Loose ends

I feel rather at odds, readers. With Killing Julie finished and in the hands of others, I wonder now what to do (intellectually).

The truth is that I always feel this way when I wrap up a project. Doesn't matter if it's my own novel or state exam questions for a high school competency test. It's all about the work and the high that comes from the act of creation.

So what now?

Return to writing Tigers, I assume. Begin to scrapbook again, perhaps. It's time to think about cleaning out the basement and setting up the workspace that my sister-in-law and I keep dreaming about -- space for my stamps and space for her clay. We can get ready for next Christmas and the craft shows we'd like to take part in.

I could work on ChickLit, which is Selina's story. I'm not quite interested in her anger/angst at the moment, though. Also, the more I think about it, the more I want a feminist bend to things -- and that demands a few refresher readings on woman and wolves. (Remember, I did go to Seton Hill when it was 96% female!)

A third tale is bouncing around in my brain, untitled but fully plotted: a small town and a few celebrated murders, a girl's coming of age, and a minister who fancies himself a successor to Father Karras (The Exorcist) and is quite -- shall we say? -- hellbent on proving it to his followers.

A fourth is beginning to take shape a well. A simple love story, one that is 180-degrees from everything I've ever written. No murders, no aliens (yes, I used to write sci-fi!), no mysteries beyond when the first kiss will take place. This is the murkiest idea right now -- which is ironic given my addiction to romance novels! I suppose the whole problem is what would make it different. Two leads who fall in love isn't the most exciting plot, you know.

Ah well, we shall see!

In the meanwhile, I guess I'll just turn up the iPod, open up my collection of Yeats, and go to the Lake Isle of Innisfree for a bit...

Frozen veggies, family, and a deadline met

The nice thing about being with relatives is that you can spend their visit with a bag of frozen peas on the small of your back and not feel like some weirdo.

Earlier this week, in a fit of youthful exuberance, Gavie and I played "spin until you fall down." The game is played by picking up my son and spinning in circles until I'm about to fall down. Then we stop and let the world catch back up.

However, I'm not four. I'm not even twenty-four. I'm thirty-four. My body is thirty-four. My muscles are thirty-four. And, for the past few days, I've been reminded of that... rather painfully.

Thus, the bag of peas on the back. Actually, to be perfectly honest, there's a cloth bag of frozen buckwheat draped around my neck.

(Someday the muscle spasms will end... or so promises my chiropractor, who I saw yesterday and who I will see again come Monday.)

My back put a huge crimp in the weekend plans. We were to have neighbors and some family this eve, but as my back locked back up this morning, I had to call it quits. But family is family, and despite my cancellations, I soon found relatives in my living room. They weren't worried about my back or my being on the couch not wanting to move, they just slapped a fresh bag of frozen something on me and put a beer in my hand. They were going to celebrate regardless.

So why the gathering? My deadline has been met, readers.

I've finished my book.

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!

Getting it right

Last night I slipped in late and left early; I sat in the back and sought attention from no one. Only a few knew I was there, and that was enough for me.

And in the car, heading home, I cried. Just a little, but cried nonetheless.

All that work, all those uphill battles, and all those days where I swore that I was insane to bother... worth it. Completely worth it.

I sat in the back of Soldiers and Sailors in Oakland and listened to Gloria give her graduation speech. I looked at the sea of caps and gowns and knew the battles nearly of of those students had endured. The program listed the names of those who made it through, who overcame issues that lesser men and women would have fallen before.

It's easy to disparage those who come from urban backgrounds, from the welfare rolls, and from cushy little suburban homes where the paved road was soft. It's easy to snort in contempt at the single mother who's pregnant -- again. It's tempting, too, to tell some students to pull their heads out of their posteriors and get a clue.

It's not easy to remember that they only know the lives they have. Some of them have always been single parents, they've always had someone telling them to give up when the road is bumpy, and they know nothing about a world where you don't have to sleep in the bathtub on nights when the gangs are particularly active.

The ones who live such lives, who work hard, and who graduate into careers and into their futures have nothing but my deepest regard. They are amazing people.

Gloria's speech was simple. Two sentences stick with me the most, and they are ones I need to keep remembering:

If it's not good, make it good.
If it's not right, get it right.

