A Favor for Joaquin

I can't stop thinking about Joaquin Luna, an eighteen year old who committed suicide one week ago today.

When I was 18 I could have - and should have - graduated from college. I was smart enough, but I wasn't very motivated and only did a semester or two before dropping out. I went on to dabble in higher education, on and off, over the next twenty years before finally completing my associates degree in 2007.

I may have mostly squandered my opportunity for higher education, but at least I had the option. Joaquin, and kids like him all across the country, don't have the same choice I had. The rub of it is they are smarter than I ever was and they deserve it more than I ever did, yet it is out of their reach.

If you know me, you know I'm an immigrant rights activist. But I didn't start out to be an activist, I was just a restaurant worker who got tired of witnessing the deplorable things that were happening to my immigrant coworkers. Sometimes there wasn't much I could do to right the wrongs, but not helping was never an option. I don't know about you, but I'd rather live with the regret of failure than the guilt of apathy any day. Even when things seemed hopeless, I still stood up and said "OK, I'll try." Failing never felt good, but at least I always knew I hadn't turned my back or pretended not to notice the suffering right in front of me.

But Joaquin hurts my heart in a more personal place, even though I never met him. He could have been any one of the bright, hardworking kids I've worked with in my many restaurant jobs, kids with potential and no where to go with it. For that matter, he could have been my own eighteen year old. As a mother myself I feel his mother's pain acutely and I wish more than anything that I could give her her baby back, but I can't.

Joaquin and other DREAMERs like him have been fighting for a long time, trying to break through the barriers of prejudice and politics. All they want is to go to college and then reinvest their talent and knowledge here, in the country they call home. They are doing an amazing job keeping attention on the DREAM Act and educating the public about the plight of DREAMERs, despite terrible odds and great personal risk. For Joaquin, thought, it wasn't enough. Somewhere along the way he lost hope and where there isn't any hope, dreams die.

It is too late now for Joaquin, but we're still here, you and I. It isn't too late for us to do something, to give Congress a push and give these kids back some hope.

I'm not asking you to care about this for political reasons - I don't care what it says on your voter registration card. I don't care if the state you live in is red, blue or purple, or if your political mascot is a donkey, an elephant or a water buffalo. I'm asking you this for one reason only - because Joaquin was a child, and all children deserve to dream.

I believe in the power of dreams and I believe in our DREAMERS.

Do you?

Joaquin Luna

You can help by learning more about the DREAM Act and the DREAMERS themselves. Please take a few moments to do some reading, then call, write or email your elected officials and voice your opinion. Do it today. Do it for Joaquin.

  General DREAM Act Info

Info on the DREAM Act on the Whitehouse website

The NJ DREAM Act Coalition

When Technology Attacks

It took me a long time to warm up to the idea of cell phones. I remember my dad once complaining I should get one, because then he could reach me more easily if I was in the car. I was horrified at the thought. About the only time I ever got any peace and quiet was when I was in the car by myself. The idea of being reachable anywhere and everywhere at all times couldn't have been less appealing. I finally caved in a couple of years later, once my son got old enough to want to roam around town without me. The phone I once didn't want has now become practically an extension of my arm.

Although I may be more tech-friendly these days, technology and I still have an uneasy relationship. Just like some people emit a weird electromagnetic frequency that breaks their watches, I seem to do the same thing for computers. Whenever I have to call the tech department at work (which is often) I hear the dread in their voices when they realize who it is. And no matter what the issue is, they somehow always end up saying "How did you do this? We've never seen anything like it!" I can never tell them how I did it because I don't know myself.

Looking back I see my initial encounter with a computer was probably prophetic. It was in 1989 and I had just started work at my first-ever office job at Home Life Insurance. On my very first day I managed to bring down the mainframe for the entire company after only ten minutes on the machine. Over the course of my career I've gone on to mangle computer files and be thwarted by hardware at every job I've had since. I snarled up the drive-through computer at Boston Market, right in the middle of a spectacularly long line of cars during the height of dinner service on a Friday night. I crashed the plate maker on a massive rush job when I was in printing. And here at my present job, I'm on my third PC in just seven years.

My powers of technological destruction aren't limited to the work place, either. Once a friend asked me to help him set-up his wireless router. The instructions said it would be easy. It wasn't. I fought that thing for hours. Finally, it was up and running. Oddly enough, though, my friend's computer couldn't access it. His brother who lived across the street, however, could. We never did figure out how that happened - or how to fix it. For the entire two years he lived there if he wanted to go on the internet he had to go next door.

