Sunday, October 28, 2012

Spanning Two Thousand Years, A Text Message Changes Everything, Book #3


At the beginning of October, I was going away for a week and was looking on Amazon for novels to add to my Kindle. (I was going to say “e-reader,” then I realized that I published a Kindle book that’s sold on Amazon so let’s just call a Kindle, a Kindle, shall we?) And, yes, I know I could be going to the library and I know that Amazon destroyed traditional publishing and now they’re evidently destroying everything else, but this is my blog and Amazon is my big, mean boyfriend that I just can’t help going back to over and over again no matter how badly he treats my family. He’s been so good to me and no one else understands him the way I do. Anyhoo, as I was reading book descriptions, I realized that there are certain fiction devices and synopsis buzzwords that make me look at the next book faster than Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Bynes can get behind the wheel after a few cocktails. Let’s look at the top three.

1. Any plot that hinges on or changes due to something found in a trunk, a mysterious manuscript or a long lost letter. If the protagonist finds something that starts me on a downward spiral of story-within-a-story long, lost bullshit, I’m out of there. An old diary on a shelf always reads like a way for the author to integrate his/her great idea for a short story that Ploughshares and The New Yorker just won’t publish. I once read someone's writing class assignment where a woman found a manuscript in an attic and within the manuscript was a letter and in the letter…I don’t want to work that hard. Trunks and attics should be labeled with Louis Carol, Alice in Wonderland-type “Drink Me,” “Eat Me” tags that simply say, “Plot Device.”

2. Spanning. Whether spanning generations or war torn third world countries, I hate to see book descriptions that begin with “spanning.” In full disclosure, I occasionally read a novel that spans, but there is something about the use of that term in a synopsis that exhausts me before I even begin. It makes every book sound like Anna Karenina and not in a good way. The church I go to has something called the Easter vigil. Although use of the word “vigil” should have been an extremely obvious clue, the first time I went to it I had no idea what to expect. It began in total darkness at five o’clock in the morning and the first words from the pulpit were, “In the beginning.” Knowing that (it being Easter and all) Jesus had to die then rise sometime before noon and in the New Testament, and that the first sentence in the Old Testament of the bible is, “In the beginning…” I thought, “Holy shit, I’m going to be here forever!” That’s how “spanning” feels.

3. Numbers and other indications of this book being part of a series. If I see something that says, Jenny and the Baseball Team (Teen Whore Trilogy #2) I feel pressure. I feel an obligation to read the first novel in the Teen Whore Trilogy before I read this one and then I feel the pressure of the third novel hanging over me. Suddenly I’m not reading for pleasure but I’m stuck back in school taking some horrible Teen Whore Literature class that I can’t get out of.  Starting with Book #2, I’m the new kid who starts school in October—not so far into the year that I couldn’t blend, but having missed the first month would always be a step behind. And what if I like the series and I’m stuck waiting for months and years for the next installment. Hell, I’ve already got “Downton Abbey” for that.

I read some fantastic books during my vacation and have many more loaded up on my Kindle and ready to go. Don’t tell anyone but perhaps there was even a bit of “spanning” involved.


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Let's (Not) Drink to the New Year

In an effort to occasionally post something on my blog as I deal with my neck surgery, I have pulled some things out of my vault. The following post is an essay I wrote for a contest in 2011. In it is a scene reminiscent of Meg's visit to Casa Arboles in, "Living Through Charlie." I believe in that saying, "write what you know." The prompt for the essay contest was "I never thought I'd..."


