Listening at the Library

Love this conversation snippet I overheard at the library this weekend between two 10- or 11-year-old boys as they were playing a video game at the public computers.

Boy 1: "There's nothing holding me back now!"
Boy 2: "Yeah, except your mother."
Laughter.

Kids, telling it like they see it.

Pet Personality

Our cat was not impressed with my daughter's idea of a photo shoot. With apologies to ICanHasCheezburger:

We already knows we haz mad skills on this thing. We doesn't have to show you.

But I bet you guys can come up with a better caption. Hit me with them in the comments, please!

Frost on the Windshield

Thursday morning was a hoar frosty morning. The view through the windshield was kind of neat. I felt bad that had to defrost it so I tried to take a picture first. It worked!

Frost on the windshield reminds me of a Depeche Mode song I like. Excuse me while I go listen to it.

(And if you know the song I mean, hope you go listen to it too:>)

Cabin Fever But By a Better Name

At the library the other day we kept a couple ladies waiting when we opened the library doors a few minutes late. (We were having a health and safety talk). So we got to talking with those ladies about how much the library is needed in peoples' lives in our small community—for a minute there they were thinking we weren't going to open, and that would be a bad thing. One of the ladies even suggested that the library was essential because she lives in the bush, and without the human interaction the library provides she'd easily go shack wacky.

Say what?

Uh-huh, shack wacky. I'd never heard that expression before. My writer's brain turned the phrase over, tasted it, tested it. A new expression! A funny expression! An expression that succinctly and superbly expressed its meaning.

Okay, so you're probably thinking I'm acting a little shack wacky for gushing over a couple of words. But part of the fun of being a writer is collecting these little tidbits wherever you can. No, it's not a new expression as I see it's out there and part of the urban dictionary. But it was new to me. I would've just used the term I was more familiar with: cabin fever. But isn't there an interesting difference in feel, in nuance, to the two expressions? Yes, I'm tucking "shack wacky" away for future use. Maybe you'd like to, too.

So yes, believe those PSAs because it really is true: you never know what you'll learn at your library.

You're Sending Me What? Something BAD?

Got an email today from an editor and the subject line really threw me for a minute. I first read it as meaning I was being sent something BAD about my forthcoming series. BAD was capitalized.

After I got over the heart attack, I looked at the subject line more closely. Oh, it said a BLAD. I was being sent a BLAD. Praying that wasn't a typo and it really was supposed to read BAD, I opened the email.

It was a BLAD! Hurray! A pdf of the BLAD to be exact. But my next thought was sort of a whispered: um...what's a BLAD?

Fearing to look at the file, I first Googled the acronym. And I found:

Bovine Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency?

Um, don't think so.

Bioartificial Liver-Assisted Device?

Ya, no.

So that left Book Layout and Design. Yes! It was a Book Layout and Design!

BINGO!

Okay, so what the heck is a Book Layout and Design exactly? Performing more Google-foo, I found this definition:

Blad (Book Layout and Design)
A blad is a marketing and sales tool, used where printed sample material is needed in advance by the sales force to sell the title. A blad will often feature sections from the finished book, including the cover artwork, page layouts and images.

Hunh, who knew? Thank you Oxford University Press Glossary of Publishing Terms. May you continue to help many confused authors like myself.

So I finally opened the file. And it was awesome! I've never had a BLAD for one of my books before. It's my very first BLAD! And that, my friends, is definitely, most decidedly, and definitively not BAD.

The Horrible Hairy Holiday Surprise

How's that for a title? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

But it was hairy, it was related to the holidays, and it was a surprise. It's horrible, too, if you're arachnophobic. See:

This was lurking on the pineapple display in my local grocery store just before Christmas. I'm not too sure it's native. Could it have come in with the pineapples? It was a healthy inch and a half long at least. [[shudder]]

My daughters and I tried to tell store personnel about this unusual squatter but no one was interested in giving us the time of day.

I wonder what happened to it. Maybe there's a story there...somewhere.

You know you might be a children's writer if...

There you are, sitting on the hard white wooden bench in your small town arena lobby. You're reading quietly, passing the time during your son's hockey practice, while two young boys you don't know toss a small ball back and forth across the lobby. Back and forth, back and forth, they chase the ball, toss it, chase it, and so on until--

The arena doors open with a clatter and a woman walks in. One of the boys calls out to her with an enthusiastic, "Hi, Bitch!" (Which sounds a bit like "hiya beetch!")

