Generation Exhausted

What if?

Well, here we are on the threshold of November once again, and I'm faced with the same question that writers around the world are comtemplating:

Will the kids even notice if I pick all the Kit Kat bars out of their Halloween candy?

Ok, so I can answer that question myself. Of course they will, which is why you bought that extra box and stashed it in your office ahead of time.

But that's not really the question. The question is:

Nano? Or no?

Currently I have one finished novel (Nano 2004) still making the rounds through Agent World and three unfinished novels sitting on my hard drive. I did not participate in National Novel Writing Month last year, and those unfinished novels haunt my dreams. What if I can't finish them? WHY can't I finish them? What if Nano, with its adrenaline-filled writing mini-marathons, its daily hype, it's "everyone's doing it so you'd better too" is the key for me, at least for now?

Starting another novel would mean continuing to ignore the unfinished. But during the last few weeks I've found myself once again assaulted by imaginary characters and scenarios that would be absolutely perfect for the next attempt. I want to know about harps and harpists. I want to know about the people who get hired to be the recorded voice for talking toys. I want to know about toy testers and rodeo clowns (thank you Corner Gas) and the person who's responsible for making sure there are M&Ms in the rock stars' dressing rooms before a concert. I want to know about the guy who runs a parking lot outside the baseball stadium and the girl who sits in a customs booth all day.

I want to know about all these things, and I want to write about them.

Perhaps, for me, Nano should be Na-Know.

Writers are all about the what-ifs. It's the foundation that we use to build a warehouse of stories and thoughts and ideas upon.

So - what if I did Nano?

What if I didn't?

Still undecided. I'll keep you posted.

Now I know the secret of the root beer

So last night I was thinking about cheeseburgers, probably because yesterday I'd driven by the new A & W in town. It's an end of town I'm not in often, so when I found myself in the neighbourhood again today, I called the hubby on the cell phone and said, "Want a Teen Burger?"

And then I actually got to the A & W, and realized how misleading the recent A & W advertising campaign is. You've seen the commercial where the guy presents his parents with a Grandpa Burger to announce a baby on the way? And the one where the two guys are debating about who's going to pay for lunch? Think about it - in both commercials, THERE ARE NO OTHER PEOPLE IN THE RESTAURANT.

Ha.

It was 2 in the afternoon, past the "lunch" hour. The drive-thru was "wrapped" (a term I learned from Oldest, a McDonalds' employee. It means the line-up of cars goes right around the parking lot) They actually had an order taker on line. I decided to venture inside to order.

Ha.

There were at least 20 people in line and almost all the tables were full too. I could see probably 15 employees scurrying around behind the counter, filling orders as fast as they could. Have you been asking yourself "whither the Baby Boomers?" Ask no more - they're in line at A & W. 90% of the customers were visibly over the age of fifty.

I like A & W. The old ones were drive-ins, and you used to order into a speaker and they'd come and hang a tray off your car window. With real glass mugs for the root beer. They're using real glass mugs again for "dining room" orders. And real coffee mugs. If only it weren't across town! And it would be cool, I think, to eat in the car, with a tray hanging off the window, glass mugs and all.

Baby Boomers aren't the only ones with a sense of nostalgia.

This is a new restaurant, and the first one in town for twenty years that hasn't been located in a mall food court. It opened a couple weeks ago, I think. I feel comfortable declaring that they should build three more immediately. There are more than a quarter of a million people in this area, and I'm betting they could go for a Teen Burger.

Oh, and the secret as to why A & W root beer tastes so much better than any other? It's printed on the takeout cups - they don't put ice in their drinks, so it doesn't get watered down.

I'd give my right arm...

Driving tonight, in the dark and the rain, a traffic light turned yellow suddenly, and I had to make one of those split-second decisions based on my immediate assessment of road conditions, travelling speed, distance to the intersection, likely "skiddiness" factor, etc. - stop, or don't?

I stopped, and as so often happens when I have to hit the brakes suddenly, my right arm flung out reflex-like in front of the passenger sitting next to me.

My 170 lb. hubby is glad to know, I'm sure, that I'm willing to let his body snap my arm like a twig before he hurtles through the windshield.

I can't help it. It's the mother's arm. And I know I'm not alone. It's the "mother's nature" that Mother Nature has programmed me to have. It's the same instinct that causes my ears to perk up at the sound of a crying baby three aisles over at the grocery store. It's what draws me to position myself in front of the schoolyard gate when I notice a Kindergarten kid wandering a little too far from the pack.

