped her. So we talked about what a good kid she is, and what good judgement she used, and how we're likely to trust her to do more alone on the Internet now that we know how responsible she is.

Much as I might have hoped we could have avoided more embarrassing territory, we really couldn't, because much as the experience shocked her, and freaked her out, she also found the pictures kind of ... interesting. She was uncomfortable admitting it, but she kind of wanted some reassurance and understanding of that too.

So I explained that pictures of naked people are pretty common on the Internet, because sometimes people enjoy looking at them. I wasn't ready to talk with her about all the fun and exciting aspects of nudity, and I really don't think she's ready to hear about them, but we did talk about curiosity, and how it's perfectly natural to have some. She can look in the mirror to see what a naked girl looks like, but she doesn't ever have an opportunity to see naked boys, and she's curious. It's not like I had a great answer for her. It's natural to be curious, but you're supposed to wait until you're an adult to indulge that curiosity by looking at naked pictures of people on the Internet. Bummer to be a kid.

And then we even talked about some of the words, so that if she wants to talk about it again sometime, she'll have the vocabulary.

It was a long talk. Afterwards it felt like somebody ought to swoop in and give me a medal, or at least a drink, but of course nobody did. Her little art project got derailed, which was too bad, but it turned out to be a pretty good day anyway. I can't help but believe that we added some points in the trust column that day, with the difficult but honest conversation, although the topic hasn't come up again.

Thank God.

Friends on Facebook

Facebook recommended a friend to me today. We have 8 mutual Facebook friends, so you'd think I'd know him. And I do. It's a guy from high school.

We were never friends in high school, despite having friends in common, and being in some classes together. We graduated and went in different directions, and then a year after high school I saw him at a party, and when I said hello to him, he said, "Oh my God! You really are flat-chested!" And after that, I thought he was an asshole.

But here's the thing. It has been 29 years. I'm not usually a grudge-holder. And 29 years is a long time to hold a grudge.

And here's another thing. If it happened today, I would burst out laughing. I've grown up a little since then.

But at the time I was pretty sensitive. And, I might argue that for some things there are no statutes of limitations. That was probably one of the most deliberately mean things anyone has ever said to me. And it successfully hurt my feelings.

Of course, when I was a teen, I said and did some pretty dumb stuff too. Who knows, maybe some of them were to him. I've forgotten most of them, I imagine, and forgiven myself for the ones I remember. And I like to think I wouldn't make most of those same mistakes now.

I don't imagine he remembers the incident. He probably remembers, like most people do, that he did some dumb stuff as a teen, but mostly he remembers himself in a good light. And he probably wouldn't make most of those same mistakes now.

So - to friend or not to friend. I hate to keep hating someone for one little thing that happened a long time ago. On the other hand, I haven't seen him since then and have nothing else by which to remember him. I don't have any pleasant memories with which to dilute the one bad one.

So I'm not going to take Facebook's recommendation and friend the guy, because we were never friends, he was an incredible asshole to me once, and I haven't thought about him for the better part of 29 years - not until he started showing up as a friend suggestion on Facebook.

Of course, this is the genius behind Google+. Instead of friending him, I could add him to a circle, like an "Assholes from High School" circle. But what would be the point? (Actually, my friend Laura says that for people in that circle, I could just do the occasional post to show them how very, very well I'm doing. I thought that was a damned funny idea.)

The situation has brought to mind a video I saw on YouTube a few months ago that had gone viral.  It's a little different than my situation - it's about an old lover who broke her heart, and now wants to be friends on Facebook. It's called "Are You F*cking Kidding Me?" But it's a good song, and it kind of represents the spirit of what I've been thinking.

Not the Best Pets

A little girl once went home from a birthday party with a goldfish in a bag. She had won it as a prize. Since then, this has been a fear lurking in the back of my mind, that somebody would thrust an undesirable pet on my daughter, and I would be stuck with it.

And then it happened.