Last night, sitting there, I realized that I had managed to "get it right" maybe just a bit more then I thought... and that I need to make a few more things in life "good" before I can count myself as the person I want to be.

And so I slipped out of the hall early, condemned to leave due to other's schedules. But it was better to slip out then fall apart in public, which I was perilously close to doing.

You see, readers, I was mentioned in her speech. Despite my no longer being a teacher there, despite my not having had her in class for what seems eons... I can only shake my head in wonder at it all.

Thank you, Gloria, and all of my students over the years, for giving me that chance to get it right and to make it good.

Ahhh... February

Nothing better then waking up to several inches of snow and a myriad of school closures... assuming that you're under 18 and condemned to the student side of academia. For those of us in the "over" category, we are condemned to scraping our cars off at 6 a.m. and navigating streets that may or may not have been visited by the beloved Salt Truck or his brother the Snow Plow.

This morning I am proud to say that I am just about able to drive in questionable conditions without wishing for a stiff drink before and after. I hate, and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word, driving in the winter.

I hate it to the point of contemplating calling off and using a precious sick day. Hate it to the point of pondering a career change. Hate. Loathe. Abhor. You get the idea.

No doubt it has something to do with two ice-induced accidents that haunt my memories.

Ever see the opening of Death of a Salesman? A black screen and two headlights. That is the image engraved on my brain from Accident the First. There I was, driving home from a bountiful day of shopping and preparation for my upcoming Christmas open house when the wheels of my Ford Explorer hit a patch of black ice. Evil stuff that ice, as many of you no doubt know.

Being that I'd just hit my gas pedal as I hit the ice, control was not an option, and it was all I could to not to go over the hill to the right of the road. I remember looking up into the black night and seeing those two headlights before I hit the other driver head-on. Somehow I walked away from the accident, as did the other driver.

My phobia didn't kick in then, believe it or not. It took another year for that. It took a winter storm and another patch of ice, actually.

It was quite simple this time around: the car before me went into a skid, I reacted but it was too late, and went straight rather then made the bend.

This time my beloved Ford Explorer, which somehow survived the previous accident, went up against a cement barrier. Chantel and I both knew what was coming; we both screamed like the girls we are as the truck slid right into the wall. We both walked away, though this time I took a nasty case of whiplash with me, but the truck... alas.

Enter phobia.

So ponder the miracle as I drove to work today and didn't find my stomach churning in terror. It was pretty cool if you ask me. :)

Just a few things you might not know...

In the spirit of a meme, I present a forward I recevied today (thanks goes to Chuck)... rather then send a mass e-mail out to EVERYONE, I'm taking this route.

Four Things You (probably) Don't Know About Me
Four things about me that you may or may not have known in any particular order.

Four jobs I have had in my life

1. American Greetings "card chick" (stocking cards in drug stores)
2. movie theater ticket seller and popcorn vendor
3. drugstore clerk
4. gopher at a doctor's office

Four Places I have lived:

1. Brentwood
2. Greensburg
3. Brentwood
4. Irwin

Four T.V. Shows that I watch:

1. Law & Order: SVU
2. Bunnytown (Disney Channel)
3. Drake & Josh (Nick)
4. Spongebob (Nick)

(I have a kid, what can I say?!)

Four places I have been:

1. Nova Scotia
2. Calgury
3. Louisville, KY
4. Williamsburg, VA

Four favorite foods:

1. pizza
2. chix parm
3. wings
4. raisins and spice oatmeal

Four Places I would like to visit:

1. wherever Caron is living at the time!
2. Rome, Italy
3. Paris, France -- to live the life of an expat for a few months
4. Auburn, AL

Four things I am looking forward to in the coming year:

1. finishing my novel and finding an agent
2. going to the Liberty Fund economics colloquium
3. working in my yard and growing roses
4. Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week

All Chaos, All the Time

In twenty-four hours.... just one day... two-four hours.... actually, not even... more like two hours...

My kid is either incredibly precocious and darling or headed for a life of cleaning crime. Damned if I know. Who else has a four-year-old who wakes up and stacks the dishwasher, cleans the bathroom, and prunes mommy's plants?

Wouldn't you just love to know what goes on in their little minds?

