So much to say, yet nothing. I haven't posted since February, though a lot of nothing has happened.

I think.

I've four posts that I keep meaning to finish, but each time I start them... well... nothing seems to "work." And, perfectionist that I can be, I refuse to publish them just to publish them.

So I've the blog on February's snow storm and what it was like to be trapped in Moon Township in a hotel without power, water, or heat. Then there's one on my trip to Omaha at the end of April when I was -- once again! -- trapped in a hotel (with power, water, and heat). This time it was thanks to a three-hour flight delay that would have caused me to miss my connection in Chicago. I spent the night in Omaha at the Holiday Inn and went to bed at the gloriously decadent hour of 8:30 p.m. I've a third post about my tendency to talk to strangers and how much fun it can be.

Fourth is the unfinished post about Gavin turning seven.

Seven!

How can I say that nothing has happened when my little miracle is no longer that little? The little boy who came into this world two months early is in the family room right now, playing bowling on Wii and yelling "yeah baby!" each time he successfully knocks down the pins.

"Yeah baby!"

My son has his own catch-phrase. Everything is "yeah baby," though sometimes we alternate with "now that's what I'm talking about!"

When I choose clothes that he likes, he pronounces that I "know his style." When I read his mind and tell him that he can't ride his scooter down the sliding board and do other "mean mommy" things designed to keep him alive and in once piece, he sadly tells me that I always "foil his plans."

He has definite opinions that about what is cool and not cool, but don't think they always coincide with the rest of the world. He also has definite opinions about why things work, why they don't work, and why he should be allowed to test his theories. He will bargain and cajole and pester for everything. While it makes me insane sometimes to explain things umpteen times, I have to admit I like that side of him too much to change it. Give me an independent thinker who questions me over a well-behaved lemming any day.

At bedtime, we read books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. When he reads on his own, he likes to peruse the two medical terminology books that he appropriated from my bookshelf. While I miss having a little boy who could comfortably fall asleep in my arms as I sang to him, I have more fun with the interactive boy who listens to the same music as I do and is not above dancing around the kitchen with him mom to the sounds of Lady Gaga and Pitbull. (American Pie, however, is his current favorite.)

How can I have nothing to write about?

Perhaps I have too much.
(Such a blessing. No?)

Somewhere, tucked in my papers from my undergrad years, is a quote about how being killed because you are a writer is "the ultimate expression of respect."

Or something like that.

It means, of course, that you are killed because you are good at your craft. Too good. You are killed because the people listen to you and because you have become a voice that powerful cowards cannot bear to hear.

This past weekend, Cuban bloggers Yoani Sanchez, Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo, and Ciro Díaz.were picked up by thugs, thrown into a van, beaten, and thrown onto the street. The bloggers' crimes? Blogging about Cuba as it is today under castro. Telling the truth.

Yoani was voted one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time Magazine. You can find her blog here: Generacion Y. (Google offers a reasonable translation for those who aren't fluent in Spanish.)

Chantel's Yucababy blog provided a translation of Pardo's post, a recount of the experience:

Below, is my translation of an excerpt from Orlando Pardo's post at Penultimos Dias:

Within seconds, Yoani and I had our arms twisted in a car imported from our Stepmother Country: China

My head against the car's carpet, and Yoani with her feet in the air.I couldn't see her, identifying her only because she would not be quiet. I heard her scream with the vehemence of a being more free than the planet itself

She had a Cuban man's knee nailed against her chest, and still she rebuked him

From that energy I borrowed the strength to revive a bit my own voice.

They told me to tell Yoani to be quiet.

That phrase, pronounced by three unknowns in the name of the Cuban State, sums up the obsolescence and obscenity of this country.

Tell Yoani to be quiet.
Tell Yoani to be quiet.
Tell Yoani to be quiet.

Despotically, they deposited us in a corner that I confused with the patio of a barracks.
I was dizzy.I felt nauseous, felt like vomiting.
I could not move my neck.
I embraced Yoani (which I'd never done before).
She began to sob.

The greatest woman in Cuba seemed like an infant.

Because Yoani is such: the future of Cuba crystallized on a fragile and unstoppable body.

I kissed her head. Her hair pulled with such hate smelled like liberty.
Once.
Twice.
Ten.
Uncountable times I kissed her ageless head.

But I never told her to be quiet.
But I never told her to be quiet.
But I never told her to be quiet.


-- Orlando Luis Pardo

Nanowrimo 2009

Once more, I'm taking up the challenge: 50,000 words in 30 days..

Ought to be interesting this year -- especially since I'm working on that doctorate, working full-time, and trying to get through the last (almost painful) edit of Killing Julie.

Thanks to Nano, I finished KJ. Perhaps this year, thanks to Nano, I'll get that next one rolling (as opposed to bouncing around in my brain).

The plot? Darned if I know.

Trust

Gav is hitting "that" age -- the one where I have to decide between sending him to the men's room alone or dragging him into the women's room with me. His six going on seven, meaning that I'm rational going on paranoid-obsessive.