Silence.

A silence in which you cringe for the boy.

"What did you say?" the woman, finding her voice, demands. She repeats her demand several times in increasingly higher volumes.

The boy wisely stays silent.

Finally the woman orders him to SIT THERE on THAT BENCH and DON'T MOVE.

He perches timidly beside you, head bent, sitting on his hands. You just want to hug him.

Do you empathize with the mother having to hear that from her child? Not really. You feel for the boy. You bet he's seen someone greet a friend that way on some TV show, or heard it uttered by an older kid, and the reaction was much different from the one he got.

Yes, if this happens you just might be a children's writer. And there might be a story there....somewhere.

A Story in a Statement

Tonight I popped into the Mac's Milk store with my youngest daughter. She was wearing thick beige tights and a light blue sheer skirt, both of which showed beneath her winter coat. The cashier asked my daughter if she'd just come from dance class. Shyly my daughter replied that no, she'd come from skating.

The cashier smiled and, as she handed me my change, leaned over and said quietly to me, "Enjoy her at that stage."

I nodded and walked out thinking that yeah, she's absolutely right. But I also caught myself wondering about the background to that statement. What was it in the cashier's story that urged her to say that to me, a stranger. I'm sure there's a story there...somewhere.

Outdone by the Cat

I feel like sharing a piece a wrote awhile back.

Raising A Reader

It was one of those days when I was scrambling to make dinner. We had to eat and dash out the door almost as soon as my older two kids came home from school. My youngest daughter picked that moment to ask me to listen to her read. Being four and in Kindergarten, she was at that wonderful stage where she loved to be read to, but she also loved to “read” to me.  She’d grab a book and make up the story. I’d already heard a couple renditions of the book earlier that day and I just couldn’t stop for another.

“I’m busy right now,” I said. “We’ll read some more tonight, okay?”

She gave me her best “Fine, you don’t love me!” and went stomping off.

Ouch. I wished I could make her understand why I had no time to listen right then, but my attention was needed at the now boiling pot on the stove so I rushed on with dinner.

Not too long afterwards I realized that I could hear my daughter’s voice coming from the laundry room. What was she up to?

Marshmellow

I walked quietly over to the closed laundry room door and listened. She was definitely talking, but there was no one else in the house at the moment. Was she talking to herself with that much energy?

Puzzled, I opened the door and peeked in. There she was, sitting on a stool with a book in her lap. And there was our cat, Marshmellow, sitting at my daughter’s feet and purring.

“Hey, what are you up to, sweetie?” I asked.

She looked at me like I must be dense for not grasping the obvious. “Reading to Marshmellow,” she replied, and then she smiled.

I looked at Marshmellow, sitting up with her ears pointed towards my daughter, giving her her full attention.

It was my turn to smile. I’d been outdone by the cat. But at that moment, my daughter couldn’t have asked for a better audience.

And for that, I couldn’t have been more grateful.

***
So thank you, Marshmellow. You will be missed.

This 'n That

This is my office floor.

This project is just about done now.

This would mean it's time to tidy up.

That would mean Lizann turns to the other 50,000 things on her to do list.

As Overheard

Husband: talks enthusiastically about a movie he saw when young and thinks the kids would enjoy too.

Daughter: "Is it in black and white?"

Lizann: laughs into the dish sink.

Between the Book Covers

There I was, working at the library on a cold blustery Saturday. I'd gone out into the freezing cold and unlocked the green steel after-hours return bin. I'd filled a big blue IKEA shopping bag with all the books and DVDs that had been dropped through the door.

I'd hauled the bag back inside to the circ desk, separated and stacked the books and magazines and opened each of the DVD cases to be sure the disk was inside. I'd backdated the system and scanned the bar codes on everything to process the returns. I'd separated out the new books and put them back on the new shelf right away. I'd put the paperbacks, nonfiction, YA fiction, and hard cover fiction on their own areas of the return cart.

Then I noticed that one of the hardcover fiction titles on the cart appeared to have some crumpled pages or something, or at least the top of the book wasn't closed up tight.

I pulled the book off the cart, a James Patterson title, and took a closer look. Oh! Something was stuck inside the book. The book opened easily to the page where the object was wedged inside.