Okay, the dishwasher is already stacked and running since Mommy started it before going to work, but there are still few things in the sink! Oh no! She forgot them! No problem. Open it up, stand back to avoid the steam, and stick the mugs that are still in the sink in the bottom rack. Plastic bowls go on the top, just like she stacks them. Tah-dah!

Granted, the bathroom doesn't really need cleaning... but going over everything with a sopping wet towel can't hurt. Can't it? Look, everything is shiny and glossy again.

And that rubber tree keeps getting bigger and bigger and snagging me every time I walk by! Time to call upon prior knowledge here! When tomato plants get too big and bushy at Guggie's, we prune them. But what to do about the shears? Hmmmm.... here we go! Safety scissors! Opps, I cut too much off. No problem! I'll just stick that extra branch in the dirt. It looks like a whole new tree. Who can tell?

Hey, look, the sun's coming up! Time to wake Daddy up (daylight's a-wastin'!) and show him the everything I did today! He'll be soooooo proud of me!

How in the world do you punish a child who is trying to help?! You can't, really. You lay down the law on what "help" is... and try to keep your expression stern. Save the laughter for when he's out of earshot. It ruins the whole effect otherwise, you know....

Not-so-blah

It's Tuesday and I'm at work, waiting for the day to begin. I'm nearly always the first one here, even though there's no real reason for that. It's ten years of habit, ten years of waking at five every morning for a commute that no longer exists.

I've become a morning person. What can I say?

(Okay, to still the semi-hysterical laughter of those who know me too well, I'm not a social morning person.)

Anyway, I've my iPod plugged in and my laptop connected. My teaching-related work is pretty well caught-up, and I'm giving myself a little bit of downtime in the intellectual realm.

Seton Hill started this past weekend. One Saturday and one on-line class. Both Western Cultural Traditions I, both quite the challenge -- there's few things better in my career then interested students. It looks like I'll have to really stay on my toes this term... a prospect which has me quite thrilled, thank you.

Along the lines of intellectual, I just received in invitation to participate in a colloquium sponsored by the Liberty Fund. The Foundations of a Free Society "will examine the political economic foundations of a free society... explor[ing] the Anglo-American and French Enlightenment philosophical foundations of classical liberalism; the resulting adoption of common law in England and civil law in Western Europe; and the institutionalization of classical liberalism and French Enlightenment, via common law and civil code..."

Etc. Etc.
You know, basic dinner table discussion topics.

I have about 300 pages of readings from long-dead and not-yet-dead economists to conquer before June. Happy Birthday to me, readers! I'm going to turn 35 in Indianapolis, IN, a state I haven't been in for a good sixteen years -- since I was a Junior Achievement achiever attending the International Student Forum in Bloomington, IN, with roughly 2,000 of my closest friends from all over the world.

*laughing* You know, I must sound like the world's biggest nerd. Ah well, c'est la vie!

On days like today, how can anyone be remotely blah? The sun was shining yesterday, and today's scheduled to hit the 50s. I'm coming to the end of my first term at my new school, and it looks like they might keep me. Best yet, my cold broke and I can breathe again. :)

Blah

Tis a soggy, rainy, blah type of day outside. Inside is no better, not when you're floored with the Headcold from Hell. How floored? For the first time in who knows how long, I laid on the couch all morning and didn't move unless absolutely necessary.

Chaos turned on his CD player and listened to his kid-friendly music. He danced around the family room in his Power Ranger pjs wielding a plastic light saber. I laid there and wondered how many times a four-year-old could listen to Pots and Pans before getting tired of it. The answer has yet to be determined, but we're up to fifteen.

He played with his new cash register and stuffed his socks with the plastic coins. When he walked, they clicked together. That lasted until one coin worked its way to the bottom of his sock and "hurted" him. I laid there and offered sympathy in between my own sniffles.

He had a picnic in the living room with his plastic food, played with his clay, and drove his Matchbox trucks all over the first floor... then down the basement steps. I laid there listening to the clink clank clunk and made a mental note to clean them up before anyone broke his neck on them going downstairs to the basement. Later.

Then Handy Manny came on, followed by Bunnytown, and I pulled myself into a sitting position. Chaos snuggled up next to me while we ate the last of the Christmas cookies and drank hot tea. (Remind me to get sick more often, okay?)