I picked up my daughter from camp the other day, and she was so excited. Guess what was in her water bottle? It was lake clams. The campers had hiked to a lake, and an older girl had persuaded my daughter that she should scoop up some clams and take them home as pets.

The older girl knew a little bit about clams as pets. She knew they ate algae. She knew my daughter needed to keep them in water. She knew they should have stones and sand in the bowl. So here is what surprises me - that, having apparently had experience with clams as pets, she recommended them.

Here's the thing about my daughter's clams - we never knew if they were alive or dead. From the beginning of our pet experience to the end, it was never clear. It was never even clear how many clams there were, since the water was a little murky, and they may have been stuck together, and one of them may have been a stone.

Given that we weren't even very good at distinguishing clams from stones, we were certainly never going to be able to tell them apart. This was somewhat disappointing for a little girl who had hoped to name her new pet(s).

So, to be nice, let's just call them, collectively, Clammy.

Here's another thing about Clammy. They are very smelly. It may have been the algae, or it may have been the clams. It wasn't entirely clear what reeked, but it was bad enough that we had to keep them in the basement.

And here's another thing about Clammy. We really had no idea how to keep them alive, if that was even necessary, given that we weren't sure they were ever alive. No idea about water temp, or whether we needed to leave the basement light on for them, or how deep the water should be, or how rocky/sandy the bottom of their plastic bowl needed to be, or whether the chemicals in our water would be a problem, or whether they were upside-down or right-side-up, and if that mattered.

But I will say this in Clammy's favor. It took very little time for my daughter to tire of this pet. The whole down in the basement, smelly, not doing anything to indicate being alive thing meant that, when she wasn't looking, we were able to release Clammy back to the wild. And when she noticed, my daughter didn't really mind.

And so the lesson about how wild animals need to stay in the wild, that they aren't meant to be pets, was actually learned. And there weren't even tears.

Not sure if it was a happy ending, what with not knowing whether Clammy lived through it. But it might have been.

Outstanding Blog Title

I just saw a blog entry called "How to Write a Novel in 9000 Complicated Steps."  Great title.  Kind of says it all.

I Couldn't Resist

I was shopping at WalMart with my daughter this morning. She's outgrown her old flip flops, and wanted a new pair. She noticed some pink ones that were available in both kid sizes and grownup sizes. She was thrilled.

"Mommy," she said. "We could have matching flip flops. That would be the coolest thing in the world!"

I hate flip flops.

So, check out my new pink flip flops. My daughter has a pair that matches. She thinks that's the coolest thing in the world. She's eight. I know she won't feel that way for much longer. How could I resist?

My Little Fashion Genius

I've never claimed to have any fashion sense. As summer approaches, I typically stock up on white T-shirts, black T-shirts, and navy blue T-shirts. As winter approaches, I typically stock up on white turtlenecks, black turtlenecks, and navy blue turtlenecks. I'll typically pair my shirts with jeans, or with black pants or navy pants, or sometimes with khakis for a change of pace.

The other day my 8-year-old took me in hand. I was purging my closet of clothes that I no longer wear. She sat on my bed, a pint-sized autocrat, rolling her eyes and making snide comments. "Did you wear that to work on a farm, Mommy?" Or, "I guess you could keep that, if you promise you'll only wear it to paint the house."

Finally, in complete disgust, she demanded to take me shopping, and she demanded that I promise to try on and buy whatever she said. I am bigger than she is, and I control the credit cards, and she is in second grade and still happily wears outfits with clashing patterns, so I didn't agree to everything. But it was Mother's Day, and it sounded like fun, so I agreed to put myself in her hands, and we went shopping.

Normally, she doesn't have the world's longest attention span. And normally she's not a big fan of shopping unless it's for her. But not that day. We shopped for an hour, stopped for lunch, and then went back to the store and put in another hour. Without exaggeration, she had me try on 50 things.