This morning when I got to work my email was down. About a dozen people have called into the office to say they, too, are having problems so I don't think it is me (this time). Everybody who called so far sounds frustrated and annoyed. Personally, I'm just glad it wasn't me for once, so I'm going with the flow. I'm going to make myself another cup of coffee, open my snail mail and relish not being connected while it lasts.

Going NaNoLoCo as the Finish Line Looms

What 40,000 words looks like

I can't help but think that whoever designated November as National Novel Writing Month must have had a sadistic streak. Otherwise, why, oh why, would they have scheduled the darn thing with Thanksgiving smack in the middle of the home stretch?

As you can see from the photo, I'm a good forty-thousand words in by now. I'm proud of myself for getting this far, but 40,000 words won't win the race. I know if I want to cross the finish line I've got to dig deep and pull another 10,000 words out of the hat.

The shops may be filled with crowds of eager shoppers today, but I, for one, will not be among them. I'll be holed up here in my house, writing. Fortified by lots of strong coffee, fueled by Thanksgiving left-overs, I hope to finally type the words "The End" sometime between now and Sunday night.

If you want to watch my final dash (or perhaps crawl) towards the finish line the widget below is the way to do it.

Thankful to be an onion this Thanksgiving

Fresh fruit and produce on my kitchen counter, waiting to be turned into side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. It is my favorite holiday and I always look forward to it, but this year I'm in an even greater state of anticipation than usual. Now that I'm down to just one job and finally I have the time and energy to really enjoy it, I plan to savor every moment.

Back in the first grade I vividly remember all the kids dressing up in paper hats to reenact the first Thanksgiving day feast in the school cafeteria. Half of us were Pilgrims, the other half Indians. Somehow it was never lost on me, young as I was, that the Indians, who should have been the stars of the holiday story, somehow got stuck playing a supporting role to the Pilgrims. I could never quite figure it out; If the Indians were here first, and they kept the Pilgrims from starving during their first American winter, why wasn't the day more about them?

Now that I'm grown up, I still kind of wonder the same thing. Why don't we celebrate Indigenous people on this day? Heck, why don't we celebrate Indigenous people in this country, period?

About four years ago I had the great good fortune to travel to Mexico to visit a friend and his family in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Their village is tiny and remote, wedged into a crevice between two mountains. Most of the people who live there are indigenous Mixtecs. I remember one particular evening my friend's father was telling us a Mixtec legend about little magical people. It you caught them, he said, they would have to grant you a wish. Sitting there at their kitchen table next to the cooking fire, in a tiny adobe house high in the mountains of Mexico, I couldn't possibly have been farther from my own Celtic roots. Yet the story was familiar to me. It was virtually the same legend as that of the Irish Leprechauns I'd grown up with.

My friend's village in Oaxaca, Mexico

I learned something important that day. No matter where we come from, all of us are connected by the same ancient roots. This is why we see so many of the same legends across cultures and on different continents. We think we know who we are, but over time humanity is constantly morphing, integrating and assimilating one culture or society or race with another. Civilizations and cultures rise and fall. Some legends and traditions are carried on, others die out or are blended together into something new.

The world we live in today is a giant kaleidoscope of humanity, with its patterns, colors and cultures shifting and melding together more rapidly than ever before. It isn't always a happy mixing, either. Sometimes it is bloody, violent and tragic. The modern-day Americas were born, in fact, out of the cataclysmic clash of two vastly different worlds.

My own family around the table on Thursday will bridge the gap between old world and new as only a modern-day American family can. At one end of the table we have my Irish immigrant mother, across from my Brooklyn born father, who, we recently learned, can trace his ancestors here back to before the American revolution. Then we have my siblings and I, who are all first generation Americans on my mother's side of the family. My own son is, as am I, the child of an immigrant. His beautiful dark eyes remind us of his Colombian patrimony. My brother's children bear their mother's Italian American heritage, while my sister's son is typically American in that his ethnic background includes multiple nationalities, including native American.

My son, whose heritage spans three continents, expresses himself by wearing a Guinness t-shirt to a salsa concert.

As an adult I have come to realize that Thanksgiving, perhaps more than any other holiday, is like an onion. It has multiple layers of meaning and lessons to reveal to us, and most of those layers are contained within ourselves. It is a day for enjoying family and counting our blessings, but also a time for peeling back the layers of history that make us who we are and remembering that underneath, we are all just children of Mother Earth.

Procrastination Beat Down

When I signed up for NaNoWriMo and dedicated myself to writing a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days I knew it would be a challenge, but I didn't count on me derailing myself almost right out of the gate.