Happy 2008

Let's see what happens this year....

Time for a few new resolutions, readers. Please feel free to spend the next 12 months weighing in and kicking my butt if I falter at all.

• Finish Killing Julie by March 29. I'm at 186 pages now and about 59,000 words. The two leads have fallen in love, the antagonist is about to go off the deep end, and Julie remains dead.
• Get rolling on finding that "right" doctorate program... again!
• Exercise. Not just think about it but actually do it.
• Continue to eat more vegetables and drink good wine.
• Experiment in the kitchen and move beyond the usual tried-and-true dishes.
• Learn how to download the pics from our digital camera and... better yet, print them out!
• Keep writing! I have two more novels in my brain now, one which is currently nameless and the other tentatively dubbed Courting Selina.
• Go dancing again. And again. And again!

Hmmm.... not much this time around. I have other minor plans: grow my hair long again, finish cleaning out the basement, continue scrapbooking, and figure out how to play Second Life.

It looks like the year will be busy enough, really!

See "yunz" all soon!

Two and counting

Chaos and I re-decorated his little tree today so that Santa could leave presents under it tomorrow night. Gavie's into minimalism this year: no ornaments, no garland, just lights. All ornaments that are put on his tree by others are removed by him within minutes. Since he's out with the big guy tonight, the tree has remained decorated for the last three hours.

We are now officially ready for Christmas.

Just in time, for tomorrow is December 24. The Day My Dad Died. Days like that deserve all caps, you know.

At the risk of sending some into conniptions, I'm going to stand by my original belief that his passing was a wonderful Christmas gift. He was done suffering, done "living" in that comatose state, done having morphine rubbed into his skin because he could no longer take it orally. A wonderful gift to see him at peace. A horrible gift to have that legacy on Christmas Eve, if I may be so selfish.

For the last month, since a bit before Thanksgiving actually, I've been bouncing between my usual child-like wide-eyed absolute love of the holidays and Scrooge-like hatred of all things merry. I said several times that Christmas couldn't come and go fast enough, dammit.

But now that it's just about here, I'm glad that my misery was ignored by the heavens.

The eight-foot-wonder is up and has remained decorated all month. Captain Chaos's own small tree is still standing. As of last night, all of the presents are wrapped. Cookies were made in a marathon bake-off yesterday; and my handmade Christmas cards, featuring Chaos himself, went out on time. I even managed to string lights on the front porch's swag this year.

All that remains, really, are for the stocking to be hung by the chimney with care tomorrow night.

Gavie's at that perfect age where everything is real, and I love it. How can I be remotely miserable when he's so excited about Santa coming? Yesterday, when Santa rode around the neighborhood on a firetruck and handed out stockings full of candy, Gavie was in heaven, and so was Mommy. His conviction that it really was Santa on that truck was what I needed today.

It will be a good Christmas.

Unsaid.

When you write, you weight the words you use, as well as those your characters use. You possess the ability to create and destroy at will. You can build worlds or annihilate them. Share secrets or keep them.

Those letters on a page wield a frightening amount of power.

In history this term, we talked about the way that movable type and that the print press allowed ideas to spread with almost unchecked freedom. Now, the computer replicates that power. With the click of a mouse, this blog goes to scores of folk -- giving them the choice to read or delete at will.

But what do we say. Or not say?

The old cliche of least said, soonest mended comes to mind.

Goes against the computer age, doesn't it? This is, after all, the era of blogs like mine. Some better, some worse, but all of them published with an agenda on the writer's part. We say it all. We blurt it out. We engage is verbal exhibitionism. (Some of us, anyway.)

But what about the words we choose to speak? The ones we choose to withhold?

I think about my father often, especially as the second anniversary of his death. I think about what we never said. He was a quiet man, and -- despite my friends who will say otherwise -- I am a reserved woman. I play it close to the vest, to use another cliche.

Somewhere in my brain is the idea that losing a loved one means that I should change my behavior. Does that mean I should talk more? Share my feelings more? I'd rather not, thank you.

What my father and I never spoke of was death. We never found it necessary to examine our views on what that moment would be like for him, nor did we think it imperative to discuss what came after. What was the point? Neither of us saw one, so we opted for silence.