Let’s (Not) Drink to the New Year
My friend, Roger likes to say that when I couldn’t remember who’d been eliminated on an episode of “America’s Next Top Model” I knew I’d hit bottom. While that’s not entirely true, I do know that Tivo allowed me to get away with being a blackout drinker far longer than would have been possible in the pre-DVR era.
            In my case, how I started drinking isn’t nearly as interesting as how I stopped. It rarely is. Parties in college, dates in bars, the bachelorette party, moms’ night out dinners, exotic cocktails on exotic vacations, a glass of wine while fixing the family dinner. Four glasses. A bottle. Two bottles. I think we can all agree that by the time Mommy can drink two bottles of wine every night and get up without any serious hangover symptoms to drive the carpool in the morning, that Mommy might have developed a bit of an alcohol problem. But like everything I do, my drinking was very organized. I had rules.
            I never drank before five o’clock. Other than an occasional mimosa with the girls at brunch, daytime drinking is simply unseemly. Besides, I was so efficient I could get through both bottles between five and ten thirty pm anyway. I never drank and drove. Ever. If the other middle school moms wondered why I was so anxious to drive the kids to the dance but never offered to pick them up, they never said anything. On the nights that my job as a Drama teacher had me working until ten o’clock, ten simply became the new five. With my superb organizational skills I kept the whole high functioning alcoholic thing going for quite awhile.
            I entertained a lot during my drinking years. I served red wine on Halloween, champagne on Christmas Eve, margaritas in the summer and vodka martinis in the nineties. Even now I can appreciate the beauty of the beverage as an accessory to a fine dining experience. I own thirty six pieces of hundred-dollar-a-stem-wedding-gift crystal. Even if I subtract the water goblets that’s still over two thousand dollars worth of booze vessels, right? I had to fill them with something.
            But drinking takes its toll. And keeping all of those balls in the air began to get harder. That’s where “America’s Next Top Model” comes in. My oldest daughter loved that show and I loved to watch it with her. Well, actually, I loved being with her and I loved watching “America’s Next Top Model,” but we weren’t necessarily watching it together. She tells me I discussed the show with her and I’m told I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t know. I was in an alcohol-induced blackout. The truth is I was recording the show and watching it the next morning when I was sober. That was the only way I knew which Tyra-wannabe had been sent back to the Midwest town she came from. Acknowledging what I was doing and why was my “rock-bottom.”
            Yeah, I know. My rock-bottom is lame. I should have crashed a car or started drinking on the job. I should have lost my kids, my house, my husband. Or maybe just starred in a youtube video eating a cheeseburger off the floor of a Vegas hotel room. But the damage caused by addiction isn’t always so obvious. Every day high-functioning alcoholics secretly reach that point where they just don’t think they can do it anymore. Or worse, they know if they don’t stop they’ll do it forever.
            It was October and my oldest daughter’s senior year of high school. Her college applications would be finished in December. My drama students would perform four plays for the annual “Winter Program” the last week before Christmas break. I went to the nearest rehab facility and informed them I’d be checking in on January first. I guess I thought you could make a reservation there. Like a spa. Apparently most addicts aren’t that well thought out, the “intake coordinator” wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. But once he saw that I was almost more upset about not being able to schedule my rehab than I was about admitting my alcoholism in the first place, he made a suggestion. While he couldn’t exactly save me a spot, he could recommend a psychologist who could. I saw the doctor and put “check into rehab” on my January first to-do list.
            I revealed my plan and my diagnosis to my husband and children. “The bad news is that Mommy’s an alcoholic and plans to celebrate the new year in rehab. The good news is we’re having spaghetti for dinner! Dig in!” They were quite surprised. I’m sure you’re wondering how no one else in the house noticed that I was drinking two bottles of wine every night. How could my family live with an alcoholic and not know? They didn’t know because I didn’t want them to. And like everything else I do, I covered well. It was my full time job. The perfectionist in me took great pride in being the best closeted alcoholic I could be.
            The hospital I chose to go to is in Pasadena, California. I bring that up for two reasons. The first is that you may have seen it on TV. In the years following my stay, the rehab facility and its head doctor have become quite famous. The facility itself was pretty much what you’ve seen on TV but with fewer field trips and no puking super models. We had way uglier furniture back then too. The second reason I’m mentioning the city name is that January first is a tough day to get around in Pasadena. That Rose Parade really ties things up. My husband drove me to the famous hospital to meet the famous doctor on a street that runs parallel to the parade route. The giant floats and I both headed east. The floats to a park where they would be put on display, their flowers slowly wilting away until the ugly armature underneath is revealed. And I to a hospital where I would reveal mine as well.
            I am led to my room. It was kind of like a college dorm except one of my roommates was passed out and the other had left clothes all over the floor. Actually, I guess it was exactly like a college dorm. The nurse went through my bag and took my hairdryer and my cell phone. She told me that both could be “checked out” from the desk during the approved hours. I was grateful that I would see my blow-dryer in the morning. I didn’t want to detox with bad hair. After she left, I sat and watched the clock. For the first time in many years, five o’clock would come and go and I would be sober.
            My fellow addicts and I learned a lot about each other in those twenty eight days. And other than the fact that you can’t buy heroin at BevMo, we were more alike than different. In addition to our “process groups” we enjoyed art therapy and recreation. While the young, scary court-ordered guys chose to play basketball, we lady alcoholics favored afternoons of croquet. In a bizarre twist the same nurses who confiscated a glass vase from my seventy one year old mother, happily handed out large wooden mallets, pointy metal hoops and heavy balls every day. (They may have found Mom’s flowers but fortunately my husband was craftier when he snuck my cat in for a visit. I guess a squirming, yowling cat in a box is just easier to keep under the radar.) The chardonnay drinkers usually lost the croquet games to the prescription pill addicts but, frankly, they were a lot smarter than us. The elaborate scams they’d run to feed their habits were pretty impressive and no match to gals who only had to drive to the grocery store to feed ours.
            On January 1, 2011 I will have been sober for six years. How have the nondrinking years been? Good, great, horrible, wonderful, stressful, amazing- the typical ups and downs of the years of a growing family. But I’ve been here for them. I’ve been present. I feel all of the feelings whether I like them or not. And what are we here for if not to feel all of the feelings and to be present with one another so we can share them?
            Now that I’ve had six years to watch “America’s Next Top Model” while sober, I’m not sure I was missing all that much. But I do know this- somewhere tonight at 5:00 somebody’s mom is going to go into her kitchen and pour herself a drink. Not because she wants to but because she has to. I never thought I’d become an alcoholic. No one does. But sometimes we do.       
             

