Challenging the Gnome

Dork Dating, and Other Memories

2012-02-10T05:00:00.001-07:00

I went into a bar once. I didn't jump on anyone's back or sing "I Like Big Butts," like our resident Russo. But I did get propositioned by a mandoline player. I refused him--one should refuse propositions when one is celebrating one's 25th wedding anniversary with one's husband in a quaint Irish pub and one's husband is sitting there watching--and I was flattered. Like, severely. Until I saw the mandoliner go down the bar and proposition every other woman in the place.

Yeah. My husband's heart was totally safe.

I also sat on a couch one evening when I was in college and was serenaded by 5 brothers who comprised a brass quintet. Called themselves the Brunson Burners. Or Brothers. I can't remember which. I think I was only on a date with one of them. But all 5 of them were there. I don't know if they were good musicians or not because my eardrums had a panic attack and blew out after the first three notes. I was a foot and a half away from the open bells of the various horns and the boys were trying to impress me. I couldn't hear for a week. Broke up with all of them after that. They were devastated but kept playing. Even went on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. I still can't hear anything above high C. And for the record, when I say they were devastated, I mean like, they weren't.

I'm telling you these things because, oh, I don't know. Maybe because Russo's post on Wednesday got me to reminiscing about funny and/or odd dating/partying experiences. And it made me happy that I don't have to do it anymore. Mandolin-dude notwithstanding.

Speaking of standing, I once watched a nice boy get a bit nervous about the say-goodnight-at-the-door moment with me and start bouncing up and down on his toes. Except he forgot he was standing on the very edge of my porch and there was no railing. He remembered when he bounced right off the thing and almost did a header into the window-well. I did not so much as crack a smile, for I am kind like that. I did laugh, though.

Finally (for now) there was the time before I was engaged to my husband when I decided to demonstrate a complicated dance move for him. So I leapt fluidly into the air, struck a graceful pose, came down lightly on my toes, and on impact blasted him with a not-so-silent gaseous emission. Grace, I tell you! Grace!

He still married me. And he did not let the mandolin player carry me off even though there have been repeat performances of said blast on and off for almost 26 years now. From him. Not me. No I mean it.

Is this too much information? Is it? Well I'll stop then. And I bow in Russo's general direction, for she shall ever be the Grand Poobah of Odd Experiences. She should be knighted for bravery. And charm. Because she survives everything with a smile.

As I did that one time when I went to that party and it was full of hott boys and I was trying so hard to be all cute and impressive that my nerves exploded and they took my lip with them. Like, I suddenly got this EPIC cold sore. Of epic proportions. Took my entire upper lip and half of my nose with it. I looked like Quasi-Lippo, the Hunch Lip of Notre Dame. A.TTrac.Tive. I wanted to die. I could teach you how to do it if you want.

THAT'S what we should do! We should start the 3Gnomes Dating Advice Column! You'd write to us, right? And take our advice? And stuff? Okay then. Post your questions in the comments section. We'll get to them asap. Just as soon as we bail Russo out of jail for telling that police officer that he had a big butt, she could not lie.

(I made that up.)

I got into a bar scuffle

2012-02-08T05:27:00.003-07:00

Before I forget, a good blogging friend, Norma Beishir is celebrating the re-release of her 2008 novel, Chasing the Wind. The gal has talent in spades. I cannot wait to buy the novel on Amazon and thought I would pass along the info to you all.

As you all know, the past few months have left me sick as a dog. I spent December and January in my velvet covers on my round bed hacking up a lung. Thankfully, those days are long gone. I finally feel up to par and as a result, I have gone on quite a partying bender, sans any substances, of course.

It all started with karaoke night and my 2012 mantra-live like this is your last year on Earth.
My friends, this mantra may be the death of me. This weekend I went with Jameses and crew, I wore my black lacy cardigan with leggings and chic motorcycle boots.

I loathe karaoke, I don't see the point in singing off key with strangers making out in the dark corners but hey, this is about doing something new and exciting, right?

Unfortunately, I don't do exciting well. No, catastrophe follows me around every bend. So, nestled in a tiny basement bar, Jameses and crew take turns in karaoking their little hearts out.

I hold my hand sanitizer in my palm and keep staring at this huge 6 foot 6 man who cannot peel his eyes off my friend. This chick is so short I could even throw her across the room but she's a spitfire.

So, this bulky 6 foot 6 man approaches Spitfire Girl. He comes on to my friend, he grabs her arm and yanks her close to him. Spitfire girl pushes him back. There's not a security guard in sight. No one around me knows what to do, they are watching this creepy guy force Spitfire Girl to walk to his side of the bar.

My new motorcycle boots must have inspired me to go crazy on his butt because I run after him and leap on his back. I am still mortified that I did this, I leaped on this humongous man's back and refused to get off until he let her go.