It was comfortable, that quiet. Lovely, actually.

Two years later, I'm about the same in that respect. If I have nothing to say, I say nothing. If I have something to say, I'm able to choose between speech and silence.

Not everything that I want to say has been said yet. Perhaps that's why I write, to get the words out of my head and make room for more. The older I get, the more words I find and the richer the thoughts and the more varied their contexts. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

With age comes wisdom. (Forgive my use of cliches, I find them ironically amusing for this blog's entry -- being that I'm talking about words themselves and the power behind them.)

So I'll say what I must and keep the rest for later. That way, when I say it, I mean it.

Easy

Last night about 1 a.m., the big guy woke me up, asking what we needed to do. Our little one was in his room having a coughing fit that, if I wasn't used to his annual bout with croup, would have terrified me. A gagging, choking, miserable cough due to a sinus infection from hell is nothing in comparison to that awful barking cough we get to hear each January or February.

So I held Gavie as he cried, rubbed his back, and soothed him, while my husband set up the water vaporizer and plugged in the greatest invention of all: the Vicks Plug-In. Insert one vapor strip and fill the room with the thick scent of Vicks Vapor Rub. The cat loves it.

"Mommy, I want to sleep in your bed," he whimpered when I said I'd stay with him until he fell back to sleep. Who can argue with that? Not me. We moved operations into my room, and for the next seven hours I laid there half-asleep listening to Chaos alternate between sleeping quietly, snoring, and coughing.

And here I am now, in my kitchen, enjoying the silence while my two boys sleep upstairs.

And here I am now, thinking about how easy last night was. All I had to do was hold my baby boy and just be there. My back hurts from having a lanky four-year-old crowd me in bed, and I'm exhausted from hardly sleeping. I'm probably going to be a bit of a grouch today from the two. Gavie's going to be a bear himself; he always is when he's sick.

But someday, I know, he's going to come home crying because the girl he has a crush on crushed him. Someday he'll tell me that I can't do anything to help because I don't understand. Someday he's going to be too big for me to cuddle and soothe quite so easily.

Thus today we'll make some cookies from pre-made dough and drink some cocoa and watch a few Christmas specials on DVD. We'll enjoy being miserable because this is easy misery. Really. I can always take a nap later. I can get someone to crack my back into place. I can't turn back time, though.

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...

44,373 words

In just a few days, Nanowrimo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) will wrap up for another eleven months. For the last 30 days, as part of a worldwide writing "contest," I've been pounding out the novel that's been in my head for too long.

Third time is a charm, readers... I'm just a few thousand away from the 50,000 word challenge laid down by the Nanowrimo writing gods.

My novel Killing Julie is taking off. (finally!!!) I know who's alive, who's dead, and who's guilty. I know what direction each character needs to take and how to get there.

If you want a teaser, check out http://www.mkilouch.easyjournal.com/ while you can. It's the earliest version of the story that exists; and while things have changed a good bit since I started on-line, it's safe to say that the general storyline is still intact. I'm going to take the site down within the month, though, so read it while you can.

I'm going to start seeking an agent as soon as I finish, and I've chosen March 2008 as my deadline. Why March? Why not?

It's a good month for me: that's when my Gavie was born.

November 22, 2007

Two years ago, on Thanksgiving, my father made his last trip to my house. He and mom came up for dinner, then spent the night. That night he gave her the Christmas presents we'd ordered for her over the Internet.

"I don't know if I'll be able to give this to you on Christmas," he told her. It was the only time I ever heard him talk of what he might not see.

As you know, he wasn't able to after all.

Today is the first holiday that my mother will host since his diagnosis in April 2003.

The holidays always lead one to think about what one has, is thankful for, and even what is wished for. This holiday I'm a bear, and I admit it. I don't want today, I don't want this weekend. I want it to be the weekend so that I can pretend Thanksgiving didn't consist of five of us around a table that used to hold ten or more.

The last time my mother had dinner at her house, my father and grandfather were alive and my brother was married. My aunt came over with her boyfriend-now-husband. Her daughter stopped over, as well. The house was noisy and rather chaotic as my then-two-year-old ran about getting into everything and the men watched football with the volume too high. The table was overloaded and everyone had to squeeze into their seats.