I've been flinging my arm out in front of the passenger seat since the doctor first said, "It's a girl." I do it to my mother, my brother, and my teenagers. I do it when I only have the youngest with me and she still sits in the backseat. I even do it when I'm in the car alone. So I asked the hubby - do dads do that?

He didn't think so. I told him I was going to take a poll, and he said "put it on your blog."

So there's the question - do you have a mother's driving arm? And do dads have it too?

Pot, meet kettle

It amazes me that the two most sporadic bloggers I know have both remarked on the lack of bloggage here this week.

Ok, to be fair - AGK blogs pretty much daily. She just keeps moving and redecorating so often that I can never find her.

And just when I got my blogroll all tidied up, the Kims decided to move. I'll get around to changing their links as soon as I can. Meanwhile, Kim One is here and Kim Two is here.

Sorry for the absence. I've been lucky enough to land two projects in the last week that are due in early November, plus it's deadilne week for my largest client. Plus the never-ending hunt for more work, trying to tap out a few hundred words (at least!) on my novel every couple of days, plus plus plus.

You get the picture.

Youngest is gearing up for the Birthday Extravaganza as she turns Double Digits in November. It's been a few years without a "friends" birthday party, and this will likely be her last one of that sort.  Add a heaping helping of Mommy Guilt and you have a birthday party price tag that made hubby go, "Ummm....wow." Bless the boy, he doesn't criticize.

Also bless the boy for not only learning how to live with a writer but also for actually, you know, paying attention when I chatter. Heck, I don't pay attention to my own chatter half the time. But no, last week I was wandering around ruminating aloud, and this is what it sounded like:

There was a harpist at church today. Harps are cool. Wouldn't it be great to write a book that had a harpist? I wonder how I could find out about harps? I wonder if the Writing Mothers know anything about harps and harpists? Could someone tiny like me lift a harp? I should find out about harps....

And three days later, he woke me up at 2 a.m. and clicked on the TV and said, "Honey, look, they're talking about harps on How It's Made!"

All together now, everyone say, "Awww..." Can't have him, he's mine.

Just a reminder, check out the November issue of Today's Parent, last page - that's me. And even more cool, one of the letters to the editor in the same issue mentions my article Class Struggles which was in the September issue.

Off to do more work - I want to be able to start NaNo without a mountain of it competing for my attention!

Feeling cheated

You know how it seems like basic groceries - say, a can of Campbell Soup, or a loaf of bread - sometimes seem to have stayed the same price over a long period of time? And how, as you're thinking about this (ok, I'm thinking about it) you realize that, okay, a loaf of bread is still a dollar or close to it, but hey - didn't it used to be slightly larger? Or the soup, or the pop, or whatever - close to the same price, but are you getting the same amount? Or are they slowly decreasing the amount you're paying for, so you don't have to be faced with paying more?

Television is giving me this feeling. Last night's Gilmore Girls, I swear there was a commercial every two scenes. I timed one show last week - there was literally a commercial every four minutes. And tonight, watching Jericho, I got the same feeling - an hour-long television program is moving further and further away from being an actual hour.

I know that paid advertising drives the industry, and I can accept that - after all, a lot of the work I do is in advertising. But it's a delicate balance, and lately, it feels pretty unbalanced. Maybe you can't give me back the two slices of bread you took away - but can you give me one slice?

What do you think?

For your amusement

There's a commercial for Canadian Tire playing these days that I just saw for the first time. It shows a husband at the kitchen sink, water spewing in eighty-two different directions while he shouts frantically to his wife instructions on which wrench she needs to bring him RIGHT NOW.

Cut to the wife, who stands in front of a basement tool bench, staring at the obligatory pegboard on the wall, trying to figure out what the heck he's talking about.  Finally, in desperation, she reaches up and tears the entire sheet of pegboard off the wall to carry all of the tools upstairs so he can figure it out himself.

I laughed hysterically. And by that I mean HYSTERICALLY, in the way that someone does when they don't get out much, someone who spent an entire Saturday cleaning the basement and organizing the pegboard last weekend.

But that's not the only reason I laughed. I laughed because I remembered the day when we moved into our first house. It was the same day the legendary Murphy of Murphy's Law fame moved in with us.