I vetoed the shirts with enormous cabbage rose patterns and flappy things on the sleeves that looked like butterfly wings, and I vetoed everything in a shade I call "pinky tan," which I hate. But I bought nine new things that day. There was a red shirt, a couple of pink ones, two aqua things, a purple, and a yellow, and some more stuff. There were two things I might have picked out on my own, but most of them were in styles I wouldn't have even thought to try on.

So the day was an unmitigated success, and my daughter was an unmitigated success, but now she is flush with her newfound power. She wants another day with me, because she'd still like to deal with my pants and shoes, and she's disappointed that I didn't buy a dress. I can't decide if my future looks good, now that I have a personal shopper of my very own, or if I should be terrified.

Seriously???

I just read a tabloid article that claimed that, a mere five days after her royal wedding, Kate Middleton announced she was pregnant. The report went on to say that a pregnancy test, performed by the royal gynecologist at the queen's behest, ensured that Kate was not pregnant on her wedding day.

The report is most likely false, but it raises a bunch of interesting questions for me, not the least of which is: royal gynecologist - seriously????

Dealing with Screen Time

Our daughter is eight. Given that my husband and I are avid readers, we had always just assumed that she would be too. We had expected it would have happened by now, but it hadn't.

She watches TV more than she should. That's our fault, we know. We're sorry. And she plays video games, which didn't exist when I was a kid, unless you count Pong. I feel strongly about raising a computer-proficient daughter, so I won't apoligize for that.

Part of the problem is our DVR. There is never a time when "there's nothing on," because there's always something good, pre-recorded and available. It makes screening TV shows easy. We control what's recorded, and we pick good quality, age-appropriate fare. So that's good. But the bad thing is that there's never a time when what's on is just too awful to watch, which was much more common when we were young.

We'd tried imposing a screen-time quota, but we got a lot of whining and negotiating, and found ourselves doing much more activities directing on the weekends than we really wanted to do. "There's nothing to dooooooooo!"

We've tried something lately, though, that's been working like a champ so far. We made a deal. For every hour of weekend screen time, there has to be a half hour of reading.

This is a lot more reading than she'd been doing. On weeknights, she's required to read for 15 minutes, as homework. But there's never been a requirement for weekend reading, and a fair number of weekends passed without any reading at all. We hate making a power struggle out of reading, because it just seems too important in the long run for her to like it.

We've noticed three good things that have come from this new deal. The first one was not unexpected. She's doing a lot more reading, anywhere from one to four hours on a weekend. At a minimum she's doing half an hour each day. But half an hour is long enough to actually get caught up in a story, so it's not unusual for her to keep reading once she gets started.

Second, she's doing other things. When she gets done with her hour of screen time, sometimes she doesn't want to launch right into her reading time. As she procrastinates, she's been finding other things to do, imaginative things, without complaining. I'm not sure why that is. It could be she figures that if she asks for something to do, I'll just tell her to do her reading.

And third, she's spending a lot less time in front of a screen. She's been playing with her dolls, and pulling out some craft stuff, and playing more make-believe. It's not like she hasn't had upwards of nine billion toys cluttering up our house all along, but now she's actually playing with them. And, of course, she's reading. And suddenly she's reading longer, harder books than she had been, probably because she actually has enough time to get into them now.

Of course, kids change quickly, so we don't really know how long this particular strategy will work. But it's working great now, so it seemed worth mentioning.

Silver Lining

This is the gloomiest Spring I can remember. We've had sleet and hail and freezing rain and snow, for Pete's sake. The other day I was at the Y and the guy behind the desk, a guy who is always cheerful and upbeat, was singing Christmas carols. If you ask me, that's looking pretty damned hard for a silver lining.

A Good Marriage

I spent the day with my dad on Saturday. It was nice - we spent enough hours together that we got past the "headline news" style of talking, and actually connected in a way that we've been too busy to do for too long.

And here's one of the interesting things we talked about.

He told me a little anecdote about a time recently when he and my mom were watching the news together. In one of the stories, they interviewed an older wife who said something like, "My husband wanted to talk to me about something. He had such a serious look on his face that my first thought was that he was going to tell me he was leaving me, or that one of us had cancer."