I did great for the first week. Every night once the dinner dishes had been washed and the kitchen tidied up, I sat myself down in front of the computer and made myself write for one hour. Each day that week I produced, on average, 1,600 words. I hadn't done too much plotting, but I had a basic story idea in mind to work from, and for the first few days the words flowed easily. I thought okay, I've got this, this won't be so hard after all.

Then week two dawned. Because I'd done such a great job during week one, I decided to reward myself with a little break. So I missed one day, and then somehow one day became two, and two quickly became three. Before I knew it, my "little break" took up the entire week and I found myself more than twenty thousand words behind. That's a lot, folks.

Talk about feeling like a big loser! I was so far behind I started to question whether or not I really even had it in me to do this. If I was slacking this early on, was I really meant to be a novelist? After a weekend of soul searching, I decided I wasn't going to go down without a fight. I might still be a big loser and could very well go down in flames at the end of it all, but at least I'd know I didn't quit.

As week three began I forced myself to get back into my evening writing routine, pushing myself to up my nightly word count. I even started trying to squeeze in 500 words or so before work. But I was so far behind, all I was doing was treading water. By Tuesday night I knew, if I had any hope of finishing on time, drastic action would be needed.

The very next day I took a vacation day from work. I got up early, fortified myself with some strong coffee and parked myself in front of the computer. I wrote from about 8:30 in the morning until 6:00 pm at night. I took short breaks here and there, and of course "somebody" had to make dinner, and that somebody was me, but for the most part my entire day was spent writing.

I am happy to report that I am caught up and back on schedule now. It feels great to know I conquered the twenty thousand word monster I created, not to mention my own inner fears of inadequacy. While I'm not proud of myself for procrastinating (you'd think I would have learned something after the paper shredding incident), spending a whole day totally immersed in the business of writing was an amazing experience which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.

My NaNoWriMo Stats as of this morning

 
Below is another excerpt from my novel. Please feel free to comment.

Chapter 8

In Which Kate Gets Her Groove On

That night after Kate put Aiden to bed, she forced herself to put her daily verbal doodles aside and pick up where she had left off with Lydia instead.

“Come on, old girl. I know we can do this” she wheedled as she poised her fingers over the keyboard. She wasn't sure if she was talking to Lydia, herself, or possibly both. She hammered out a few paragraphs, but when she re-read them they sounded trite and forced. Her attempts to re-work them were no better and she began to become frustrated.

Pressing her fingers to her temples, she closed her eyes and tried to think back to when she wrote the first Lydia Thorne novel, and how she had felt doing it. She had been totally relaxed, that she knew. She had written the first book propped up on down pillows, with a glass of good wine on the night stand and a fire in the fireplace. It hadn't been hard to write a romance, relaxing in a romantic setting like that. All she had really done was take her own fantasies and put them down on paper, letting her imagination fill in the rest. It had been great fun, she recalled. She certainly hadn't been like this, all tense and pressured and hunched anxiously over the keyboard. There was no way she could call what she was doing now fun, not by any stretch of the imagination.

After another couple of attempts, with no better results, she got up and padded into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine. As usual, Jill was in the living room, sitting up late grading papers in the recliner while Letterman blared in the background. Welcoming the distraction, Kate wandered into the living room, sipping her wine. After so many months of living together she knew better than to offer a glass to Jill, whose religious beliefs prohibited drinking. When Jill first told her she didn't drink, and why, Kate had felt intimidated about drinking in front of her at first. But over time, she came to realize that Jill was not the judgmental type. She probably wouldn't appreciate living with a roommate who drank excessively, of course, but Kate's occasional glass of Merlot wasn't an issue.

“Hey” Jill said casually, glancing up from the spelling test before her. “Looks like both roomies are burning the midnight oil tonight. How's the writing going?”

“Eh.” Kate shrugged. “It doesn't seem to be going at all, really. At least not with Lydia, anyway. I can churn out thousands of words about just about anything else, but whenever I sit down to work on the novel for my book contract I can't seem to focus.”

Jill made a sympathetic noise. “Would you like to trade? You can grade spelling tests; I'll whip up a few chapters for you.”

Kate tried to suppress a smile. It was hard to envision virginal little Jill writing a steamy romance. “We'd better not.” She said, deadpan. “I don't think my spelling is up to it.”

Jill put her red pencil down and leaned forward over her lap full of papers, stretching her arms and back. “Kate, I was going to talk to you about this anyway, but since you're here maybe this is the right moment.” Jill leaned back against the recliner again and turned to look at Kate. Kate's stomach did a flip-flop of premonition, fearing by the look in Jill's eye that this might not be good news.