He then throws me off his back like I'm a lil mouse (which is hard to do, I am 6 foot 2). I gash my forearm on loose pipe. I should have walked away after Spitfire Girl was safe but noooo, something inside me snapped and I yelled, "There's no way I am getting hepatitis because you're a creep."

The 6 foot 6 guy just stares at me in surprise. Jameses and crew burst out laughing because I am not freaked out by 6 foot 6 man. Instead I am worried that I am going to get hepatitis. The tension has faded.

The 6 foot 6 man begins laughing. Yep, everyone is laughing-the tears gushing out of their eyes, lungs burning kind of laughing. All because I am a wacked-out-germ-fearing-kind of gal.

Everyone goes back to what they were doing. For the next hour, I got ribbed for jumping on a humongus man's back. I can't stop smiling and laughing. The only way to get them to shut up is to do the thing I loathe most-sing karaoke.

I walk up to the stage, gulp down the fear and grab the microphone. I tap my black boots against the floor and sing along with Sir Mix-A-Lot, "I like big butts and I cannot lie . . . "

The Snowman's Heart

2012-02-06T08:00:00.001-07:00

February Challenge: Valentine's Day Short Fiction

She was four the first time she built him. Her dad helped her place big, round buttons in a neat column down his front. They gave him dead branches for arms and tucked two flat, black rocks from the river beneath him for feet. Dad took a red apple from his coat and sliced it in two with a pocketknife. He helped the girl set one half into the snowman's chest, just left of the buttons. Then he lifted her up so she could twist two ends of a cucumber onto the snowman's face - green eyes, just like hers - and a smile of raisins.

"Wait," she said in her tiny voice before Dad could set her down. She loosened her scarf, yanking the ends of it from inside her coat and wound it around the snowman's neck, tying a fumbly child's knot at his throat. As her feet touched the ground again, she smiled up at her work. The scarf was bright pink and flowery, but the snowman didn't mind. He was just happy to be there.

The following winter, she stretched an old ski cap over his head and gave him some gloves to keep his fingers warm as he stood guard in front of her house. And there was a new scarf, deep blue and gray. When she was sure her father and brothers weren't looking, she stood on her tip-toes and whispered into the snowman's seashell ear, "I picked it out. I hope you like blue."

Even though it was against the rules - snowmen aren't allowed to show life to anyone but their own kind - he winked at the girl. Just once. Just to tell her that he did indeed like blue, although he hadn't known it until that moment. She stood there blinking at him. But then slowly, and with great effort, she winked back, so the snowman knew that she believed, and understood, and that their secret was safe.

As she walked to the bus stop each morning holding her oldest brother's hand, she turned and winked at her snowman. Or waved. Or smiled. Sometimes she did all three. The snowman wanted more than anything to wave back, but it was too risky. So he waited until they'd turned the corner before he allowed the icy crystals in his cheeks to shift and stretch into a smile.

One winter, she replaced the ski cap with a wool tam. By now she was ten, and tall enough to arrange the snowman's features by herself. The snowman opened his eyes - still green, like hers - to find her regarding him while her brothers and father built a snow fort. Her mouth twisted into a puckered knot on one side of her face. The snowman thought he knew a word to go with her expression: uncertainty. Believing was becoming harder with time.

Quickly, the snowman grasped the edge of his new wool tam, bending new joints in his arm even as they were created, and tipped his hat once to her. The dead branch that was his arm snapped back into place before anyone else noticed. But she saw, and smiled. And all was well again.

One day, the snowman woke up for the first time and noticed that the girl had changed. Her face had gotten thinner and her eyes had lost some of their childhood roundness. More than one winter had passed since he'd last seen her. Her hands shook as she struggled to tie his blue and gray scarf just so. The snowman couldn't see the girl's father anywhere in the yard.

The snowman's initial joy at being alive again was quickly replaced by something else, something new. He was sad to see his girl this way. She wouldn't even look at him as she placed the heart on his chest like always. He wished she would talk to him, tell him her secrets like she had so many times before. But he knew what caused the tears to slide down her winter-kissed cheeks, even without her saying the words. She had never built him all by herself before.

That night, the snowman shook the new snow from his shoulders. For the first time in all his winters, he wriggled his river-rock feet free of the crusted ice and dead grass. He made his way around the house until he found her window. The room was dark inside, but he could hear her crying. He stepped up to the glass, filled his frozen lungs with air, and blew.

Thin crystals of ice bloomed where his breath touched the glass, rippling and spreading until they covered the whole window. He knew he should return to his post in the yard. He'd already broken so many rules. The consequences for revealing himself like this would be grave indeed. But he couldn't bring himself to leave his girl alone yet. So he waited and watched, and hoped it would be enough.

This must be what it's like, he thought, to feel your own heart beat.