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

A Nice(r than usual) Post About Marriage


In honor of my twenty eighth wedding anniversary next week and because I have to limit my pre-neck surgery typing, I'm reposting a guest entry I wrote for a friend's daughter's blog while she took time off for her wedding and honeymoon. You will notice two things- I make a lot of math references because she's a math teacher and I'm being less snarky than usual. Enjoy!

This Friday, Melissa White (whom I have known since before she was born,) is getting married. She has asked me to write a guest post for her blog while she gets her nails done, practices aisle walking and whatever the hell else girls do in the few days before their weddings. Fortunately for Melissa, I love, love, love weddings and giving unsolicited advice so I’m super excited to write this post!

I married my husband Bill on July 29, 1984. Although 1984 was a regrettable year for fashion, it seems to have been a fine year in which to have gotten married. And July 29 is evidently an awesome day to get married. I share a wedding anniversary with such notably happy couples as Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and Pamela Anderson and one of the dudes she married. What are some of the things that have kept Bill and me together for twenty eight years? One reason that we’re still together is that we haven’t gotten divorced. Unsolicited tip number one—stay married by not entertaining other options.

(First, a caveat for the random reader- if you are in some sort of self-destructive, hellish marriage, for God’s sake stop reading this blog and see a professional! I’m not advising you, I’m advising Melissa anyway.) I have been the wedding coordinator at my church for the last six years (times three weddings per month, times twelve months per year, times six years—you do the math, ‘cause you’re a math teacher and all) so I pretty much have the ceremony memorized. At the risk of revealing a matrimonial secret, the priest gives the same homily at every wedding. One of the best lines in it refers to the times when the bride and groom will hurt each other, not if. Because you will hurt each other. You will fight and you will argue and sometimes you will hate your husband’s guts and wonder how cereal can possibly make that much noise while it’s being chewed and you will want to beat your husband with the spoon he’s using to shovel it into his mouth because his chewing is drowning out the sound of your soul. Okay, maybe that last thing only pertains to me.  But stay. Work it out. Take the option of divorce off the table. Keep that table clear so there’s room for better options. Use those. But 50% of all marriages end in divorce, right? Divorce is a really common and accessible out. Well, yes and no. Divorce is common and accessible but that 50% statistic is kind of inaccurate. You’re a math chick, you should appreciate this—in your demographic, you actually have a better than 80% chance of staying married!

The reason we’ve all heard that 50% of all marriages end in divorce is because a lot of the people that get married are idiots and they bring the average down. When you add everyone’s marriages together including teenagers, Dr. Phil guests and Kim Kardashian, then divide or multiply or whatever you math teachers do, you get 50%. But for a college graduate, over the age of 25, getting married for the first time, who has an already established source of independent income (sound like anyone you know?) the divorce rate isn’t 50%, it’s 20%. And the other good news is that the divorce rate has been on its way down since 1980 and continues to fall. So if you have an 80% chance of succeeding now and your chances are increasing every day, those are some really good odds! It’s also a really good thing to tell someone when they tell you that half of all marriages end in divorce. Because they don’t.