“Donny proposed and we set a date. We're getting married!” Jill beamed, her cornflower blue eyes glowing with happiness for just an instant before she regained her composure. “The thing is I'll be giving up the apartment when the lease runs out in January. We're going to live at his place after the wedding, so rather than keep paying here, month-to-month, I'm going to live at home with my parents and save the rent money to put towards the wedding."

Kate's first thought was to be happy for her friend. She jumped up and gave her a bear hug of congratulations, the news about the apartment barely registering until she had sat down again. Not wanting to derail Jill's happiness – her eyes were glowing again – Kate kept a firm smile fixed on her face as Jill recounted the details of the proposal. As she listened she was mentally counting the weeks she would have left before she needed to move. Seven weeks, that was all. She needed to finish this novel more now than ever before, or finding herself out on the street with Aiden would be a real possibility.

Kate sat up late that night, and each night thereafter, hammering out paragraph after paragraph of trite material. It was total schlock and she knew it, but she told herself better to at least get the whole thing down on paper, then rewrite later if she had to. Lydia returned to haunt her dreams anew, mocking her. Her husky voice making snarky comments often intruded into Kate's train of thought when she was trying to write.

Kate had all but forgotten her promise to go out to the club with Araceli and Leo until Araceli reminded her of it.

“We're going pick you up at 9:00 o'clock on Sunday, so be ready, amiga! And don't forget to put on something sexy.” Araceli winked naughtily and did a little shimmy like the one Kate had done when she committed to getting her grove on again. Kate couldn't help but notice the shimmy looked a heck of a lot better on skinny Araceli.

The last thing Kate felt like doing these days was dancing. Lydia was torturing her and she was staying up way too late every night, trying to wrestle her novel into submission. When she did try to sleep, her mind kept racing through the calendar, stressing her out over how little time she had before she would need to actively start looking for somewhere else to live. But on the other hand, Aiden would be with Jeffrey for the weekend and taking a break from it all for a night might do her some good. Dancing would certainly help her burn off some of this stress, and the prospect of a few adult beverages weren't sounding too bad, either.

Kate was ready at 9:00 p.m. on the dot and waiting anxiously, peering out the window every few minutes watching for headlights pulling in. She felt like a fourteen year old, going to the big school dance for the first time. Getting dressed had been difficult. Finding something dressy that she still fit into that didn't make her look like a sparkly sausage had been so demoralizing she had almost called Araceli to cancel three times. Finally, she had settled on black slacks, strappy black heels, and a somewhat slinky (or so she tried to convince herself) yellow silk tunic with a wide black patent leather belt cinching it at the waste. Over it, she wore a simple black blazer with a little delicate jet beading around the neckline and cuffs.

She new she probably looked like she was going to a business meeting more than to a club, but it was the best she could do. She cursed herself for having gained so much weight and tried to make up for the boring clothes by carefully applying her makeup and blowing out her hair. She had managed a decent smoky eye and had tamed her hair into a decent approximation of a sleek, shiny pageboy. She had finished off her look by pulling her hair back on one side with a sparkly silver butterfly barrette, and now she was just waiting, anxiously.

At 9:40 she finally heard a honk and looked out to see Leo's battered red work van lurking beneath the street light. Her spirits sank a bit at the prospect of riding in the back of the van, but she grabbed her black satin evening bag and ran out into the dark with a feeling of excited anticipation bubbling in her stomach. Leo, smiling his usual amiable smile, opened the back of the van so she could climb in and gave her a hand up. She picked her way carefully through rolls of carpeting and padding and stepped over spackle buckets full of tools to find a spot to perch on near the front of the van. She picked a likely looking place on the end of a roll of Berber and balanced on it, bracing herself against the back of the driver's seat with one hand as Leo pulled away from the curb. Ready or not, she was on her way to the club.

Greetings from the Battle of the Bulge!

I try to avoid peeking at the scale, but sometimes curiosity gets the better of me

One month ago I posted that I was getting back on the proverbial horse, finally ready to do whatever it takes to reduce my waistline and improve my health.

I am proud to say, since then I have lost a total of . . . (drum roll please) . . .  5.5 pounds!

Ok, I know it is not that big of a number, but in weight loss it really is slow and steady that wins the race. As I keep reminding myself, I'm not on a diet. I'm changing my lifestyle and these changes are forever. Sometimes I still go overboard or just plain have a bad day, but I want to be around for as long as possible to enjoy my son and one day his children, too, and that keeps me motivated. When I fall off the wagon, I just climb back on on again and move on.