It was a cold, snowy January Sunday, late afternoon. For weeks, we'd been painting and making the house ours. The walls in the baby's room (good lord, that baby will be 17 next month!) were a beautiful shade of lilac, and on one wall was wallpaper, in a pattern of repeating rainbows. Putting up the wallpaper had, in itself been a test of our marriage, which, like the baby, was still in its infancy. (ultimately, I told him to go away and did it myself, or maybe I had my mother do it. We never EVER tried to wallpaper together again. My mother even came and wallpapered my kitchen when we moved into THIS house. Knowing we can't wallpaper together is one of the foundation stones of our marriage. Seriously.)

The room was beautiful. The hardwood floors were in reasonable shape, and we'd moved in the rocking chair, and a small rug, and the stark white crib that was as new as the baby. It was our first night in the house, and it was cold. And the radiator in the baby's room didn't seem to be working.

"Just turn the knob on the radiator," my dad said. So hubby did.

And the knob broke off in his hand, and the water, it spewed. And spewed. And SPEWED.

Ugly, smelly, black, greasy water, in eighty-two different directions. All over the nice new wallpaper, the beautiful lilac walls, the rocking chair, the crib. Water, water, everywhere. Spewing.

I ran for a bucket, ran for the phone. "Turn off the water," said my dad.

Knowing how to turn off the water when you've never owned a house before? Not so likely. I ran back and forth to the phone (pre-cordless days) while I searched the basement for the shutoff and hubby bailed.

There are no hardware stores open on snowy Sunday evenings in January. But at least the water stopped spewing. It also stopped coming out of the taps, as well as stopped being able to heat the rest of the house.

Ultimately, we didn't fix the thing, just disconnected it and put in an electric baseboard heater. And scrubbed the lilac walls and rainbow wallpaper. The world also hadn't heard of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser yet, so that wasn't very effective. To this day, there is a black spatter mark on the rocking chair that never did come off.

Also, I learned stuff. Years later, in this house, the bottom went out of the hot water tank, and I knew immediately how to shut off the water. The nice lady at the hot water heater company only had to walk me through (on the cordless phone) how to shut off the gas.

So, I laughed hysterically at the commercial. Because spewing water? Makes you frantic.

Trust me.

Bless you boys

I haven't been to a Tiger game in decades, but I'd love to see them at Comerica Park in the World Series. Just in case anyone was wanting to send me tickets.

I've never even been to Comerica Park. My Tiger days were spent cruising Tiger Stadium at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. The 1984 and 1985 seasons were a whirlwind of excitement - my dad was a season ticket holder then, so we got to go to many, many games. Dad and brother would settle down and watch the game. I would do what I do best - people watch, and shop. What can I say? I was thirteen years old!

I was the proud owner of a piggy bank shaped liked a baseball helmet representing everyone of the American League teams. I had Tiger cropped t-shirts in three variations.  I could polish off three ballpark hotdogs in the space of a game.

It's kind of neat to see Tiger Fever reviving itself. I don't know any of the players, and I haven't really paid attention to baseball since the days of Parrish and Gibson and Senor Smoke. But even my kids are tuning in, watching to see what happens. I even went searching the Internets for a copy of "Bless You Boys." And found it.

Go Tigers!

Oh the Winter, She will be long

The problem with being a self-employed freelancer working from a home office is that there's often no one to talk to. (when I first typed that sentence, my finger slipped and it said ELF-employed. I find that hysterically funny for some reason)

Every phone conversation I had after 11 this morning started with me saying, incredulously, "It's SNOWING. It just isn't RIGHT."

I found it disconcerting that, when I ran up to the school for a minute, the heat was on. The heat is NEVER on this early. Partly because of cost, partly because the boilers take a while to fire up and once the heat is on, it's ON for the winter. They're not supposed to fire up the boilers until November 1. And here it was, October 12, and the heat was on. If they have no problem letting the kids sweat in May and June, why can't they be a little chilly in October, that's what I want to know.

And then, like any slightly neurotic artistic type does, when faced with something they just can't face, (I'm still talking about the Snowing thing), I took to my bed. Got my blankie and my remote, and had a little rest.

And then I got up and dug out the bin of hats and mittens, because sometimes, you just need to face the things you don't want to face.

Middle got an academic award up at the high school tonight, and the light refreshment promised did not include coffee. And Oldest writes the SATs in about 36 hours. I'm telling you, it's just a hive of excitement around here.

I may take to my bed tomorrow too. As soon as I take the air conditioners out of the windows.