What if Mat’s a totally different person in a few years? He will be. He should be. You should be too. I don’t know why anyone is surprised when his/her spouse changes over the course of a marriage. Being married doesn’t freeze time (insert obvious joke here) and a person who doesn’t continue to grow and learn wouldn’t be all that much fun to be married to. I would even argue that you don’t have to change in the same directions, just “complimentary” ones. Learn new things, pursue your interests, fulfill your dreams, pick up weird hobbies. Don’t be afraid to be alone and explore things on your own. Boring people have boring marriages- come on, you know who they are. Don’t be boring. If you keep developing as an individual, you will strengthen your bond as a couple.

So, what did we learn? Change but stay married and the odds are in your favor even though you will hurt each other. This is not the kind of advice you’ll find in Cosmo, The Secret, The 17 Day Diet or any other publications the cool girls read but it’s worked for me. I wish you many, many years of happiness with the least amount of hurt and loud cereal chewing possible! Congratulations!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Tell the Pod of Dolphins to Move a Little to the Left


I like hiring people to do things I don’t want to do as much as the next vain, narcissistic gal. I live in Southern California and after worshipping movie stars and making bad financial decisions, personal “outsourcing” is kind of our deal. But even I was surprised to discover that the latest fad in paying-for-shit-you-should-do-yourself is hiring a professional photographer to take your vacation photos. If I’d read about this in Star Magazine in an article called, “Katie Hires Photog to Airbrush away Suri’s Tears while in Paris,” that would be one thing. But the article I read was in the Wall Frickin’ Street Journal!

Evidently in addition to having lots of extra cash and a love of frivolous self-indulgence, one of the main reasons vacationers are hiring photographers is so their pictures look good on their “social media” sites. That means Facebook, right? People are paying for professional Facebook pictures? I looked at my Facebook “news feed” and unless my “friends” are traveling with kittens, political posters and inspirational quotes about their mothers, I’m pretty sure they only post crap they find on the internet and photos they’ve taken themselves My-Space style in their bathroom mirrors. I feel a little better not knowing anyone who has ever engaged in this new practice but all of the evidence won’t be in until Christmas cards arrive later in the year.

Yes, families are having professional photo shoots done while on vacation and using them for their Christmas cards. Disney theme parks will even open the doors early for you and your brood so you can tromp through the gate in your white shirts, blue jeans and bare feet before the other sixty thousand guests arrive. Gosh, what fun! You get to wake up super early, dress the kids, keep them clean and smiling, pay $350 an hour and pose for pictures all over a theme park! That’s just about every one of my least favorite activities crammed into one fun-filled morning! And just as everyone reaches the end of their patience and Mommy starts looking for some McXanax, the photo shoot is over and you can start waiting in line after line after line for your never-ending day of amusement park hell. “Stop whining Naveah Heaven Haven! Mommy’s creating memories!”

The pictures accompanying The Wall Street Journal article are pretty fantastic. Most of them are typical vacation photos—a couple riding bikes, snorkeling, lying in a hammock, filling out missing luggage forms at the airport— but it’s the photographer standing waist deep in the ocean, his face and his identity obscured by a moldy fishing hat and a telephoto lens like a perverted Loch Ness Monster that makes the shot. Nothing says, “Relaxing Vacation” like a guy in Bermuda shorts popping out of the bushes every time the honeymooners go in for a kiss. We’re only a wedding magazine article away from inviting the photographer to shoot a little video in the bridal suite as well. What a souvenir for the happy couple to share with Grandma when they return.

Evidently for an extra fee, you can have your pictures photo-shopped and airbrushed. Okay, I love airbrushing! I mean, really, look at my headshot, obviously I’m a fan. If I could be preceded by a soft focus lens as I traveled through my day, I would totally do it. But there’s history in unflattering vacation photos. I went swimming in the Amazon River and the picture of me looking like a drowned rat as I emerged is indicative of what a person looks like in 400% humidity after cavorting with piranhas. In a picture of my 90 lb. daughter attaching tar paper to the roof of an orphanage in Tijuana, the heat rising from the roof is so omnipresent it’s almost another character in the shot. Much as I’d love every angle of my ass to look Shape Magazine cover perfect, that’s just not how it is in real life no matter where I vacation.

As I was ranting and raving about the stupidity of this article to my daughter who is home from college (she’s working for me for the summer, listening to Mommy rant and rave is in her job description,) she said, “I should send you this article I read online about the Six Jobs You Won’t Believe You  Can Outsource.” Why yes you should. And she did.