Thanksgiving is the first major holiday I'm facing in my new reality. As fate would have it, it is also the most  food-centric holiday of them all. I'm not worried, though. This is just the first of many holiday meals that I will have to navigate, so depriving myself, or binging and feeling guilty later, simply cannot be options. Instead, I've got a plan. I'm going to use portion control to enjoy everything without going nuts. My Mom, sister and I are lightening up some of our old favorites and working more veggies into the menu, too.

We ladies in the family are also trying something new this year. All three of us are going to walk in the Turkey Trot, an annual Thanksgiving Day Marathon here in town. Grandpa and the boys will be cheering us on from the sidelines. Aside from being a healthy thing to do for ourselves in the short term, it is also a great example for our kids for the long-term. And, you never know, maybe a new  family Thanksgiving tradition in the making.

My actual weight loss goal for this month is to lose three pounds and I intentionally left it for last. While seeing the number on the scale go down is a great motivator, I know the real victory is another week of healthier behavior.

I found this recipe online (I forget where, otherwise I would provide the link) and will be making it this Thanksgiving:

Mashed Sweet Potatos With Apples

5 pound(s) sweet potato(es), medium-size, scrubbed, pierced with a fork
1 Tbsp butter
2 medium apple(s), Golden Delicious, peeled, cored and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1/2 cup(s) orange juice
1/2 tsp table salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon, plus extra for sprinkling on final product
1/4 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 spray(s) cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Place potatoes on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until very soft, about 1 hour. Remove potatoes from oven and reduce oven temperature to 350ºF. Let potatoes stand until cool enough to handle.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add apples and cook, gently turning occasionally, until golden and tender, about 7 minutes; remove from heat and set aside.

Cut cooled potatoes in half and scrape out pulp into a large bowl; discard skins. Add juice, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper; mash with a potato masher. Or for a smoother texture, process in a food processor until smooth.

Lightly coat a 1 1/2- to 2-quart rectangular or round baking dish with cooking spray. Scrape potato mixture into baking dish; arrange sautéed apples over top in pretty pattern such as concentric circles. Bake until bubbly around edges, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon and cut into 10 pieces.

Baking Weck Rolls on a Sunny Saturday in November

There is something about fall that makes me go into full blown nesting mode. I don't know if it is the crisp weather, the approaching holidays, or what, but I find myself in a happy frenzy of cooking, baking and cleaning.

Although I like to think I'm a pretty good cook, I've never been much of a baker.  Cooking is about color, texture and flavor, elements you can play around with, sort of like painting a picture. Once you know the rules, you are free to break them. Baking, on the other hand, is all about chemistry and science. The rules are the rules, period.

But not having a natural talent for something has never stopped me before, so I decided to jump in and give bread baking a try. After a little online searching I found a recipe for German Weck rolls (short for kummelweck) that seemed to fit the bill. Here is a link to the recipe I used.

I have a stand mixer of indeterminate age (we'll call it "vintage" to be kind) that my mom found for me at a garage sale. It was top of the line in its day and still has the dough hooks with it. This is important, because it takes a lot of the labor out of kneading the dough.

The dough hooks hard at work kneading the dough so I didn't have to

Once the dough was kneaded, I put it aside in a bowl to rest. There was no rest for me, though. I had to clean up all the flour that somehow got all over the kitchen during the mixing.

After about an hour the ball of dough had doubled in size.

The dough about 15 minutes before it was done rising.

When the dough reached the top of the bowl I punched it down, then left it to rise again for another 45 minutes.

Next, I shaped the dough into rosettes. I did it by rolling a ball of dough into a long snake, then tying a knot in it. One end of the knot gets tucked under, the other over.

Half the shaped rolls went into the freezer for later in the week.

The rest of the rolls were left to rise prior to baking.

Once the shaped rolls had risen sufficiently, it was time for a light brush of egg wash, a quick sprinkle of seeds or salt, then into the oven.

I think the finished product came out pretty good for a first try, if I do say so myself.

Hot and crusty fresh from the oven

Beef Burgundy is simmering in the crock pot as I type this. Something tells me these rolls are gonna go pretty darn quick . . .

Time Marches On

Flemington is a very small town (only about a mile square) and the majority of my daily business is concentrated on just one street of it. On sunny days I walk from my apartment down where Main Street begins, just beyond the traffic light, to my jobwhere Main Street ends, at the war monument.

Flemington is a pretty town, very nice for walking. Victorian homes line streets shaded by trees and punctuated by stone urns filled with flowers. It is still the type of small town where everybody knows everybody else, for better or worse.

Main Street on a sunny fall afternoon

Recently my oven mysteriously stopped working. With the holidays approaching I decided I'd better get the thing fixed. I called up Burkett Supply and was pleased to hear they could send somebody out the very next day. They said they'd call when the repair man was on his way over.