I know. Time marches on. New traditions need to be made, old ones need to be modified. I'm not going to fight the inevitable. It's really all just a matter of perspective.

I'm not the woman I was before Dad got sick. I'm going to start my new job on Monday and meet people who know me as I am today, not as who I was and who I became. Nursing a loved one towards death forces change, despite one's best efforts.

My brother changed, too, though I suspect much more subtly. While I was busy learning how to say "no" and learning how to trust myself, he was examining his life. A month ago he made the decision that he owed his son more then parents who happened to live in the same house. While divorces are never pleasant under any circumstance, I find myself hard-pressed to condemn anyone to live in a house where walking in the front door at the end of the day does not bring a sense of peace.

And here I am, a few hours away from going to my mother's and trying not to compare what was to what is. I'll do okay, I'm sure. I always manage, though I'm saying it without the same frustration that I once did.

I've often remarked to my students that we need to prepare them for a world where bosses won't always guide them through the rough spots and where employers will expect much more then teachers sometimes do. When they hit a wall, they need to find a way to get around it. Preferably intact.

And so it's Thanksgiving, and as I sit at my laptop in the kitchen and watch my son eat play with his toys and watch Playhouse Disney, I think about how tiny he was when he was born, just a bit over four pounds. Gavie came to us eight weeks early, and for 32 days we lived at the hospital and waited for him to outgrow his apnea and learn how to swallow.

I have a husband who lets me write at will, who encouraged me to go back to school, and who said "go ahead" when I took the FMLA to care for my father.

I've a beautiful house, a career with potential, and family and friends who I can count on.

There's much to be thankful for, obviously, and this is a tiny start to the list. I'd like to add one more, one that has often earned a few confused looks. I'm thankful for going through everything that I have gone through, both good and bad. I'm thankful, I once told my students, that I was able to be there for my father.

That's not the part where they ask if I lost my mind. That comes when I tell them that an experience which turns their world upside down is something I hope they have. It has nothing to do with wishing them difficulty, but everything to do with the way that one changes as a result.

Somewhere, in the boxes that I brought home from work, I have a wise little phrase, which I'll paraphrase until I can dig it out: our character is determined by how we respond to those challenges that rise to meet us.

Happy Thanksgiving, readers.

Being a Good Parent

Perhaps you heard the screams of anger and frustration. Perhaps you wondered at the high-pitched wails. Perhaps not. They are, to a parent, rather common. You learn to turn them out eventually.

Captain Chaos might have finally mastered the arts of staying in his seat for the entire meal and washing his hands when told (without argument), but comprehending the cruelty of a mom who turns off cartoons deemed excessively violent.. well... we're still working on that one.

Four nights ago he was sent to bed without a story or song because, when I told him that Courage the Cowardly Dog was too violent, he went into hysterics and thought that things could be remedied by upending his container of wooden blocks.

The next night he again turned into a puddle of tears as I turned off The Simpsons when the mini-cartoon "Itchy and Scratchy" came on. I just don't believe that a four-almost-five-year-old can understand and appreciate social commentary. Call me crazy, but I think that he's missing the point of the excessive violence and why Bart and Lisa laugh so hysterically each time the cat is decapitated or tossed into the wood chipper.

In both cases, he screamed and cried and begged. In both cases, I held firm. The good news is that the second episode was both shorter and did not end in an early bedtime. (Apparently he learned from the previous night.)

Boundaries are interesting in my house. I tend to be quite permissive in many cases. Captain Chaos is allowed to jump on the family room couch, pile up the over-sized sofa cushions then leap into them, rearrange whatever unbreakable holiday decorations are up, and turn himself into a human mudball. When I come home to discover that he and Aunt Na have painted each other's faces with whatever Crayolas they could find, I laugh. There are designated shelves in the pantry and another in the fridge where Chaos can go help himself to any snack he wants at virtually any time of the day -- they are, however, chock full of healthy stuff.

You want to eat raw carrots fifteen minutes before dinner? Okay! How about some broccoli to go with it?

I think I'm doing okay. It's not easy, which is a given; but the results are worth it. He's a pleasant, well-mannered, intelligent little critter who never gives me much pause, even in public. Essentially, I try to let him be as much a kid as possible without disregarding those very necessary social conventions such as please and thank you and respecting other people's property.