In fact, the husband was going to tell the wife something about a third person, whom this story was about. But that's not why my dad was telling me the story. It was my mom's reaction.

She turned to my dad and said something like, "You know, if you wanted to talk to me about something serious, it wouldn't be my first reaction that you were going to leave me."

It took me a minute to process what my dad was saying, and why he was saying it. And then I got it. That little statement of my mom's was a pretty amazing tribute to the strength of their marriage.

It made me reflect on how lucky I am. As individuals, my parents are both terrific, and I'm lucky to have them. But I've also been lucky to have been a child of that marriage. I have no doubt at all that my marriage is as successful as it is because there are so many ways of being successfully married that are second nature to me, from having lived in a home with a successful marriage. And it doesn't hurt any that my husband's parents have logged more than 50 years too.

I'm not saying that their marriage was always happy. I'm not saying mine is either. But it sure is healthy, and strong, and terrific. Way to go, Mom and Dad! And thanks.

The New Job

On Monday I start a new job. I'm a little panicky about giving up my indolent artist's life. I never expected to love it as much as I did, and I will miss it. I'll miss the huge stretches of time for indulging in creativity. I'll miss the time I've had for poking away at household projects. I'll miss being relaxed and contented on a daily basis, and I have no doubt my husband and daughter will miss that too.

On the other hand, it's a pretty cool little company I'm going to work for. It's a tech-based start-up. I've never worked for a start-up before, and I'm guessing it's going to be an interesting experience. The company is owned by some of the most brilliant and idealistic people I've ever met. Those two characteristics don't always go together, but it's nice when they do.

The interview wasn't anything like I'd expected. They never asked any of the usual questions, and never asked for references or transcripts. One thing they did ask, though, was whether I can sing, because periodically they're apt to break out in song. I don't think the job depended on my answer to that question, but I'm not absolutely sure.

I really think I'm going to be happy there.

Candy Heart Conversation

Brenda Davis

I just spent a wonderful morning at a meeting of the Wisconsin Romance Writers of America. This month's meeting included a workshop given by Brenda Davis on "How to Fire Up Your Muse," which was wonderful.

Brenda talked about the "Butt in the Chair" approach to meeting your writing goals, which is as straightforward as it sounds - get your butt in your chair and write. But once you've sat your butt down, it helps to engage your imagination, which is not as easy to sit in front of a keyboard as your butt is. So she presented a couple of exercises that were simple, creative, and effective.

I got the biggest kick out of the Candy Heart Conversation exercise. Brenda gave each member a baggy full of those candy hearts that have words printed on them. Then she gave us 4 possible dialog scenarios: a couple having an argument, flirting, reminiscing, or joking around. The exercise was to pick a scenario, and using your candy hearts (and other words too,) write a dialog.


Here's what my hearts said:

• get real
• awesome
• yes
• first kiss
• love you
• love me
• soul mate
• kiss me
• u go girl
• yes
• dare you
• xoxo
• just one
• you rock

At first the exercise seemed ridiculous and impossible. Then it started to seem like fun. There was a huge variety in the resulting dialogs, from the steamy to the silly.  Here's the dialog I finally came up with. It's a little argument.

"I'm going to teach you a lesson!"
"Get real!"
"You know I love you."
"Yes."
"And I know that you love me."
"Yes."
"So, kiss me."
"What?"
"I said kiss me."
"Why?"
"Would you just do it?"
xoxo
"Now, don't speak yet. Just let yourself feel. And then tell me one thing that you're feeling. Just one."
"You rock."
"That's not a feeling. Try harder. This is important."
"That was awesome."
"You can do better than that. You claim to be my soul mate, so prove it. I dare you."
"OK. OK. You want to know what I really feel? I'll tell you. Even after all this time, every time I kiss you, it takes me back to our very first kiss."
"Really?"
"Yes."
xoxo

Now wasn't that fun?