Who knew how many options there were for paying people to do shit for you? You can rent friends and dates and cats and hire people to wait in line for you. For the right price, you can even get fake paparazzi to follow you everywhere like you were Justin Bieber on the 101 freeway. You can pay a stranger to ask your spouse for a divorce or break up with your significant other (which sounds like a decision that will bite you in the ass for years to come.)  But one of my favorite outsourcing indulgences (not “favorite” as in “That’s so awesome!” “Favorite” as in, “Wow that is pure evil genius! High five Horrible, Awful Human Being Who Came Up With That!”) is an alibi service. The alibi service describes itself as, “a cutting edge full service discreet agency providing alibis and excuses for absences as well as assistance with a variety of sensitive issues.” Basically they will make shit up for you and provide evidence to support your shit—not unlike writing fiction.

I could see renting a cat and maybe paying some dude to stand in line at the post office to make a Zappos return, but the rest of this stuff is ridiculous. If anyone wanted me to vacation with a photographer, I would totally hire the alibi service to lie about why I couldn’t go.
______________________________

Perhaps the two of you who follow my blog noticed that there was no entry last week. Evidently the vertebrae in my neck are not being fooled by the hair dying, spray tanning and my other look-young-forever efforts and the resulting revolt has put a damper on my ability to type (the vertebrae/hand connection makes sense if you Google-image search it.) I am doing a full Steven Hawking here learning voice recognition so bear with me. A little surgery here, a steep learning curve there… I’ve got to take some time off but I’ll be back soon.




Friday, June 29, 2012

May I Quote You on That?



You know how sometimes you read something a celebrity has said and you think, “Thanks for explaining the Fukushima nuclear disaster so clearly, Miley Cyrus”? Were you to spend any time wondering about this (which in this case you wouldn’t because it’s Miley Cyrus, but work with me here) you might question the wisdom of a reporter asking her about, well, anything.

I have never been a fan of people spouting off about subjects when the only concrete knowledge they have of them is that they have an opinion. This is probably why I only read two Facebook pages and my own is one of them. (Yours is the other. You are smart and fascinating. Trust me.) I know that talking out your ass is not only a popular pastime but it’s one of our rights as Americans. The first amendment is basically the right to talk out your ass. But just because a question is asked, should you answer it in a public forum if you know you’re only talking out your ass? What do you think, 2009 beauty pageant contestant? What would you say if asked, “Should the U.S. have universal health care as a right of citizenship?”

"I think this is an issue of integrity regardless of which end of the political spectrum that I stand on. I was raised in a family to know right from wrong and politics, whether or not you fall in the middle, the left or the right it’s an issue of integrity, no matter what your opinion is, and I say that with the utmost conviction."

Saying it with conviction is what made her a winner, ladies and gentleman. Miss Congeniality probably gave a really incoherent, stupid answer. But what if she had said, “I’m an eighteen year old girl. I appreciate your asking but I don’t really feel informed enough to give a nationally broadcast answer to that question”? Ironically the audience would have thought she was an idiot.

For the last several weeks, I have been doing interviews in order to promote my book. I’ve gotten pretty good at deflecting when questions are outside the scope of my expertise, even though it’s hard not to answer questions in an interview when you are a people-pleaser and a talker like I am. It would be so much easier and make the conversation flow so much better if I would just talk about things I know nothing about. One reporter asked me an odd, racially charged question that was related to the material in my book by a very long, twisty thread. While I could kind of follow her thought process and see how she got there and how this issue might be a tangential, shirt-tail relative of a small aspect of a line in one chapter of my book, I knew I had no knowledge of her subject matter. I also knew that the last topic of conversation I wanted to pull out of my ass was an area of midcentury race relations of which I am woefully uniformed. I complimented the reporter on her amazingly creative question and didn’t answer it.

Because my book features a character with an autistic spectrum disorder, I am asked a lot of questions about autism. As the mom of an adult child who has Asperger’s Syndrome and as a former teacher in a school for kids with language-based learning disabilities, I’ve had both training in and experience with autism. But I have too much respect for the material to offer uninformed, potentially dangerous opinions in public forums. Vaccines, special diets, changes in the DSM V, increase in numbers—I’ve heard the same things you’ve heard and I’ve read the same reports you’ve read. But that doesn’t make me an expert and it would be irresponsible for me to pretend it does.

What say you 2007 teen pageant contestant? I’ve got a question for you. Why can’t one fifth of Americans identify the US on a world map?