Is there anyone lurking in there? Is some pervert waiting for a trusting mom to send her son in to him? Will Gavin know enough to scream and run? Or will he be just too frightened to act? How much trouble will I get in if I open the door to check on my son's safety?

Wait, do I really care about how much trouble I might get in? Not really.

I stand right outside the bathroom door, ready to leap to action and kill anyone who looks at my son "funny" and makes him nervous.

Well, really, they don't have to make him nervous. Making me nervous is about all it will take for me to push that door open and charge in. While I haven't yet, have no doubt about it, I will should I feel the need. (I've chased my son into men's dressing rooms at department stores when he was a curious toddler, so a men's restroom isn't particularly intimidating.)

It should be noted at this point that Gavin -- in spite of training by parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and teachers -- says that he "knows" what to do when approached by a stranger. He will hit him with a baseball bat. Throw him under a car. Run him over. Brake a table over his head. Throw the cat in his face. And, finally, feed him to monsters.



THEN he will run.

(No wonder I get nervous.)

Other mothers share their stories with me, which does not help. While I realize that it's good to be aware, why does every story seem to have an evil stranger haunting it?

Frankly, excluding this, I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky chick. I believe that people are generally good at heart and that more of them are likely to help than to hurt. I think that things tend to turn out right, even when it seems that they won't. I talk to strangers, and I smile at people on the street if we make eye contact. I am, probably, the sort who some would say is bound to end up on a milk carton someday.

When it comes to conferences, I hop on planes and head to big cities all by myself. Airports are adventures just waiting to happen -- so much so that I make it a point to change planes whenver possible and pick layovers in states I've yet to visit. When I drive to conferences, I seek out local mom-and-pop restaurants and invite other conference attendees. I've been known to close bars with my closest friends as well as those I met at meetings that morning. And if there's a club to be found, I'll be there.

Ah, and the stories! The culture! To be with people from other worlds who look at everything so very differently then you, whose economic systems were so defining in their lives (uh, yeah, I should probably mention that I meet the bulk of these folks at economics conferences)... it's really quite the drug to me.

I want Gavin to be like that, and he's showing signs of it already... well, that is, when he's not hiding behind me because he's shy around g-i-r-l-s. He, too, looks at everything as an adventure and won't hesistate to ask questions (unless it's a "do you want to come over and play" question, which is another blog for another day).

The trick is to teach him when to talk and when to run without terrifying him into avoiding all strangers, to teach him how to trust his gut in situtations without actually putting him in those situations to learn what a "gut feeeling" feels like.

In the meanwhile, I'll stand outside of the men's room, ready to charge at the first sign of danger. Real or imagined.

Myth Independent

Okay, so I'm still thinking this one through... but sometimes thinking is overrated... so here we go:

I just finished The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women and, for all intents and purposes, had a difficult time putting it down. The premise is a bit too close to what I've been pondering on my own as of late: that females are being sold a bogus bill of goods on what makes us valuable, namely:
Our bodies
Our virginity.
The number of men who have had us prior to marriage.

I grew up with the "good girl" notion that one was to "save herself" for marriage. So be it. There's no angst or anger or need to sit on a shrink's couch because of it. My mother is a product of the 50s. I came of age in the 80s. It's now 2009. Things change.

The problem today is that it's not what we females do so much as how we are taught to view ourselves after we do it. Once a male has a female, she is less of a person. She isn't as "good" as the girls who are not had.

I may be a Catholic school girl, but I am also the graduate of a Catholic women's college where men were nice to be around but far from paramount to our existence. Most of the time, we were too busy being human to worry much about batting our eyelashes and wiggling our hips. I learned that there are too many things I can do on my own to ever become the clinging, vapid young thing so idealized by MTV et al.

Still, though, as students, we divided ourselves subtly. The girls who had sex were quietly nicknamed and wondered at. My friends and I thought that you had to be in love to have sex, and we could not understand how those other girls could be so "easy." We were taught that men would not love us fully (read: marry us!) if they knew that we had a "reputation."

Like nearly all of my female cousins, I found my husband while in college and graduated not only magna cum laude but also engaged. Carrying on the tradition, I walked down the aisle in white, and -- upon return from the honeymoon -- began to plan for babies. What I didn't do was plan to quit working after said babies arrived, but that's another blog for another day. We're here to talk about what I did "right," not what I did for me.

*sigh*

I still find myself buying into the purity concept, to a degree. I don't believe is sex for the sake of sex. I cherish the idea of it being between two consenting, caring, loving adults. I'll tell my son to wait to have sex, and I'll be nervous when he brings home girls who have (real or imagined) reputations. I won't even try to deny any of that.

What I do believe is that intimacy is not about naked bodies tangled together in bed. Bodies are cheap and interchangeable, particularly when there is no intimacy. Intimacy is about language.

I look at it through my words -- what is said and unsaid, what is implied and what is screamed. Several months ago, I removed the link to my fictional blog, retitled [Insert Title Here], because it's about a woman who isn't exactly true to all of those social and religious ideals. Selina is not, to put it mildly, living the happily ever after promised to women who played by the rules.

I removed the link because I was worried about offending, a behavior -- I have to admit -- that offends me.