"Oh good." I said. "Just give me about 20 minutes notice so I can walk home in time." The man on the other end of the phone snorted and said he could walk up and down Main Street three times in twenty minutes, but that would be fine with him.

The following day when I got the call I grabbed my jacket and my house key and set off down the street at a brisk pace. I'm 4'11" and don't take big steps, so my idea of a brisk pace probably isn't all that brisk. I was only about halfway there when I heard a voice yell "Hey there, are you Kelly?"

It was the repair man from Burkett Supply, leaning out the window of his van.

"Hop in!" He said. A white haired gentleman in his later years, neatly dressed in a blue uniform, he knew which driveway was mine without me having to tell him. "I put most of the ovens in back here years ago."

While he worked on the oven we exchanged a bit of local gossip. Although we chatted mostly about current events, something about the conversation reminded me of days gone by. Maybe it was just that he knew my landlord and half the neighbors, or that he talked about the goings on over at the American legion and the Ringoes Grange.

Having lived here most of my life, I remember when elderly farmers in baggy overalls still hung out down at the grain elevator and the famed Flemington Speedway still sent the roar of stock car engines and dust from the dirt track floating over town on a Saturday night.

Flemington Speedway in all its former glory

That Flemington is long gone now, of course. A Lowes and a Walmart replaced our beloved race track several years ago and what is left of the grain elevator will soon be torn down to put in more fancy retail shops. Even run of the mill farmers seem to be gone now, replaced by younger, hipper, "artisan" growers down at the weekly farmers market.

As the Flemington I recall from childhood is fading away, a new and seemingly fancier one is emerging. I have mixed feelings about the fancier bit, but not all the changes are bad ones. I'm looking forward to seeing what Flemington's future looks like. Even so, it was still nice to shoot the breeze with somebody who remembers the Flemington I grew up in.

Thank you Mister Oven Repair Man, wherever you are.

If Only I Had a Time Machine

I got out for a walk at lunchtime one day last week. I live in the same town as I did in high school and on my walk I went past our old house.

The house is a cavernous old Victorian duplex. When we moved in it had peeling paint, noisy plumbing, drafty windows and a questionable roof. My parents did quite a bit of work restoring it when we lived there. Sadly, over the past 25 years or so, it has reverted to almost the same dilapidated state we found it in back in the early 80s.

Our former house, as it looks today.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, our house was intentionally built as a duplex, not converted later. Each side has a front and back staircase, but different floor plans. Best of all, there was a secret passageway under the stairs connecting the two apartments. The door looked deceptively like a regular coat closet, but guests would often be surprised when someone would unexpectedly come bursting out of it, or disappear into it and not come out again.

A couple of nights after we moved in, my sister and I were on dish duty in the kitchen after dinner. Our routine was I washed, she dried. When I finished with the last dish and turned off the tap, to our surprise the sound of running water continued. My dad opened the basement door to find a small waterfall. For the next few weeks, we had a basement full of plumbers. There was a great deal of banging, clanging and muffled cursing from beneath the floor as they battled the ancient Goliath of a boiler.

The house as it looked while we lived there.

Now I like to get out for a walk for exercise, but back in high school I dreaded the daily walk to school. It seemed like miles and miles back then, but it was really only about three blocks. Then again, considering the 50 pound backpack full of books I carried, I can see why it seemed longer than it was. Snow and ice slowing me down in winter didn't help, and neither did the angry little white dog that chased me every day, both going and coming back.

The scene of the dreaded walk to school

One of the best things about living in that house was my grandparents lived in the apartment next door. When they decided to move to Cape Cod permanently, they moved in with us on our side and the other side was rented out. While having them next door had been fun, having them in the same house was a critical mass of togetherness that frayed everyone's nerves.

My grandfather would complain long and loudly about the "bloody pipes" making noise when we took showers early in the morning before school. He also made it known that he thought we all spent entirely too much time grooming in the bathroom for our own good. "You're always picking at yourselves, it isn't natural."

Once when my brother singed some popcorn in the microwave (a new contraption we had only recently acquired and weren't too handy at using yet), grandpa insisted we were burning the place down. He marched out to the backyard and refused to come in, claiming that he couldn't breath because we were filling the house with "bloody smoke," although he seemed to have plenty of lung power available for shouting about it.

My parents, siblings and I circa 1985 or so.

Three teenagers and two octogenarians in one house lead to quite a bit of "bloody" this, that and the other thing. Usually it was something we did, but Sometimes Grandpa was the culprit. He loved to talk long walks, and one or more of us grand kids often accompanied him. Once on one of our walks he noticed the WWII tank on the lawn of the American legion. He had my sister up on top of it, looking for a way in. There had recently been an article in the paper saying if you hit a deer with your car, you could keep the meat. For awhile after he had gone out for some mysterious drives at night, but never had any luck. I think he thought the tank would up his chances. Had it not been sealed shut, I have no doubt he would have driven it home.