There was something different about the morning when the girl woke up. The light had a crisp, peculiar quality. She sat blinking for a few groggy moments, then looked at her window and gasped at the frosty patterns lit by the sun: a blanket of icy lace, blooms and swirls, a whole garden of snowflakes, and everywhere hearts, big one, little ones, all wreathed in ice. Almost as soon as she'd seen it, it was gone. Warmed by the sun's heat, the crystals turned back on themselves and retreated into nothing.

But the girl had seen, and she remembered her snowman. For the first time in a long while, she felt happy, and she did not see the pile of seemingly disconnected items lying outside her window in the snow: a couple of rocks, dead tree branches, a hat, an old scarf, pieces of a wilted cucumber, and in the center of it all, one half of a bright red apple.

Illustration by Janiel Miller

OohRah Goes My Heart

2012-02-03T05:00:00.003-07:00

February Challenge of the Month: A Little Love Story.

Never tell your girlfriend what you do for a living. Especially if it’s something dangerous like working explosives for the U.S. Marines. Can you say “Constant shrieking, whining, and nagging?” Like, what? I’m going to die or something? Not likely.

Okay, I didn’t actually tell her. She found out herself. I don’t know what I was thinking with this relationship. Kiarra came to me one night when I was working on some ordinance in a field at the Marine training facility on the coast. It was dangerous. She shouldn’t have been out there. In fact, I don’t know how she got around the dogs and electrical fence, not to mention the guards. But there she was, wandering through the field, picking her way around the pot-holes left behind by other trainees when they clipped the wrong wire. Sorry scumbags. I am the best. Nothing can touch me.

But it could touch her. I sort of freaked out when I saw her standing there looking at me, with her long pale hair blowing like there was a gale coming off the ocean. And there wasn’t.

I’d never seen anyone like her. And I had no idea what to do with this chick standing there in her nightie (“it’s a shift, not a nightgown!”) staring at me, hair blowing, eyes so blue they glowed like neon Freon in the moonlight. I had my hands all down in the wiring, so it wasn’t like I could cuff her, take her back to base, and let the Master Gunny deal with her.

Besides. She looked a little crazy.

Her eyes were red around the edges like she’d been crying. She stared at me, chin trembling. Then she whispered, “You’re dead.”

Well. If that ain’t a turn on, I don’t know what is.

Kiarra wasn’t threatening me. I knew that. I am the size of a giant redwood compared with her. And I am a master of my trade. Strong as an ox, able to leap tall buildings, that sort of thing. Naw. Nothing dangerous. Just your run-of-the-mill whackadoodle-doo that wanders onto the United States Marine Corps' Special Ordinance Disposal Training Grounds in the middle of the night, wearing a blowing nightgown and looking all hot.

I talked with her. She was majorly stressed. Been through some tough stuff. Seen a lot of people bite the big one in her life. Can’t imagine a life like that. I’m not the most feeling kind of guy, but I did my best. Told her if I die its all right by me. That calmed her down. But, I added, I’m the best the Marine’s have got. Nothing takes me out. Nothing.

She smiled and went all female and melty on me just as I snipped the last wire and diffused my little warhead. Kiarra reached out and began to drift toward me when she tripped on a clod of dirt and fell straight into the hole next to me. I tried to leap up to catch her, but my left leg fell off. Totally stinks, man. It usually doesn’t come off until after one or two explosions.

I sort of crawled across the dirt with my other leg and my one good arm, though, and got to her pretty okay. She cried. I comforted. I do know how to do that. Then she lifted her blood red lips and gave me a thank you kiss. I kissed her back. It was all right. My lips even managed to stay attached.

So yeah. Kiarra’s my girlfriend now. And it works. She still cries a lot, but what’s a banshee going to do when her boyfriend is a zombie? Girl's gotta shriek.

But I’m happy. I’ve got a great job, and a great gal. Valentine’s Day is coming up. This year, I think I’ll give her my heart.

A Valentine's Story

2012-02-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

February Challenge of the Month: A Valentine's Short Story

Warning: This story might just be true but I'll never say for sure

My ex-boyfriend used to call me his hood-girl. I loathed the phrase. Every time he uttered the words I was reminded of my lot in life, which must be why he didn't last long. No one wants to be reminded of what is lacking in their lives.

Whether the ex stuck around or not, he had a point. You cannot escape your past. I am and always will be the daughter of a loon. My parents divorced when I was eight. As a teenager, my father would pick me and brother's up for dinner. I always wanted to go to Denny's to see the hott server. Instead, my father would cook up a vat of SpagettiO's and we would eat in the parking lot of Albertson's. The chill of the snow was nothing compared to the chill in his station wagon.

I am what the ex said, a hood-girl.

There is a certain pride that comes when dealing with poverty. The more you struggle, the more you gain in confidence. You know that the worst will never faze you because the worst has already happened. And so, you venture out in the world ready for anything.

