Generation Exhausted

LIfe's little ironies

Think parenting isn't funny? How about this little interaction with my teen last night?

Ten minutes of yelling at each other about her not telling me about something going on at school

Ten minutes of yelling at each other about why should she fold the laundry and gee Mom, what do YOU do around here?

Five minutes of general you don't understand me/I don't understand you/roll the eyes (her, not me)/stomp stomp out of the room (her, not me)/slam the cupboard door (me, not her)

Followed by:

"Mom, here are the scissors. I trust YOU to cut my hair without screwing it up"

A Series of Unfortunate Events

How horrible is it that I went to a funeral this week and came away from it thinking, "I have GOT to see that Lemony Snicket movie!"?

Oh, shall I start at the beginning? If you insist.

Several weeks ago, one of my columnists was suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was in good spirits though, very serene about the whole thing (at least during his phone conversation with me) and plans were being made to operate. Kent was not just our magzine's longest-serving columnist, he was also a well-known local parenting educator, professor at the college, and, as it turns out, an ordained minister.

Two days ago, I went to his funeral. During which, they showed a movie clip from Lemony Snicket.

It was one of the most moving services I've ever attended. Standing room only. And the movie clip was shown in relation to something Kent had written after his surgery - it related to the scene in which the children receive the letter from their parents. The message was something like this:

Everything happens for a reason.

There is good in the world. Look for it.

If you have each other, you are home.

So here I am at the end of a shaky week that has been a roller coaster ride of emotions. Grief. Sadness. Joy. Determination. Fear. Relief. Self-doubt.

The big article I was working on several weeks ago, the one that was such a milestone for me, was killed yesterday. I'm not sure which will be harder to repair - my ego or my wallet. My wallet, I think - the editor was very good with me, all sorts of very specific feedback that made a lot of sense. No doors are closed. But it means the loss of about two grand in income that I was anticipating. So now I'm scrambling for some quick-paying stuff.

I'm trying to remind myself that Magazine B assigned out of the blue last week, so it's not that I'm a horrible writer. The paperwork came this week for that, so off we go!

The novel is being read by many.

My speaking career is about to take off, with some really good possibilities on the near horizon.

Who really, really knows what's next, or why things happen the way they do? I'd like to rail at the fates for things small and not: My loss of income. My friend's death. The fact that the guy next door finally sold his house - to another young single guy who looks like he throws weekend beer bashes. The jerk who's been calling my teenager names at school. The writer's block I've been experiencing lately.

But I won't. It's enough to know this: Things happen for a reason. There is good in the world. And I am home.

Euchre

As has become an annual tradition for me, I attended the Church Ladies' Card Party this afternoon with my grandmother. Hubby came too - he doesn't mind an afternoon spent with the white-haired bunch at all.

I'm not a great euchre player. Since I quit high school early in Grade 11, I never got to the part where you learn how to sit in the cafeteria and play cards instead of studying for exams. And even though I'd spent countless hours as a child sitting on a parent or grandparent's knee while THEY played cards, I never learned how to play. All I knew about euchre was that you got to rap on the table and say "pass." That was my job, when I was little.

So I was nearly 18 when hubby taught me to play euchre, and that was only desperation on his part, since we had no friends and the TV in our apartment in Northern Ontario only got two stations. And sometimes, you know, it was nice to having something to do instead of, well...never mind.

Anyway, I wasn't a good player, so we made some friends, and eventually got jobs, and had kids, and then there was no need to while away the hours playing cards. So we didn't play cards for a long time.

Although recently we've been playing cards a lot down at WilsonWorld.

Anyway, I like the Church Ladies Card Party, because Grandma doesn't yell at me when I make mistakes, and the sandwiches are good. (cherry cheese, yum!) And they have cool door prizes.

So today, there were a few times when hubby lectured me, because I had a really good hand, and I didn't go alone. Three times in a row. He was wagging his finger and everything. But I wouldn't make the decision to go alone. I'm just not that confident. It's too big a risk.