Wouldn't want Simply Sentenced readers to be offended, now would I? Wouldn't want them to think that I was a bad girl at heart, you know? Wouldn't want them to laugh at me, right? Wouldn't want to gain that reputation that everyone and her mother warned us about, would I?

Do you hear my sarcasm, readers? Or is it lost in translation?

The link is back. It won't be removed again. You're old enough to determine what you want to read.

So in the previous post I mentioned that Chaos still hurls himself to the floor when he doesn't want to do his homework. It's probably due in part to the fact that he doesn't like homework that he deems "preschool work."

Seriously. He thinks some of his homework is for babies. Especially the counting pages. He knows how to count, he tells me. Given his perfect papers, I trust him on that one.

Still make his do his homework though.

So what isn't "preschool work," you ask?

Well, um, medical terminology. You know, all those big words that doctors spout? Yeah. Those. Seems that Chaos comandeered my med term text (used for a writing gig, not for my own personal studies) about a year ago. Conversations now go something like this:

"See that, mom? That's a third-degree burn. That white stuff is the person's bone!"
"Uh-huh," I reply, trying to look like I'm looking at what I'd rather not look at.

"Ohhh... mom! Look at the skin graft!"
"Uh-huh. Sweetie, there's a reason your mom has sticky notes covering some pictures. Can you leave that there?"


"What's this say?"
"Pancreas. Do you know that that is?"
"What I pee from?"
"Um, not quite, honey..."


"How did the baby get inside the mommy's tummy?"
"Wow. Hey, look at the time, Gav! I think Spongebob's on!"

To date, he still loves the pics of burns and grafts, he now knows just what a pancreas is, and he still thinks babies grow in tummies because the mommy and daddy kiss.

(We're going to keep it that way for now, thank you.)

So continues the novel adventure...

First, the update: 380 pages, 76,845 words, and a dead antagonist. Life is good. I might just make that March 29th deadline!

Second, the spin-off: There's a new link to your left, w(or)d(p)(lay). Rory's best friend Selina Deitson came into being a bit over two years ago in a different blog. Recently, for those who don't know already, I took the entire blog down -- all 205 posts -- and redid the entire tale. Sorta. I'm using the 205 blogs, but I'm re-arranging them. I want to see what happens. True, there is some editing to make a few things make better sense re-ordered, but the bulk remains the same... that being that Selina is a bit too-free of a spirit, is awash in excessive self-doubt, and is tired of being a stewardess to the world. She is the angry everywoman who doesn't know what to do with her anger. (Be warned: there's a few Killing Julie spoilers in there, and it isn't exactly the sort of bedtime story you'd read to your kids.)

Third, the red herring: If you click on A Novel Adventure, there remains one post only. The current version looks nothing like it, particularly since Elizabeth no longer exists.

Lastly, the request: To those of you who have ventured into the publishing world, to those of you know know someone who has, etc. etc., I am looking for referrals for agents. If you have a name or any advice for me, please drop me an e-mail.

I am eternally in debt to you all for your support, patience, help, and continued readership! Thank you!

Nearing the Finish Line

Some days things just plain go right. Some days are so good that, despite the chaos that probably should make you a raving lunatic, you can't stop smiling and even what goes wrong seems right. I love days like this.

The Christmas decorations are still only 3/4 finished over here. I still have three big Martha Stewart-esque swags left to hang in the house. Tried to start tonight, but after the first one came crashing down thanks to the removable hook removing itself, I decided that tomorrow was just as good a day to decorate as today.

This evening, Captain Chaos was banned from touching the Christmas tree until he's ten after three (thankfully cheap) resin bears ended up in the garbage after "jumping" off of the top of a two-foot gingerbread house that no longer lights up because of the stuff he jammed through the windows when we weren't looking.

Actually, it wasn't until I found three breakable Keepsake ornaments in Chaos's toy box that the ban went into effect. (For the record, two of the ornaments suffered nary a scratch, but Bugs Bunny will require Super Glue surgery once I find his eas.)

Three of the four CD mixes that I burned the other day are duds, as I discovered this morning on the drive to work. For whatever reason, they just won't play. That was just plain irritating. After all, if I have to drive to work in snow -- surrounded by people who forget how to drive the moment the skies turn white -- at least I could have some music to soothe my nerves.

I scorched the rice while making dinner. Plum forgot about it for just five minutes too long. I think it'll be easier to buy a new pot then scrape out the old one.

Frankly, I'm okay with all of it.

You see, readers, nothing can faze me right now, not even the fact that I shrunk my favorite cotton sweater in the dryer, for the writing gods and my inspirational little muses have been kind to me this week, particularly today as -- on the ride home -- I finally got the final scene for my two leads figured out (they didn't make it easy, they're both rather hard-headed).

I have my entire novel fleshed out at last. The outline is no longer a skeleton. All I need now is the time to get what's scribbled on reams of paper onto the electronic page.

Thus I offer a glass of wine to the deities, perhaps I'll pour a bit onto the ground for them as I've been told that the ancient Greeks once did.

A toast, good readers, to the gods who give me reason to smile!

Even as I'm disentangling myself from the *&$%# swag that landed on my head...