Another time when we were out walking, Grandpa stopped in at the florist. I thought he was going to buy flowers for Grandma, and so did the sales clerk. Instead, he asked her for several of those little packets of preservative that come enclosed with cut flowers. "I'd like to put a wee bit in my wife's orange juice of a morning." He said, deadpan. "To keep her looking nice and fresh."

Grandpa, looking very much the irascible Irishman

Being a teenager, sometimes the eccentricity factor at my house was set a little too high for my liking. There were times when I just wanted us to be more normal. But other times, when I visited friend's, and saw how bland and beige their home lives seemed by comparison, normal didn't seem quite so attractive anymore.

Walking past our old house last week, I wished I had a time machine so I could go back again for just a few hours. We lived in a lot of different houses when I was growing up, but I'll always have a special place in my heart for that big old drafty, quirky Victorian on Broad Street.

My Secret Crush

I have a confession to make. I have a secret crush on . . . . the supermarket.

I know, not what you were expecting, right?

The thing is, I really love food. I love cooking it, I love eating it, and I even love just looking at all the interesting ingredients that go into it. For me, the supermarket is like an always changing food museum.

I mean really, just look at this lovely display of fall nuts.

Yeah, I know, I've got a rice and beans budget, but that doesn't stop me from having garlic pickle and hand made pierogi dreams.

At least I can always enjoy indulging over at the olive bar.

But seriously, the real reason I love the supermarket is because it reminds me just how lucky I truly am. In most of the world, putting food on the table is a daily struggle.

So the next time you are at the market take a real good look around. Savor the sights and the smells. Enjoy the experience. Think of your weekly shopping not as a chore, but as a blessing. And while you're at it, take a moment to bless others by picking up a few extra items for the local food pantry pantry, soup kitchen or shelter.

And We're Off!

Yesterday was the start of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a first draft of a 50,000 word novel in only 30 days and this is my first time doing it.

I spent October fussing around, trying to get ready. I spent lots of time reading up about things like the three act structure and outlining techniques. I even wrote several short stories, just to limber up my story telling muscles.

Before I knew it, the calendar said November 1st. Every time I wrote the date at work yesterday, I would get a little thrill, thinking today is the day. As the day wore on, the thrill turned to nerves. At home later I could sense my computer looming in the corner, its blank screen leering at me in a silent challenge.

Finally, at 6:30 I plunked myself down in front of the computer, turned it on, and told myself "You aren't moving out of this seat until you churn out at least 1,600 words." The weird thing is, once I started typing I tossed all my preparation and my carefully outlined story idea right out the window and wrote about something else altogether.

My favorite writer is Diana Wynne Jones. If you don't know her, she was J.K. Rowling before there was a J.K. Rowling (http://www.dianawynnejones.com/noflash.htm). As I opened up my word processing program last night I remembered something she once said in an interview, that she never planned her books, the stories told themselves and her job was just to write them down. At the last minute, I decided that was what I would do, too. I would let go of all the fussiness and simply let my imagination lead the way.

If I actually do manage to end the month with 50,000 words on paper, there will be plenty of polishing and editing needed to give me my busywork fix. But for this month, it is all and only about getting the story down on paper. I'm committed only to going wherever it takes me and writing simply for the joy of uncovering a story, the way an archeologist uncovers ruins, one small piece at a time.

 

Below is an excerpt from the chapter I drafted last night. Your feedback in the comments is both welcome and encouraged.

 

KATE GETS ON WITH IT

 

Chapter One

In Which Kate Has Writers Block

Kate nibbled a finger nail as she stared at the pristine whiteness of a blank Word document, flickering on her computer screen. She was supposed to be thinking of a plot, coming up with exciting romantic conflicts for her heroine, Lydia Thorne. Instead, her mind kept wandering to the laundry. The laundromat was only open until 8:00 and it was 7:20 or so now. If she didn't get there soon, they would bag up her laundry, dry or not, and put it in the Good Will box out in the parking lot. She knew this because the sign on the wall by the door said so. From what other patrons told her, they meant it, too.

Kate shook herself and forced the laundry out of her mind, trying to get back to Lydia. “Come on Lydia” she mumbled aloud. “Do something already, you stupid cow!” She knew it was silly, but she could almost sense the character lurking, just out of sight in the back of her mind, snickering at making Kate look bad. It would be just like Lydia to do that, and Kate ought to know – she had created her, after all.