And why should I go alone? Sure, there'd be more points, but hey, one at a time is good. It's nice to know there's someone else across the table that you can count on to help you out if you make a dumb choice.

Wonderful news for the oldest daughter today. Her story is IN the anthology, and will also be excerpted in a national magazine this summer. So, before her sixteenth birthday, she'll have been published in a major way, twice. We're all very excited for her, and very proud. I hope that she can take this success and build on the confidence it's given her - I have a feeling there are good things in her future.

And if there are speed bumps along the way for her, well, we'll be here to help her out. Even if she could, she won't have to go it alone either.

Spring Sprung, and then disappeared

Looking out the window at a deck covered in snow on the 24th of April in SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO is NOT RIGHT. In six days it will be MAY fer cryin' out loud.

Around here, we're playing the "act as if" game, which means we're refusing to acknowledge the change in weather. If we pretend it's spring, then spring it shall be. Got it? Good. The mittens have been packed away and they ain't comin' back out.

Feeling much like the goose my daughter saw in the mall parking lot yesterday. "It was just standing there, looking bewildered."

I can sympathize.

I always knew there'd be days like this

It is the call that every freelancer I've ever met dreams of getting some day. All that slogging away, the paying of the dues, the pitching and refining, the revising, the hits and the misses. All in the hope that some day, some way, this call will come.

It came for me today, marking a new milestone in my freelance career. A national magazine called me and offered - OFFERED - an assignment, one I didn't even pitch.

The past five years have been all about getting this call some day.

Like any self-employed person, working is often about working to get work. To have work appear like this without having to go out and find it - rare. Treasured, even.

Ok, it's only one call - but man! it felt good. Better than good. It's an affirmation that everything I've done up until this point - inch by painful column inch - has kept me moving in the right direction.

Oh, and more interest in the novel.

Oh, and I was going to tell you that the teenager has a job interview tomorrow. Except now I have TWO teenagers, as of yesterday.  How weird is that? So Oldest has her first job interview tomorrow. Think good thoughts.

And the other teen will be on CBC radio tomorrow.

Days like this, where everything is just good. Great, even. They can happen. Here's to more of them!

A must read

If there are gods in Alabama, then there must also be goddesses - and Joshilyn Jackson is the Goddess of Good Fiction.

Writers read books differently than those who don't write, I think. There is always the thought,lurking in the back of our mind - could I do this? How could I write this story - better? - worse? - not at all? We read the sentences written by others, and we absorb their stories, but we also see the way words are woven together, the way phrases are turned, and we think - I would do it this way - that way - not at all.

And then there are the books we read and think - I will never be this good. NEVER. I might as well stop right now, because I won't ever be able to put words together and make the sentences SING the way this writer has. Eventually we get over it, of course, but still.

gods in Alabama is one of those books. Well done, Joss. Well done.

A writer's worst nightmare

It was one of those things I knew I was SO going to blog about when I got home. So here I am.

The backstory:

On Monday, I called the local mega bookstore to see if Joshilyn's book was in. My email lists had been filled with tales of readers literally tripping over gods in Alabama displays at bookstores scattered throughout the US, Amazon had started shipping copies, and the official release date was Thursday. So I figured it was worth a try.

The clerk on the phone confirmed that the computer said there were six copies in store, but he informed me that he wouldn't be able to sell me one until the official release date. Ok, I can play by the rules - I'll wait the two days.

As to why there were only six copies delivered to just about the only bookstore serving a region of 300,000 people, well, I don't know. I'm just saying.

So tonight we were running some errands, and I swung by the mega bookstore to finally buy gods. There was much joking on hubby's part about me running into the bookstore "just to pick up one thing, back in five, I swear." I have never spent less than 30 minutes in a bookstore in my life. But I promised - I was going in to get Joshilyn's book, and I'd be right back out. Honest.