Who do I call about this?

It is snowing.

It is October 12.

This is SOUTHwestern Ontario.

Snow. Mid-October. For crying out loud.

As easy as...

In my attempts to reorganize the calendar, I forgot the most important thing about this Thanksgiving. I made a pie. Two pies.

No, really.

I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've made a pie since Grade Nine Home Ec Family Studies, when they taught us to make that hideous concoction out of Ritz crackers that magically ends up tasting like apple pie. (what's the deal with that, anyway?) Cooking doesn't come naturally to me, (just ask the people I live with) and pie has always seemed rather, well, complicated.

It all started because they put me in charge of the turkey.

Oh, they weren't so foolish as to suggest I cook the turkey - I was merely responsible for buying it. I was to purchase a turkey suitable for feeding 10 or so people, including one senior citizen, two children, and one picky eater. Plus leftovers.

Because of my adventures in Deviled Egg Math (note: one dozen eggs will make 24 deviled eggs, not 6) there was no way I was going to attempt to convert a turkey sold by the kilogram into the recommended poundage per person, so consultation with my mother and husband took place. It was ultimately decided that I should obtain a turkey of about 12 pounds. (we like our leftovers)

Then I, being me, forgot all about how if you're buying a frozen turkey that's meant to be cooked on Sunday, you should buy it, say, well in advance of Sunday, so that it can be taken out to thaw in a sufficient amount of time. Also, the fact that 10 jillion other people will all be wanting turkeys and the grocery store only has so many. Turkeys don't grow on trees you know.

Which is what brought husband and I to the 24-hour A&P at midnight Friday night, because I'd forgotten to buy the turkey. Where there were about five turkeys that were too small and ten turkeys that could have fed the state of Rhode Island, and nothing in between.

There were large chickens available - I considered using a sharpie to scratch out the word "chicken" on the wrapper, but decided my mother wouldn't fall for it. Likewise, the distress that would ensue if I arrived at my mother's on Saturday morning with 12 Cornish Game Hens.

There were also packages of turkey breasts, turkey thighs and turkey drumsticks. I used to be quite the Brownie leader, adept at crafts - could I build a turkey?

It wasn't worth the risk. We got a smaller turkey, and a turkey breast, and moved on to pie. Because oh yes, I was also in charge of picking up a pie.

Pies are expensive, and I was feeling adventurous, so I decided that I would make a pumpkin pie. I feel very sorry for the person who left their Thanksgiving shopping to a later minute than me; I got the last can of pumpkin pie filling in the known universe. The label was torn, but I checked to see that the directions were intact. That's when I discovered that pumpkin pie filling isn't a stand-alone type thing - you need to add things to it, things like eggs and evaporated milk, which really makes me think they should call canned pumpkin pie filling something else, because you can't just fill the pie with the stuff from the can. They should call it the Pumpkin And Spices Part Of The Pumpkin Pie Filling.

So. Eggs. Evaporated Milk. And, oh look, lemon pie filling is on sale. And the handy-dandy frozen pie crusts come two to a package. I will also make Lemon Meringue Pie, oh yes I will!

You know, I went to WalMart to get a kid some rainboots once and came home with a lamp and windshield wiper blades as well. My shopping habits are my shopping habits, it seems, no matter where I roam.

Sunday comes, and it's Pie Day. My husband and children were having a hard time coping with the concept of me in the kitchen, and were all kerfuffled. Oldest wandered in for a drink of water and didn't get out of there for twenty minutes, as I sucked her into my madness, charging her with filling the lemon tarts I'd decided to add to the plan. See, my neighbour had some apple tarts, so in she sent those over, and some empty tart shells, since I had an extra box of lemon pie filling (it was a two-for sale) and I was going to give her the lemon tarts.

So. I made the pies and the tarts without setting the kitchen on fire. And then hubby made us a nice omelette with all the eggs that I'd failed to seperate successfully.

I don't know how my grandmother used to do it. That woman could make half a dozen pies with us underfoot, and she made her own pastry too. We'd get all the dough scrapings and sit at the table making little dough people right in the middle of it all. She'd slice apples and roll out crusts, and beat meringue, and it would take HOURS. I was in the kitchen on Sunday for 90 minutes and felt like I'd fought a war.

In the end, the pie was good, nobody died, and Grandma said it tasted right. But I think I'll let someone else be in charge of buying the turkey next year.