It is a kleenex. A crumpled kleenex. A crumpled kleenex with unidentified brownish substance clearly visible on its surface.

Gah!

A crumpled kleenex with an unidentified brownish substance clearly visible on its surface that I prayed was the product of someone's late night reading session with leftover Valentine's chocolates.

I gingerly lifted the offending object out of book with thumb and index finger and dropped it into the garbage, then dove for the bottle of hand sanitizer.

Please, remove your personal items from your borrowed materials before you return them. Circulation clerks everywhere will thank you.

Of Politics and Poop

So last week I was out driving and I came across a municipal election sign with a toilet seat draped over it. How eloquent!
I laughed so hard I nearly drove off the narrow road.

I couldn't take a picture of that particular sight, much as I wanted to. I felt it wouldn't be fair to the candidate because there was no way to hide the identity of the beseated individual. But now that the election is over and all the signs have disappeared from the landscape, I keep thinking about this incident. It brings to mind a story starting point.

What if a kid saw someone had done that to his or her parent's election sign? Do you want your parent to be mayor? Would this make you angry or make you ready to die of embarrassment? Or what if this happened to a teen's election sign if they were running for high school or class president? Would you get to the bottom (pun intended) of who did it? Would you ignore it? Laugh it off? Stew in silence? Hmmm.

Okay, so you'd have to add a lot more. But it's a start. Go run with it.

Still Slacking into September

I've been AWOL! How did that happen?

A story to illustrate the state of the union chez moi. The kids came home from one of the first few days of school last week with this story. Paraphrasing:

"Mommy, the exhaust pipe fell off the bus this morning so we had to get on the high school bus and she turned the wrong way on the highway and then we had to do the last part of our route backwards."

Disclaimer: wrong way means not the way the route should go, not as in going south in the northbound lane, which sadly happens a few times a year around here.

What does that illustrate? It's like a metaphor for my writing life the last couple months!

Yep, my exhaust pipe fell off somewhere. What writing have I done recently? Ahem, nothing. Between volunteer jobs taking over my life, going to work very part time (more on that in another post), dealing with regular family maintenance, and stupid allergies that make me look and feel like I've had about 2 hours sleep--oh wait a second, sometimes that might be true--I haven't had an inch of head space for writing projects.

And now I feel guilty about that. 

You know all that writing advice that says stuff like just write? make it a priority? you've got to treat it like a job? do it everyday? writers write? just plant your heiney in a chair and get writing? Yeah, I hear it and it makes sense but when I just can't manage it I feel like a bit of a failure.

Sometimes your family has to come first. Sometimes they need to be fed. Sometimes they need you to help them put Barbie's hair in a ponytail. Sometimes you have to work to make money to pay the bills. Sometimes you have to step up to help with extra curricular activities your kids love or they won't be available. Sometimes you just have to catch a few moments enjoying the sunshine and your flowers and watch the vibrant green of summer turn to the mellow gold of fall or you'll go insane. 

But I'm trying to claw my way back to writing. Maybe now that the kids are back into a school routine I might have a bit more time to write some days. Maybe the volunteer duties will settle down for a bit. Maybe the first frost will come soon and kill all the nasal and sinus irritating pollen producing plants. 

My return to writing feels awkward and sporadic and like I'm coming at it all backwards right now. But maybe one day I'll find all this supposed distraction sowed some good seeds, gave me some fantastic fodder, for future writing. Or am I just kidding myself? 

Time will tell. But in the meantime, if you're a writer who sometimes feel like this, let's not beat ourselves up too much. Okay?

Me and Iced Tea from Nancy D.

Every summer I keep a steady supply of iced tea in my fridge. I make it from a recipe I've had since I was, oh, 10 or something. It's straight from my copy of The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking, copyright 1973, my edition printed in 1975.

I keep making this recipe because it's the best iced tea I've ever had. There's a secret ingredient in the tea: real mint leaves added while the tea is hot and steeping. The practical side of me likes the added benefit of making use of the mint that threatens to overrun a corner of my backyard.

The nostalgic side of me likes to pull out this recipe book because I get to remember what it was like to make this tea when I was young.