So I go in, zoom right to Fiction, J section. It's not there. I find a clerk, who goes to the trusty computer and confirms that yes, there are six copies in store. Seeing my distress, we search all the aisle displays, New Releases, Chick Lit, Great Fiction, even the buzz wall. IT'S NOT THERE.

At this point, the clerk offers to look "in the back." Great. I wait, and he finally reappears, says the book's not there, so sorry, he doesn't know where it is, perhaps I should try again in a few days.

This is where the story gets dramatic.

I start my little "whatever happened to customer service" hissy fit that I'm famous for, and suggest that I just order it from Amazon, or perhaps see if WalMart has it. What a shame it will be if I end up buying it somewhere else, yada yada.

Major digression-  I was bluffing, except for the Amazon part. There aren't any other bookstores. There's a little one across town, but it's part of the same mega conglomerate. All of our indies are gone, in part because of the whole mega store thing, in part because indies, at least around here, had a bad habit of stocking books they thought people should want to read instead of the books people actually DO want to read.

Clerk rolls his eyes a bit, and says Ma'am, we will find this book. I'll stay with you and search the store if it takes all night. He's patronizing me.

I take a breath. Look, I say. I'm a writer too. My book is on that shelf over there, see? The one with the pretty pink cover. I would be horrified to think that people might come here looking for my book and not be able to find it, even though it is HERE.

The person who wrote this book? She's a real person. Months - nay, years - have gone into getting this book published, and printed, and into this store, and stores like it around the country. Selling this book is her LIVELIHOOD.  You can't sell books if the stores don't put them on the shelves EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE IN THE STORE. People can't buy books they can't see.

It's an author's worst nightmare. (ok, I don't know that for sure, but it sounds pretty nightmarish to me, and I'm an author too, so there you go. Perhaps it isn't the WORST nightmare, but it ranks right up there.)

The clerk gets another clerk. And a manager. Sadly, the manager is not as earnest as the clerk, but the second clerk says, "I've heard of that book." See! Someone heard of it ALREADY. And what if other people that heard about it - like ME - come in looking for it, and don't see it, and they're not willing to be a pain in the ass about it like I am?

The three confer, and determine that the book passed through receiving last week. They go into the mysterious "back" again. Finally, second clerk comes back out. There's a whole SKID full of books (by lots of authors) that came in last week, and it HASN'T BEEN UNPACKED YET.

First clerk makes his way halfway down the skid, and finally finds the box containing gods, and unpacks the box, and emerges triumphant with six copies of gods in Alabama. Five of them go onto the shelf, and the other one goes into my hands, and I race toward the cashier.

I was in the store for 40 minutes. And my hubby wasn't mad, and didn't leave me, even though he and the little daughter were sitting in the van the WHOLE time. Thank you hubby, for that. And thank you, clerk, for not telling me to go away, and for finally getting Joss's book onto the shelf.

Another agent has asked to see the full manuscript. Some day, my first novel will be in a store near you. Hopefully, not buried in a box in the back room.

Now I'm going to read gods in Alabama.

Should I borrow a preschooler?

It has been several years since I had a preschooler of my own. My girls are older, and in five days I will have not one, but TWO teenagers in the house. So why then, you might ask (yes, you WOULD ask, you know you would, it's only natural to be curious - oh god, the Google hits I'll get from that phrase) where was I? Oh yes, why you might ask, was I at a MOPS meeting last night?

Because I was the guest speaker, of course. One of the members had read and LOVED my book, and thought I was just the funniest thing EVER, so she invited me to speak to their group. Now, I know not all of my readers have had positive MOPS experiences - one only needs a to wander the blogoshpere for about five minutes to determine that - but I truly enjoyed myself.

I got there early, because I misjudged how long it would take me to drive to that end of town. Which means that I was there for all the other parts of the meeting that weren't all about me. There were about ten women there. It's an evening group, so there were no kids. They played a game, and I won a prize. And then it was me.