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

Oh, Sweetie, I think you pulled that out of your ass. Just say you have no idea.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Shades of I Wish I’d Written that Book but I Don’t Really Get it




Have you read the sex novel yet? You know the one. It’s been all over the news that when women read this book they want to have sex. I’m reading it and it doesn’t make me want to have sex. It makes me want to lecture the twenty one year old girl in it. It makes me want to edit it.

Normally, I don’t believe in throwing anyone’s book under the bus. First, because writing a book is really hard. Not crab-boat-coal-mine-jobs hard, but it’s hard to stare at a blank word document and write words so amazing and insightful that you want to share them with the world so strangers can criticize them. Second, opinions about books and their content is really, really subjective (this is always the last sentence of a rejection letter, BTW, right before the agent wishes you good luck finding another agent.) Just because I don’t like a book doesn’t mean that ten million other people won’t like it. Can I just have a moment here? I googled that. More than ten million copies of that damn book have been sold. Note to self- learn to love this genre and write it. But since the Sex Novel has gone beyond being a book and has become instead, a phenomenon, I feel okay about “discussing it.” Besides, the author has sold so many copies that one bitter, newby writer saying, “I don’t get it” won’t even make a blip on her gigantic bestselling screen.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I have daughters the same age as the college-girl-turned-sex-slave in the Sex Novel so I begin the whole process from the place of euwww. And I’m mad at the girl’s parents for not having exposed her to enough people and places for the first twenty one years of her life. She goes to an office building and she is so impressed by elevators and windows, she’s ready to screw anyone with a file cabinet. And why isn’t she more confident? Sweetie, you’re about to graduate from college, you’re not a seven year old! Sit up straight, ask this asshole questions for the college newspaper, write the answers and take them home to your stupid reporter roommate who sent you to do her job just because she got the sniffles (and if I were her mother, I would tell her to take the Dayquil and go and interview the asshole herselfsometimes we get sick but we still have work to do. Suck it up cupcake!) I’ve barely made it past the premise of the book and I’m already pissed off! I’m not feeling like having sex yet but I would totally stop reading at this point and have a discussion with my husband. I want to talk about the raising of our daughters so I could get reassurance that they are smarter and more confident than Sex Novel Girl. Clearly, I already don’t get it.

Beyond the content itself, I have grammar and word issue issues. I’m annoyed by words being used as verbs when they’re not really verbs. Like disrespect. Disrespect was a perfectly good noun for decades. Why does is have to be a verb now? I also hate weirdly ineffectual adverbs (not like “weirdly,” that’s the perfect adverb for this sentence. Because this is my blog, that’s why.) I’m not a big fan of adverbs anyway, they kind of stop me in my tracks when I’m reading and I analyze whether they should be there or not. The verbs-that-should-be-nouns and awkward adverbs were distracting. “His mouth quirks up, and he stares appraisingly at me.” “He shrugs noncommittally.” “His eyes narrow, speculatively.” “Andrea hesitates, gaping at him.” I’ll grant that one could probably stare appraisingly, although “appraising” does suggest a bit more eye movement than does staring. But how does a mouth quirk? How does anything quirk? Can quirk really be a verb? He quirks, she quirks, we are quirking? And isn’t a shrug by nature noncommittal? “He firmly accepted the proposal with a shrug.” I know, I know, I’m totally missing the point. Although if Andrea in her entirety is gaping at him, what does he need the college girl for? Andrea appears to be easy pickings!

You’re thinking. “God, Rebecca, you are such an uptight bitch! And you are just jealous that millions more people bought the Sex Novel than the stupid novel you wrote.” Totally. You are right on both accounts. I am the first to admit that I am both an uptight bitch and very jealous. Let’s take that statement as a given.

Okay- blah, blah, blah, helicopter, blah, blah, blah, sex dungeon, blah, blah, blah, signed a nondisclosure agreement before Richy Rich tied me up and humiliated mefinally the sex scene cometh!

Ladies, he’s such a creeper, how does this excite you? He has such a disturbing Daddy/daughter relationship with Sex Novel College Girl. I mean I know women get off on all kinds of weird fantasies, stuff they wouldn’t actually want to do in real life but he makes me feel so icky. And she makes me feel so irritated. And they’re quirking all over the place! Lips quirk sixteen times in this book, I searched it! And eyebrows quirk once. How can any woman get in the mood in the presence of such misuse of a perfectly good noun?

Do I wish I’d written this? Hell, yes! But I didn’t. And my novel about an autistic child isn’t going to have the same wide range appeal. I probably won’t finish reading the Sex Novel though. It’s supposed to instill sexual desire not the desire to attack my ereader with a red pen and call my children and yell at them about the importance of high self-esteem. I know this book is a huge club that millions of women have joined but I don’t get it. It only made me shrug appraisingly and quirk noncommittally.