We're working, however, on respecting his own property as today he was channeling his inner Pete Townsand-slash-Julius Sumner Miller: giving a wonderfully loud concert for me and the hermit crabs... then smashing his blue plastic guitar on the ground. Over and over and over.

He wanted to see what would happen, as the night before we were talking about how glass breaks more easily then plastic.

The Unexpected

So about a year or so ago, I put my resume in for a position as a compliance officer for The Western School. Didn't get it. They filled it internally. No big deal.

I forgot about it, started to look for a doctorate that interested me, and decided to stay where I was at least until I earned my degree. Four years, probably five. Then, and only then, I'd decide what to do with my career.

Then at the end of September, just before I left for Louisville, KY, for one of the best econ conferences I ever attended, I got a phone call from friend Diane, who is the school's HR Goddess.

Send Tom your resume, she said. (Tom, incidentally, is my former boss from days gone by. We only parted employer-employee company due to the school itself going bankrupt.)

As soon as I get back, I'm leaving tomorrow for a conference, I told her. It needs some updating and I'm going to be on a plane in about 24 hours.

And so, the long and short of it: last week brought a "chat," not an interview in any traditional sense, and a job offer to teach English.

Having done my homework on the company (I admit it), accepting was an easy decision.

This past Monday, I gave my supervisor my resignation. I'll work until November 21, then begin my new job November 26.

Ever have one of those moments where you never see it coming?

Diane will tell you that I was -- for once -- shocked, speechless, and stunned. She laughed heartily at my inability to wrap my brain around the previous hours of that day.

A job? A new job? Leave my friends at work? Leave supervisors who have been nothing but fair, especially when it came to my dealing with my father's terminal cancer? Leave students that I know, whose lives I'm involved in?

The decision to leave my current job has nothing to do with any of them. What an incredible, fortunate thing to be able to say. It had nothing to do with them.

But the benefits offered, the room to grow professionally.... turning it down for the sake of social comfort? I haven't met a soul yet who said "stay for the sake of the people you like to hang out with." Friends, after all, are exactly that: friends. Geography is relative.

I've been a bit melancholy this week, now that the words have been said. Everything is final, now. The word is slowly spreading, though I haven't told my students yet. I will, of course. They deserve to hear it from me and not the grapevine.

You know, pardon the ego here, but this is the greatest feeling in the world. I apparently did something right seven years ago (seven!) when I originally worked for Tom. Seven years ago I made an impression, began my professional career in earnest. And now look at me: going back to work for the same man who gave me the chance to find my way in the classroom without fear of someone smacking me for approaching the lesson from a right-brained perspective.

Wow.

As I would say to my students, with a self-deprecating grin, guess all that professional behavior paid off. Huh?

UPDATE to Recommended viewing

I just found this on-line:
CLICK HERE to watch Dr. Pausch's entire CMU speech.

The original post:

Dr. Randy Pausch will be on Oprah today.

You know, while I remarked in my previous post that I felt rather lost regarding the whole doctoral program change, I'm glad that I didn't let it knock me into inactivity.

The link that I included today takes you to the Post Gazette article which features a second article with Dr. Pausch. I happen to appreciate what his mother told him when he was getting rather upset over an exam:

"We know how you feel, honey, and remember, when your father was your age, he was fighting the Germans."

Puts things even further into perspective, doesn't it?

Square one

Duquesne University put the ILEAD program on hold. But those who read Ferocious Tigers already know that.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like someone set adrift. All that time searching, all that time thinking... and now what?

I start over, I guess. Visit the schools again and look at their programs. Already I feel some internal rebellion thinking about attending a school already crossed off of my list. Attend THAT school? Get a K-12 certificate? Again?! Be a principal or superintendent?

The urge to chew my arm off returns each time I think about it.

Driving home from Seton Hill, I left the radio off and thought long and hard tonight. I'm not going to rush into a new program; I'm going to take my time. In the meanwhile, I'm going to take some writing courses. I've never had but one, you know.

It ought to be interesting. I'm rather looking forward to it, to be honest. Maybe I can (finally) do something with my novel adventure, Killing Julie.