I talked about "finding the funny" - the importance of keeping a sense of humor on your mothering journey. I spoke for about 40 minutes, and I think I did okay. They laughed at all the right places, and no one seemed to be suffering from a wandering attention span. They all spoke with me later and told me how much they enjoyed it, and I sold a few books. So I think I did okay.

Please don't tell them that I'd hardly prepared at all. Straight off the top of my head, that one. I'm sure you could tell, at times, that I was winging it, but only a couple of times.

Then I stayed for craft, which was make your own banana splits. Free ice cream! And we all sat around, eating our banana splits and talking about our favourite restaurants, and - it just occurs to me now - there wasn't a lot of talking about kids. Plus, there was also candy.

I had a really good time. And I realized that I don't get many chances to sit around with other moms and just...hang out. My interactions with adults mostly have a purpose - work, fundraising, school council stuff. I do wander down to WilsonWorld often for idle chitchat, but usually when I'm in a group of women, we are there for a REASON. Most of my hanging out casually with other moms happens on the Internet, through blogs and email, etc.

I never went to mommy groups when my kids were little. As a young mom, I was suspicious of mommy groups and drop-in centres. I was convinced that if I went, they would be watching me, waiting for the teenaged mom to make a mistake. I interpreted those groups as a kind of parenting test I was sure I would fail.

My other perception of mommy groups was that they were very clique-ish. And some probably are. And I didn't fit in in high school, and I figured that MOPS and other groups were probably just like the high school "in crowd" only with kids, and that I'd have a hard time belonging.

I think I might have missed out. But my kids are older now, and I'm assuming that means I don't qualify for MOPS anymore. Last fall, I had the opportunity to go hang out at a drop-in centre once a week, and I really enjoyed that too, except they were all moms of babies and toddlers too, and I found that the diaper discussions could get a bit tedious.

There should be a group for moms of teenagers. A group that isn't about raising money for the soccer team or planning the school carnival, or organizing hot dog day. A group that's just about hanging out with other moms who will be able to relate when you say "Does anyone else have a problem with their daughters stealing their foundation?"

We could call it MOTHER, and it could stand for Mothers Of Teenagers Have Evening Respite. Or MOTCH - Mothers of Teenage Children. Or something. Just a once-a-month get-together where we can talk about the challenge of parenting kids who are almost grown up but who will always be our babies.

Games could include Decipher The Instant Message and Figure Out The Math Homework. For craft, we could scrapbook a Grade 8 graduation page. And we could have ice cream and candy.

Why don't these things exist for mothers of older kids? We're still experiencing new phases of parenting, and making it up as we go along, just like any other parent. Just because it gets different doesn't mean it gets any easier.

Just like starting over

One of today's tasks was to get the partial ready to send to the agent that requested it. I'd gotten lucky on the request for the full -bless their hearts, they were willing to take it via email! But the request for partial needed to go Pony Express, real envelope, SASE and all.

First, I had to get ink for the printer - printing the full manuscript twice in the last six weeks for editing purposes meant I'd used up most of a cartridge in half the time it usually takes. My printer's been warning me for a week now - THAT'S ALL THERE IS, THERE ISN'T ANY MORE. GO TO STAPLES, DUMMY.

Fifty pages printed, plus a synopsis, plus another cover letter, and then, dear god, do I even HAVE an 8 x 10 envelope? (I did)

And the address label, and then the SASE. And then the angst over the return postage.

See, living in the Great White North, one cannot send a SASE with Canadian postage. That's about as useless over there as our money. I've never used the infamous irks. (IRCs) Couldn't even tell you what they look like. So I used to get U.S. writers to mail me postage every now and then when they were feeling generous, or I'd have dear old dad stop at the USPS on his way home from work.

Took me a while, but I found them. They're in 33 cent denominations, and I'm fairly certain postage has gone up there since I last used them in 2001, so I stuck two on the return envelope just to be sure. Besides, since they're going to call and request a full, they'll never use the SASE anyway, right?