When making any recipe was a real accomplishment.
When I spent my summers reading in the shade on the patio swing.
When I built forts in the treeline with my best friend.
When my best friend and I climbed the old cherry trees in her yard and ate all the cherries we could reach.
When evenings were full of games of kick the can or ghost in the graveyard.
When summer stretched out in front of me like an endless expanse of possibility.

So I'm off now to make another batch of tea. You're welcome to join me.

Words and Warnings

I like to bake. Usually I just grab the flour and use it. But I couldn't help notice the new packaging this time. It was no special type of flour, just your regular run-of-the-mill whole wheat stuff. It was exactly what the words on the front said it was:

 But check out the back of the bag. Below the ingredients list there's that very helpful orange exclamation mark so you can't miss the allergy warning.

Because OMG apparently if you have a wheat allergy you need to be told that your whole WHEAT flour actually contains something called WHEAT!!

Good thing you were warned.

Me and Some Girl on TV

Driving home last night from parts further south, I was stopped on a minor highway between two small Ontario towns. Cars and vans and miscellaneous vehicles lined both sides of the road, and a huge blinding spotlight was illuminating spooky fog swirls up ahead. I expected a R.I.D.E check but that wasn't it.

We weren't moving at all. Cars in front of me turned around and went back. After debating whether or not to do the same, to trust the road sign at the intersection I'd just crossed and detour on a road I'd never driven on before, I too turned around. Oh, sure, now some guy puts up a road closed sign. But I also saw a couple other guys on the side of the road dressed similarly in odd whitish/grey outfits. I decided to ask them what was going on as I drove by.

The answer? Filming for some TV show, I was told. Then the guy said, "Hey, you look like Being Erica's Erica.
I laughed, said thanks, and went on my way. I was thinking either the guy needs glasses or it was the fact that

1. it was dark out
2. and drizzling rain
3. and I asked the question through the passenger side window while sitting in the driver's seat so he couldn't see clearly 

Still, it's okay to be mistaken for the star of a TV show who happens to be only 32. Hah!

(I confess to recognizing "Being Erica" as the title of a CBC TV show but it's not one I've ever watched. I had to look it up today. The premise sounds cool. I might just have to check it out now.)

G8...Gr8?

Between the natural world throwing us an earthquake yesterday, last night's tornado off to the southwest of me, severe thunderstorm warnings here this morning (which amounted to only heavy rain, thankfully), and all the security and shenanigans associated with the G8, things here have been rather interesting lately.

Yesterday my kids came home excited to tell me about the military helicopter that landed across from the school and how everyone in a couple classroom portables abandoned their desks and ran outside for a better look. I guess some guy told them to get back and it took off again. The kids got a talking to from their teacher too.

And yesterday three very loud helicopters flew over the house a couple times. Those things are loud! The wildlife in my backyard was not too impressed. The low flying copters scared at least one heron and a turtle. I initially put the quake shake down to another flyover. Oops!

I know these things are necessary with an event such as the G8 and the important people attending it, but it's a very odd juxtaposition to have such a technological military/security presence in such a rural region known for being a get-away-from-it-all vacation destination. Makes me appreciate the time when the peepers were my biggest noise complaint:



And I am fortunate that things will return to normal in just a matter of days.

G8?
Gr8
2 appreciate
1's normal state

Pansy Personality

Where did the week go? Been wearing the titles chauffeur, spectator, and convalescent this week. About to be immersed in the volunteer world of figure skating for a few days (don't ask). So just a quick post of these photos snapped within the last couple days.

Some plants just seem to have personality, don't you think?

Pop a Wheelie Point of View

This past weekend I took Number One Son to field lacrosse provincial qualifiers in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). As we were speeding down a major multi-lane highway I noticed two motorcycles on the on ramp. Because I was in the right lane, I was in the process of judging whether or not I'd need to adjust my speed when I realized exactly what the first motorcycle driver was doing: he'd popped a wheelie! Merging onto a major highway. Not 50 feet away from me.

Here are our two points of view:

Number One Son: Whoa that's EPIC! How does he do that?

Me: OMG is he crazy?! What if he wipes out and crashes in front of me?

And that's why I love writing for kids. Their reaction is so much more fun. 

(The motorcycle sustained the wheelie for about 5 seconds or more, returning to two wheels just as it merged onto the highway proper and sped away. Big relief for me. In spite of our differing points of view, it was definitely the most memorable moment of the weekend for both of us.)