I can handle gunfire and death threats. I can even handle the hunger of wanting something more but I cannot handle him-- Zack. The obnoxiously hot guy who lives on the hill. His mansion is nestled between two large oak trees that have been around almost as much as his families money.

Zack wakes up in the morning and gazes out the window only to see a man-made waterfall and hundreds of tulips planted by his gardener. I wake up to the scenery of a brick wall and green trash cans. Our daily panorama is completely different but that doesn't matter. When we are together all we see is each other.

Every year we struggle with the same debate-how to handle Valentine's Day.

Zack was raised where the man brings flowers to their lover. I was raised where flowers are what you lay on the caskets of the dead.

A fancy dinner dance is out of the question because he can jig-it-out to all sorts of complicated dances, I cannot. I accidentally stamp on his feet with no rhythm whatsoever.

And so, we are caught in the middle of a tug of war between the privileged and the poor. Neither of us can understand the other. I am completely okay with not celebrating Valentine's day but Zack won't have it. Every year his family hosts a massive soiree at his mansion. After a week of constant debating, I nearly give up on the bloke. Strangely, Cupid throws a miracle our way. Zack begins to see the world through my eyes.

Valentine's Day could have been a nightmare but he saw things differently. He picked me up in his Cadillac. I tugged at my navy blue boots, wishing they were Prada, not Payless. I am nervous as all get up, until I see the pot of beef ravioli sitting between us. We pull into the local market, I smile up at him, realizing he has sacrificed more than his dignity to sit here with me.

The passerby's walk swiftly to get their groceries. They don't even notice us through the tinted windows. This is what I am used to, this is my world.

Zack hands me plate and dishes out a serving of ravioli. He smiles in a sexily sly sort of way and says, "I got you flowers and you didn't even know it."

"I don't smell any flowers," I said.

Zack ran his hands through his long brown hair, "They are in the ravioli-rose hip sauce, a family recipe."

There are no words to say as I munched on the divine dinner. We come from two different worlds, his Sunday dinner's are a formal affair. Mine are spent hoping that my drug addict Uncle doesn't burp mid-prayer.

I guess you can mesh two different worlds together.

I learned a valuable lesson that night with Zack. Your history doesn't define you. It mold's you into the person you are today. Cherish your past, so that you can cherish others.

California Redwoods in Middle Earth

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to see the giant California Redwood trees. I just never thought I'd get that chance in Rotorua, New Zealand instead of - you know - California.

Since this grove is still relatively young, the trees aren't exactly giants yet,
I mean as far as California Redwoods go.

Interspersed with some funky New Zealand tree-ferns
whose proper name I can't remember.

Having grown up in a desert, I'm always a little fascinated
with green things. We sure don't have moss like this where I live.

Someday, a loooong time from now, the Rotorua grove will look like
the one in this video. The trees may not be giants yet (relatively speaking),
but it was still pretty neat to witness the beginnings of something so great.

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Remember to check back Wednesday for our first February Challenge of the Month post
from Russo. We decided to try our hand at some Valentine's Day-themed short fiction.
Numerous paranormal love triangles to follow. Or not.

C'mon Hollywood. You Can Do Better Than That

2012-01-27T08:32:00.001-07:00

RANT ALERT.

I just read an article that says that Monday nights are television's most popular and most raunchy nights. And that it's gotten even more brain-in-the-gutter this season. Like, last week over the course of four of the networks most popular shows there were 53 sexual jokes, 9 flatulence/bodily function jokes, and 2 scenes with marijuana use.

Hollywood defends the shows saying they are highly rated and therefore clearly resonate with the audience.

Okay. I don't know how y'all feel about this but really? Carol Burnett used to resonate with the audience. Maverick, The Rockford Files, The Cosby Show, Mork and MIndy, and --forgive me--The Brady Bunch used to resonate with the audience. What changed?

If you read a lot of reviews or ratings snippets on movies nowadays, they will refer to the content being "Adult" or "For Mature Audiences."

Here's the thing. The last time I checked it didn't take much maturity to tell a dirty joke. Or look at a dirty picture. Or make farting noises with your armpit. It took a whole lot of pre-pubescence or sophomore-in-high-school-ness. No offense to sophomores-in-high-school.

This is what I think: if you if you walk down the street and come upon someone passed out on the ground, or making a scene, or wandering around half dressed, or (heaven forbid) getting in an accident, you're going to look, right? Stare, even. It's where the term "rubber-necking" came from. Because this stuff isn't normal in our day to day lives. It's unusual to see it. We, as individuals, normally have more discretion than to behave publicly in extreme ways because we respect each other too much. And when we see it we're oddly, understandably, fascinated.

So if Hollywood throws extreme behavior, conversation, or dress up on the screen, of course we're going to be curious. Of course some of us might even come back for more. We don't run into it anywhere else in our lives. Because normal descent people don't act like that. Why is Hollywood proud of themselves for pandering to the lowest common denominator? Isn't art supposed to elevate? And don't they always stand up at awards shows and talk about how everything they do is art?