Friday, June 15, 2012


I steal a lot of material from my children’s lives. First, because their lives have not been very—how should I put this—linear so they’ve given me lots of material. And second, my kids aren’t my demographic so I can pretty much write anything I want to about them and, chances are, they won’t read it.

Funny story: last week my twenty five year old’s boyfriend of six months came to my house and broke up with her. It was super extra awkward because she doesn’t even live at my house. He waited until he’d finished having dinner with the family and broke up with her on his way out. It was a—how should I put this— dick move. Before I reacted I had to think, as I’ve learned to do in these situations WWABMD? I know you can figure out the two W’s and the D. This abbreviation started with Jesus and has trickled down into the lexicon of phrases we use cleverly and ironically to suit our own purposes. But WWABMD stands for “What would anyone but me do?” I can be a little—how should I put this—emotionally reactive so sometimes I need to take a deep breath, focus, and think like somebody else for a moment.

Now that my two children are in their twenties, I find myself thinking WWABMD quite often. So often in fact, I’m thinking of putting it on a bracelet. People could wear it between that red string that confused celebrities wear and that yellow rubber Lance Armstrong one. When my girls were little and someone hurt their feelings, solutions were simple. No birthday party invitation? Invite a friend over. Invite twelve friends. Invite all the girls in the class except for the one little brat that excluded my kid in the first place and get a bounce house and all of the Disney princesses and puppies and cupcakes—WWABMD. See where my mind goes? This is why I have to take a moment to rein myself in. I want to spare their feelings, make sure they don’t hurt and go to great and excessive lengths to accomplish this.

Younger children will forgive a bit of overly enthusiastic parenting. But with an adult child you tread a very fine line. The break up with the—how should I put this—asshole last week was not my daughter’s first heartbreak. Let’s take a moment to talk about Dillweed.

Dillweed is my daughter’s ex-boyfriend from college. After college they moved in together. It was a—how should I put this—effing disaster. When my daughter made the decision that Dillweed was way cooler at school than he was sharing her bathroom, she broke up with him. Just as the weeping and wailing died down (honestly, my husband can be such a drama queen) Dillweed’s mom called from her home far, far away in another state. Seems she heard that my daughter had given her son the boot and Mama Dillweed was not having it. Now, Dillweed’s mom could use a bracelet for sure. If not a WWABMD bracelet then a breast cancer one, a charm bracelet, hell, silly bands—anything she could use to smack herself in the head before she makes a decision to call the parents of her twenty four year old son’s ex-girlfriend to yell at them for what their daughter did. The only thing that would have made Mama Dillweed happy is if I’d given my daughter a time out and made her promise to marry Dillweed so his feeling wouldn’t be hurt. Dillweed’s mom continued her rampage with more phone calls and emails then she flew across the country, packed up Dillweed, paid a couple grand to ship his car, and bore him safely home on the wind beneath her wings.

Much as I mocked Dillweed’s mom (and I did mock her. After all, mocking is kind of my—how should I put this—schtick) I kinda got where she was coming from when Mr. Dick Move made his move last week. My daughter came back into my house crying hysterically because instead of the “goodnight” she was expecting on the front porch, she got “I think we should take a break from seeing each other.” I wanted to follow Dick home in my car so I could yell at him for being such an insensitive tool. I wanted to call his mom even though I’ve never met his mom and email his entire extended family so they would know what an awful jerk he is. I just wanted to make him hurt as much as he had hurt her.

I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I sat on the floor next to her while she cried. I put her to bed in her childhood room and I slept nearby on a sofa just in case she “needed me.” After a couple of days of dissecting Dick Move and their relationship with her girlfriends, she was pretty much over it. I did her laundry, made her some food and sent her on her way. I may have taken a moment here and there to consider WWABMD, but in the end I did what—how should I put this—a mom would do.




Thursday, June 7, 2012


Here is the entry I posted on Caroline Leavitt's blog this week. I don't plan to re-post the same thing over and over but now I saved you a click!