The whole process made me realize just how much I do electronically. Oh, I have a reasonably stocked office. Envelopes, paper, labels, even US stamps. But it's been an AGE since I used most of it - I email queries, and email finished articles, and I edit on screen, so the only things that get printed around here are ad handouts and flyers for the school bake sale. And kids' homework. And the books don't get mailed in an 8 x 10 envelope.

When I was a novice writer, I agonized over that damn SASE. See above about postage anguish and the lengths to which I went to make sure I always had US postage on hand. I'd almost forgotten about how much time I used to spend on stuff like that.

This search for an agent stuff is new to me. Don't get me wrong - I'll mail out as many fulls and partials and SASEs as it takes, US postage and all, to get this baby into the right hands. But as each day passes, I'm realizing just how little experience I have with submitting fiction.

I speak at MOPS for the first time tomorrow - how to find the "funny" in motherhood. I'll keep you posted.

Maybe I'll meet Mork and Mindy

When I was little, every time I read a book where some kids made something - a go kart, a clubhouse, even the "roller coaster" in one of the Great Brain books - I wanted to try it too. The basement and garage were a haven of possibility - there seemed no end of things to put together. (or take apart)

I never had much luck, and my interest in creating anything but books eventually faded. But I remembered that early inclination yesterday as I watched kids from Grade 6 to 12 show off their own ingenuity and creativity in the form of scenery, structures and mechanical beings. The Provincial competition for Odyssey of the Mind was certainly the place to be for those who admire independent thinkers!

And the strange combination of chicken wire, old bed sheets and a stuffed animal paid off for my daughter and her team-mates - they took FIRST PLACE in their category! This means that she and the other five kids are now eligible to compete at the World Finals in beautiful Boulder, Colorado next month!

And that's not all - ALL THREE TEAMS FROM OUR SCHOOL QUALIFIED!!!

Plus, TWO OTHER TEAMS FROM OUR SCHOOL BOARD!!

Our educators, and I'm sure more than a few parents are now scrambling to figure out what this is going to mean financially. I've even heard some muse aloud that perhaps the cost is simply too high - maybe they shouldn't go on. But I am determined to do everything I can do to make this happen for these wonderful kids. I'm not terribly worried. Not terribly.

Our best estimate is that it's going to take about $1000 U.S. per kid to participate in this amazing opportunity. That translates to $23k for our school alone, and about $35-40k for our board.

My daughter has asked to start a blog, and ask "the Internet" for donations, but I've put a hold on that for now. "The Internet" doesn't know her, and there are so many other sources we can turn to. We've already started working up lists of community organizations and businesses we think we can ask for support. It's early days - we don't know yet whether we're going to be fundraising co-operatively, school by school, or kid by kid. Probably a combination of all three. But I'm confident that the support for these kids will be found in their own families and communities.

I intend to go as well. My kid will have just turned 13 and that's an awfully long way to go, to look out into a sea of spectators and not have a single relative there. It's way over there on the other side of the continent, for heaven's sake! But obviously, whatever fundraising takes place, it's not going to be for me. So I've got to figure something out.

We've already decided that it's simply not right to take from our other kids, or our family as a whole, to get me to Colorado. So yeah, the Disney trip will still happen, and the kids will still play Little League, etc.

I'm not going to ask "the Internet" for money either. The online community has been good to me in terms of providing information and connections and encouragement, but cash is not something I'm comfortable asking for. (unless you are my parents, ha ha) We're not a rich family, but we don't go hungry either, and it would be misleading to indicate otherwise. Our ends meet, even if we have to stretch a bit every now and then.

But a spike in book sales would go a long way toward helping me out with this one. So if you haven't bought Generation Xhausted yet - or your sister, or your friend or your cousin hasn't - why not think about it now? You'll get a million laughs for your few dollars, and it would sure help this author get closer to a plane ticket. And tell your friends too!