Anyone can come up with sex jokes. Anyone can get up in front of other people and fart or burp. I wish Hollywood would go back to trying to elevate, work a little harder, and be genuinely funny. I miss laughing out loud.

Rant Over.

PS - Big Bang Theory. Brilliant writing. Hilarious. They veer off into the sophomoric more and more now, but clearly they don't need to. These guys know real comedy (pardon the Italian subtitles):

PPS - Here's a moment from The Cosby Show. The sound is a little off at the end, and the humor is from the '80's, but I miss this stuff. This clip is about men getting pregnant. And for those who still want edgy material, Theo is an unwed mother:

Live in the moment, Nastia Liukin

2012-01-25T05:21:00.002-07:00

Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, once said in Vogue Magazine, "When you're out there, you're not thinking about the big picture. You just have to live in the moment and enjoy it."

My friends, we are chasing a dream and the pursuit can be exhausting. Not just on our minds but also on our bodies. I am starting to think the way to really flourish is to learn from Miss Liukin-live in the moment.

Enjoy the ups but even more than that, cherish the downs. Yes, the moments of victory make the process seem worthwhile but the hard times are what strengthens our resolve. Enjoy the moment because something beautiful awaits you.

A Spin Around the Shire

2012-01-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

In New Zealand last fall, I got to visit Mt. Victoria, which stood in for parts of the outer Shire in the Lord of the Rings, specifically when the hobbits are chased by the Ringwraiths:

Stand back, Nazgul. I got this.

"Get off the road!" Frodo knows something's up.

I wasn't as worried as Frodo. More amused, maybe. It's hard not to look stoked when you're in New Zealand!

Time to duck and cover . . .

Except the actual tree is gone now, and there was nothing scarier than a spectral jogger on the road.

After all that excitement, I had to stop for a rest in the Frodo tree.

Yep, the very same tree.

What's this? Just a shortcut to some mushrooms.

View from Mt. Victoria. Would you believe Wellington is really just a stone's throw from Middle Earth?

Next stop: the Gardens of Isengard (really Harcourt Park)

I looked everywhere, but there were no wizards to be found! Maybe they were hiding.

My guide Wendell kept a stash of wizard's staffs for tour groups in the bushes nearby. So here I am in the Gardens of Isengard with my very own wizard's staff. Oh yeah. I'm totally legit.

Winter Tree and Granola. My Friday Gift To You.

2012-01-20T05:00:00.001-07:00

It's been a lonnnngggg week. Weeks. I need peace. Do you? Ah, I thought you might. Here is my peace offering to you: a tour of my winter decorations! Yes, yes I know. Just what you've always wanted. Well, you are WELCOME.

Thank you for bearing with me. I might need therapy, and you are far less expensive than Dr. Forehead. And nicer. I am seriously pushing the Christmas line with my decor, but I don't care. In a winter of no snow, which totally stinks, I have the right to push Christmas out as far as I want. And so do you. Except I'm not. I'm pushing snowmen. And icicles. And greenery. And lights. And forest trees. Forest, not Christmas. And I'm also pushing granola. My favorite recipe for which follows the pictures.

And just to be a nice guy, and to prove I'm only pushing the peace of winter, I shall also include a wonderful non-Christmas song that you can play as you browse the pictures and read through the recipe. I hope you can sit back, close your eyes (except when you're looking at my post), and just float away for a while. Peace to you all, my friends.
(This song is in Irish. Then English. It's from my trip to Ireland. Which was massively peaceful.)

The fireplace: de-Santa'ed, de-Nutcracker'ed, de-Stockinged. Icicles on the Stocking hangers. Red glass tree to represent St. Valentine (don't say anything). And a happy little forest tree. And forest candles. And forest lights. *sigh*

My husband's old skates. From when he was twelve. He used to flood the horse pasture between his house and his grandparent's in the winter. It could get down to 60-below at times, so it didn't take long to make an ice rink. He'd skate it on these.

We once had freezing rains in Germany that robed everything in 3-4 inches of ice. I had white skates just like these, except, you know, white. My brother and I skated around the block, over and over again. The Germans watched us crazy Americans from their windows. Which were frozen shut. *double sigh*

My snowmen. People have given these to me over the years. Including that snowman runner. It's a collection I never actually started. I love it. It reminds me of lovely people.

A picture from my sister-in-law. I love lights in winter and put them everywhere. You may have noticed. The Presidents noticed. Look at them up there smiling. We love our country. We also love poor starving artists who go door to door hawking their paintings so they can pay for their new baby. And we hang what we purchase on our wall so we don't forget to send good vibes to the artist and his family.