Mommy Competition

If you’ve spent a good portion of your adult life either driving a car or looking for your keys so you can drive your car, chances are you’re a mom. And if you’re a mom, chances are you occasionally have doubts that you’re doing it right. Okay, you frequently have doubts. You wallow in doubt. You lap it up from a spoon and wear it daily as a skin suit Silence of the Lambs style. This insecurity fuels something I call Mommy Competition. You know what it is, it’s that need to figure out who’s doing it better. That uncontrollable desire to look at another mom’s kids, do a quick assessment and decide who is the Alpha Mom and who is most likely to serve dinner by tossing a greasy bag of food from a drive-through window into the back seat of the mini-van on the way home.

The best way to quickly establish the identity of the Alpha Mom is to greet each other with A Question About Each Other’s Children. “Is he breastfed?” “Is she talking?” “Walking?” “Reading?” “Applying to preschool?” That’s right. I just said, “applying to preschool” like that’s a normal thing that normal three year olds do everywhere. They don’t. But in communities where there’s a waiting list for toddler tutors, Mommy Competition rises to a near professional level.

If you live in the school-by-application-only culture like I do, you’re lucky! Your town has conveniently set up a Mommy hierarchy for you! Recognizing the Alpha Mom is as easy as knowing the reputations of the local private schools. There are the good schools and there are the schools-your-kid-got-into-because-he-couldn’t-get-into-a-better-school-so-you-must-be-a-crappy-mom. It starts with preschool- “So, where is Hydrangea going to preschool?” What you’re really trying to find out is- Were you teaching your kid the alphabet while I was drinking wine and playing Yo Gabba Gabba on a continuous loop? Did you have a reward system for your child that never included you saying, “Fine. Here’s the damn cookie.”? …like me.

Most of the private elementary schools in my area have uniforms. This is a wonderful shortcut if you have to establish who the Alpha Mom is from a distance. (If your child’s school doesn’t believe in uniforms, there’s a whole different ranking system involving license plate holders and the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s parking lots but it’s too complicated a formula to explore in such a brief blog post.) Should two moms encounter each other in the wild and the children are wearing uniforms, you can skip, “Where is Petunia in school?” and go straight to, “What is Carnation up to?” Carnation went to summer camp in Costa Rica where she hand pollinated indigenous vines and then she won the third grade science fair with the paper she wrote about it! Damn it. But Carnation isn’t in school right now. Yes! She’s got a tutor on set until her movie wraps. You win. I give.

My kids are in their mid-twenties so I should know better. And, in spite of (or maybe because of) my inability to ever rise to the role of the Alpha Mom based on this Mommy Competition criteria, my kids are seriously awesome! Seriously. Nevertheless, I actually did the let’s-see-how-I-rank-as-a-mom thing at a Pilates class yesterday. (Yes, I do know how that sounds. I already told you I live in a private school environment, that there are Pilates classes nearby shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.) I ran into a mom I hadn’t seen in about fifteen years and I greeted her with, “Oh my gosh, hi! So, what is Chrysanthemum up to?”

We were doing the back and forth about her kids and my kids (I was winning, by the way, it seems little Chrysanthemum is still living at home and hasn’t chosen a college major) and I suddenly realized what I was doing! I don’t want to do this, I’ve already won this game!  She’s won this game! Being a mom is hard, we shouldn’t be competing with each other, we should be supporting each other! So what if Chrysanthemum hasn’t chosen a college major, one of my kids flunked out of the first college she went to! And even though Carnation won the science fair in third grade, she could get bullied every day in fourth grade like my other kid did. Suddenly I blurted out, “I wrote a book! It’s about private school moms trying to live vicariously through their kids and what it’s like for one mom when her kid doesn’t fit in!” Our conversation stopped as my faux pas hung in the air. Did I really just start talking about myself instead of continuing to rank our kids’ accomplishments so we can identify the Alpha Mom?  We stared awkwardly at each other’s Lululemon workout gear for a moment not knowing what to say as if I had made a racial slur or an inappropriate political comment. Finally I broke the silence. “And I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.”

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Mommy Competition on Caroline Leavitt's Blog

What better way to start my blog than with a link to someone else's blog! It's not just anyone's blog, though. In addition to being one of my writing instructors at UCLA, Caroline Leavitt is a New York Times best selling author who is about to publish her tenth novel. Ironically, my post is about Mommy Competition. I say, "ironically" because, unlike the competitive moms in my post, Caroline believes in helping aspiring writers wherever she can. I am honored to be on Caroline Leavitt's blog today!

http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2012/06/rebecca-woods-author-of-living-through.html

Friday, May 25, 2012

Welcome to the new Living Through Charlie blog, a place I've created to share and connect with readers, other special needs parents, educators, writers, and more. Stay posted for more coming soon!