If anyone had told her, a year and a half ago, that she, Kate Worthington, would have written a successful romance novel she would have laughed at them. Yet, that was exactly what she had done. She wrote it on her lap top, sitting up in bed tapping away on her lap top on the nights when Jeffrey was away on business trips, usually a glass of wine on the night stand beside her. She knew when she married Jeffrey that he traveled a lot for his job, he had been very up front about that. She missed him, of course, but his job allowed them to enjoy a lifestyle that more than made up for it. They had a lovely big house, were able to send their son to a good school, and took fabulous vacations twice a year. Wasn't that worth a few lonely nights? Ok, more than a few . . . four out of seven days a week she was on her own, not that she was counting. The truth was, she was lonely. Very lonely. Writing her romance novel had been a way to get through it by escaping to a romantic little world she had created for herself.

Looking back, writing the damn book had been almost too easy, really. All it took was a little wine, a nice fire in the gas fireplace in her luxurious master bedroom, with the big cushy king sized bed, a little longing for her hubby and some imagination, and the words just spilled out all by themselves. Her friend Missy, whose husband was in publishing, read it and had gushed about it so much to her husband that he sent a copy of it to an agent he knew. It had surprised Kate as much as anyone else when she suddenly ended up with a book deal.

Seeing her book in print for the first time had been a major thrill. She and Jeffrey had thrown a little book launch party, invited their friends from the neighborhood. She had basked in the glow of everyone's attention, not realizing yet how much work she would have to do to promote the book. Soon thereafter, her agent had her out doing book signings, attending conventions and book store openings. It had been overwhelming at first, but soon she had come to enjoy it. She hadn't been so busy, or so mentally engaged, since college. She soon found herself obsessively seeking out opportunities to go promote her book. The time she spent answering fan mail, blogging and doing appearances hardly seemed like work at all, she had enjoyed it so much.

But somebody else hadn't enjoyed it much, and that somebody was Jeffrey. Oh sure, he was Ok with it at first, when it was just a hobby. He even liked introducing her to people as his wife, the author in the beginning. But pretty soon her busy schedule began to conflict with his, and she started to expect him to help out more with their son and in running the household. Little cracks began to appear in their marriage, and grew into bigger cracks as continuous fights erupted over silly things. The marriage had collapsed more suddenly than she had ever thought possible. It was as if it had just imploded, unable to handle the strain of two busy professionals in one family. Damn the fragile male ego, she thought to herself. If only Jeffrey had been able to man up and deal with her having a career, too, they could have made things work.

Use Your Imagination, But do it Like This

When my son was about eight or nine he was known in the family as the king of the tall tale. Now that he graduated to the status of aloof teenager, he passed the Tall Tale King crown to my nephew, Zachary. So far Z-man is proving himself a worthy successor to the throne.

I've always thought one of the best things about little kids is how wonderfully rich and fertile their imaginations are. Yet for some reason I can't quite fathom, once they get to school it seems they try to squash the imagination right out of them. It starts with comments like "Don't color outside the lines" when they're little and becomes "Pay attention and don't daydream" when they're older.

Evan always seemed to get into trouble somehow when it came to using his imagination at school. They would tell him to be creative, then reprimand him for the result, which made no sense to him or to me.

It started in kindergarten, when they gave him a paper cut out of a man at after-care and told him to color it to look like somebody from history. He did Adam, from the Garden of Eden. Grandpa had to be called to pick him up early.

Once I got a phone call from an upset teacher after Evan wrote a short story at school. He wrote about twins that get kidnapped by a creepy guy, which the teacher thought was inappropriate. She was taken aback when I asked her why did she tell him to write whatever he wanted if she didn't actually mean it? I guess she expected me to reprimand him for not having written a happier, friendlier story.

I won't even go into what happened in middle school with his video project. It featured Evan in a cow suit on a skateboard doing odd things to surprise members of the public. It was very heavily influenced by the movie Jackass. Suffice it to say the teacher was clearly not a Johnny Knoxville fan.

I know it isn't easy being a teacher. But it isn't easy being a kid, either, especially not when you get conflicting messages all the time. One minute they tell you to be yourself, the next they are pushing you to conform with the rest of the group.

I'm launching myself into NaNoRiMo today for the first time ever (National Novel Writing Month). It is a little intimidating, knowing I'm supposed to turn a blank stack of paper into a 50,000 word story in only thirty days. I'm not worried, though. If I get stuck, I know a couple of tall tale telling experts I can call on for help.

The "inappropriate" short story

My nephew's drawing of himself and his cousin in the future