The glitter tree! Yay! I love this the most. My family hates it because they all have inner-ear issues and can't not get caught on the tree whenever they walk by. I don't have this problem. There is plenty of room. My family claims the tree grabs them. This year I put the tree on the coffee table. If my kids get caught on it this time it means they've flung themselves at it and I am taking them for therapy with Dr. Forehead.

Glitter tree on table with lights (surprise!) and hubby-skates. Fireplace to right. Snowless yard to left.

Glitter-tree again because I love it. It was supposed to cost $125. I had been looking everywhere for a glitter tree--which I'd never heard of and totally made up in my head--so when I found it I thought it was a sign from God that I needed a glitter tree. But I didn't have no $125. Then the lady in the store noticed this particular tree had a severe lean (obvious in picture above this one). So she gave it to me for $23. Yep. Twenty-three smackers.

It was meant to be.

And now, Toasty Oasty Granola. A la my lovely friend Alyce

Mix together:

1 cup slivered (or chopped) almonds

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup cashews

1/2 cup coconut

3 cups oatmeal (old fashioned)

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup agave (or 1/4 cup oil, 1/4 cup brown sugar)

1 tsp cinnamon

1-2 tsp vanilla

--Bake 300-325 (fahrenheit) for 20 minutes on cookie sheet. Can stir half way through. I do. Let set on a sheet. Will be moist. If you like your granola crunchy cook it 5-10 minutes longer, stirring in half way through. If you want craisins in it (I do), throw them in after it has baked. After. If you bake the craisins they will morph into nasty bitter little erasers and you will be traumatized.

This is FABulous stirred into yogurt. Especially Greek honey yogurt.

Yummm.

Sigh.

Happy Friday!

Laurie Anne Gibson & fighting for your dream

2012-01-18T05:23:00.002-07:00

Lemme be honest, 2012 has not gone my way yet. For the past three weeks, I have been in a NyQuil induced haze. Yep, being sick is no fun at all but resting does have its advantages when chasing a dream.

It allows you some time to regroup and refocus. After battling sickness, you see things more clearly, like what is important and what needs to go. You cherish your health, you fight for it.
And that fighting spirit is your most important tool when chasing a dream.

Laurie Anne Gibson, former choreographer for Lady Gaga said it best, "To me, dance is a fight. It's about passion, heart and the ability to find hope in the smallest crack. The freedom to be who you born to be."

There's Nothing Like a Real Book

2012-01-16T08:00:00.001-07:00

Got Fear? Break Out the Sling-Shot.

2012-01-13T05:00:00.003-07:00

You know that saying, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back its yours. If not, it never was"? Yeah, it's lovely. And probably true. But flip it around and make the thing you're releasing Fear, and see if it still ain't isn't true: "If you fear something, set it free. If it comes back its yours (to deal with). If not, it never was (so stop freaking out about it)."

Russo's post yesterday about fear got me thinking. I've been struggling with this a LOT lately. And fear does pretty much stop you in your tracks, just as Russ said. Which totally stinks. Because if it gets out of control--i.e., gets you in a half-nelson--it wrecks all the things you love doing, not just the things you don't.

But I wonder how much of what I fear is actually real? And if I were able to set it free instead of holding onto it like a life-preserver, would the stuff that stops me just float away? I kind of think so.

Lately, this has been me, writing my book:

And I'm so, SO tired of it. I've rewritten the front end of my book over and over again for almost 4 years, thinking that I've got to get it perfect, or I can't write the rest of the story.

Then a dear friend of mine *cough*Robin*cough* asked if I might be in perpetual opening-chapters-rewrite because I'm terrified to write the rest of the book. WELL, Miss SmartyKeyboard! I think I know more about my writing psyche than you do. You live clear across the country from me. What do you think you have, objectivity or something? I can write this book! I can write it any time I want. I just don't feel like it right now, a'ight? I just need . . . I just . . . I . . . er . . .

Yeah. That was it. I was hanging on to my front-end for dear life. (Is it just me, or did that sound wrong?) And it was symbolic of a whole lot of other things I live with too.

So, I decided that enough was enough. I had one nerve left, and fear was getting on it. So here's what I did. (Hope it sticks) I asked myself what I thought was going to happen if I started writing the rest of the book and found out I couldn't do it. And I answered,

-Well, I'd be a failure.

-Then I said, trying not to roll my eyes, really? A failure because you tried something and it didn't work out?

-Well, I answered, no-ooo. I guess not. I'd be more of a failure if I never tried at all.

-Very good, I said in reply. Then I asked myself, What if you write the rest of the book and it stinketh? Like the proverbial Limburger?

-After I uncurled myself from the fetal position I replied, People would think I was really pathetic.

-Which People, I asked myself.

-Oh, you know, People. I said, and got myself a drink because this fear thing is really thirsty-making.

-So, I said, not actual people then. Just People you imagine are out there judging you.

-Yep, I said, with just a touch of defiance.

-"Self." I said to myself. "Has it ever occurred to you that most People are scared of the same thing, and even if they do judge you, you're not going to fall into a hole in the earth and everyone who actually does love you isn't going to shovel the dirt in after you? They'll still be there. They'll still love you. And they'll admire you for trying."

-Oh. I see.

-Then I added for good measure, "Also, you need to throw the fears up in the air and run away, instead of trying to stamp them down and keep them in control. Stamping them down means they are still under your feet, which means they can still tap you on the ankle and harass you. Slingshot them up to the sky or the universe or whatever, and walk away. They won't come back. So they won't be yours anymore."

I'm trying this. So far its working. I'm not writing my book for the mysterious People anymore. I'm writing it to see if I can do it. And also for my nieces who have been nagging me for two years to get it done so they can finish reading it. Bless their fuzzy hearts. :)

Now all that's left for me to do is find a therapist and see what I can do about this talking to myself-thing. It's starting to freak us out.

-Like totally.

What to do when fear holds you back

2012-01-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

Dominique Moceanu, an American gymnast, once said, "If you feel fear, you will not be able to achieve your best." I dunno know about you but fear hits me at the oddest times. When it comes to my own dream, one minute I am fine and the next, I am a basket of nerves.

My dear friends, we cannot afford to allow fear to squeeze a way into our lives. This dream is yours for a reason. You know what motivates you and you also know what holds you back. The only way you are going to achieve your dream is to hold tight to what drives you forward.

Yes, fear can be ever-present when chasing your hearts desire. Do not fear the unknown. The fact of the matter is-you are stronger than your fear. Never forget that truth.

Sheldon and Me

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've recently discovered The Big Bang Theory. In the few months since it's been on my radar, it's become my new favorite thing, ever. For those of you who aren't familiar with the show, it's about four socially inept scientists who form a friendship with a cute waitress/struggling actress. One of the scientists is a neurotic, self-absorbed, too-smart-for-his-own-good physicist named Sheldon.

Sheldon is my favorite character.

He says the things we'd all like to say but never do because our social sensibilities tell us not to. Despite his many issues (or maybe because of them), there's something childlike and oddly endearing about him. More than that, I think I like Sheldon because I identify with him a little.

Now I'm no physicist, and I sure hope I don't come off as a high maintenance know-it-all (I'll take the oddly endearing, though). You see, Sheldon can be a bit obsessive. He tends to fixate on certain things. Like when he gets stuck on a scientific problem. Or how he can't stand it when someone doesn't answer their phone. Or the time he thought his neighbor's recycled chair was infested with bugs.

See what I mean? He just can't let stuff go.

Writing is a lot like this for me. I get to a certain point and then I can't go any farther because I get hung up on something stupid like, "This sentence bugs me. Why can't I find the right adverb to describe exactly how he picks up that pencil?" or "Gah! This scene isn't turning out at all like that perfect vision in my head," or "But I don't know all the details of this character's back story! How can I know what she'll do in this situation until I figure out whether she liked to eat Froot Loops or Cocoa Puffs for breakfast when she was ten? Oh mighty Muse, WHAT DO I DO?! WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?"

Little stuff like that. I know it's crazy. I know first drafts are supposed to be full of mistakes and I can always go back and fix everything later. But like poor Sheldon, I have a hard time letting stuff go.

I think a little bit of obsessiveness is good for a writer. How else do you get the gumption to slog from that first spark of an idea all the way through the Miserable Middles to the ~~bitter~~ happy end? The trick is to find a healthy balance. I just hope I figure out how to do that before I end up like THIS. Janiel and Russo have my back, but it'd still be way embarrassing if they had to come fish me out of a ball pit in the middle of the night.

What about you? Are there any fictional characters who remind you of yourself in one way or another?

Dream Big, Baby!

2012-01-06T07:27:00.003-07:00

January Challenge: Fantasy Goals for 2012

If I could do anything in the world during 2012 it would be to set and keep goals. I'm like my fellow gnomies: I don't do the whole New Year's Resolution thing. Partly because I know I'll get psychotically ambitious and set three thousand goals, none of which I'll keep. I'm like all those people at the gym who suddenly start exercising at the beginning of the year because the holidays packed it on ("it" being cheesecake, brownies, fudge, toffee, and shortbread. Shortbread should die. It is evil), and they desperately want to pack it off. So they go faithfully for a month, and you can't find a treadmill or an eliptical trainer, or a stair machine or a stationary bike. And then literally at week five, BAM. Everything is free again.

That's me.

I get all fired up and determined, set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. and rush out the door in a flurry of technical clothing and running shoes, and slam into all of my New Year's goals hard and fast. For a month. Then it's over. So I don't do it that way anymore. Now I take things as they rear their heads and I feel much better about it. (Although I'm still trying to hit the gym in the mornings. I got things heading south on my body that need to at least be stopped in their tracks for awhile.)

BUT, if I could make it all happen in 2012? Here's what I'd do:

1. Qualify for the Boston Marathon by having run the St. George last October (It's a Boston qualifying run. Also, I believe in ex post facto laws when it comes to goals.) Then go to Boston in April and run the thing, taking a victory lap down Boylston Street with thousands of people screaming me on because if an old lady like me can do it, they can do it. And now they're inspired. (Do you see why I don't set goals?)

2. Spend a month in the British Isles. Have my family join me at week three. Maybe two. They're pretty cool. Then take everyone back at Christmas and have a Dickensian experience. With Wills and Kate.

3. Be able to pay my bills without having a panic attack.

4. Learn to love running. HAAAAAAhahahahahaha! *sniff* Okay. Learn to like it. HAH! Okay. Learn to do it everyday without stopping every tenth of a mile.

5. Become so organized and Feng Shui'ed that when someone walks into my house they achieve Nervana.

6. And one last little goal-lette: Chillax. Seriously. Become a river of peace. That and become famous.

Dreaming is good, right? :) And I think if we're going out there and putting good into the universe, the universe will put some good back into us. So dream big, do good, and be grateful. That's my real mantra for 2012.

Have a lovely year, my friendly peeps!

World peace and Ugg boots

2012-01-04T05:23:00.001-07:00

January Challenge: Fantasy goals for 2012

I'll be the first to admit, I don't really do New Years resolutions. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my goal in seventh grade was to smooch Tom Cruise and well, that never happened.

Now, before you cringe lemme note that this wasn't the crazy-pants Tom Cruise of our day and age. Do you remember when Mr. Cruise was in Top Gun and he seemed normal and HOTT? I know, 'tis but a distant memory. Anyways, on to my fantasy goal.

For 2012, I would like to become Pippa and Kate Middleton's long lost sister. Yep, wouldn't the Royals gasp when I came dressed to Buckingham Palace in my leather leggings and studded Ugg boots?

I would like the Queen to note my wacked out sense of style and say, "Ugg boots for all."

After a scrumptious supper of pork and cupcakes, Prince William, Prince Harry and I would then go on a massive shopping trip. The goal? Snag the whole world some studded Ugg boots. No one and I mean no one, would be left out.

Ugg boots would be delivered to the likes of evil doers, basketball players, civilians and military personal. And then something strange would happen- the world would become peaceful. All because of a pair of Ugg boots.

Yep, that's my goal for 2012. Make the world peaceful with the help of the Royal family and shoes.

But if I can't bring about world peace, maybe I will take a 6 month hiatus from life and become a Navy Seal. Surrounded by HOTT men, guns and mud. I'm so there.

Devil, Thy Name is New Year's Resolution

2012-01-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

January Challenge: Fantasy Goals for 2012

It's traditional to start off a new year with "resolutions." You know, that thing where you make a goal you're going to accomplish sometime before the next Dec. 31st. It tends to be something big and lofty and you start off feeling all hopeful and motivated and stuff. Then sometime in March you realize, "Eh. I tried, but I have other things to worry about, like catching up on all those Downton Abbey episodes."

Well, forget that. How many people actually keep their New Year's resolutions? Is it really that many? And am I starting to sound bitter? I'm starting to sound bitter. But that's only because I don't believe in making resolutions since I never keep them. (Or do I never keep them because I don't believe in making them? Tricky, that.)

Don't get me wrong. If you're one of those people who makes resolutions and manages to keep them every year, I bow in your general direction. Personally, I lean more towards the Do Your Best Each Day and Worry About Tomorrow When It Gets Here school of thought.

That said, my Gnomies and I thought it would be fun to make a list of "Fantasy Resolutions," awesome stuff that could maybe come to pass this year. But if not, that's cool too. It's not the end of the world or anything. So here's what I came up with, the things I'd accomplish this year if I had an infinite supply of time/funds/patience/motivation/discipline/chocolate:

1. Learn to cook (HAHAHAHAHA! *Sniff* Oh my, we are off to a rocky start, aren't we?)

2. Go back to New Zealand, except this time, I'd catch an actual Hobbit. Or an elf. No, a RANGER! Yeah, that's it. I'd catch a Ranger for sure.

3. Finish the first draft of my book. You know, that book that won't leave me alone until I finish it.

4. Attend a live taping of my new favorite show, The Big Bang Theory. You know what? Scratch that. These are fantasy goals, after all. I don't want to be in the studio audience, I want to be on the show! I'm pretty nerdy. I took physics ~~against my will~~ in college. I'd fit right in with those guys.

5. Take up gardening (i.e. not kill every plant I ever try to take care of).

What are your goals for this year, fantasy or otherwise?

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T03:33:00.001-07:00

Maegan, Janiel and I hope every one of you have a thrilling New Year. 2012, baby!

Something beautiful awaits you this year, can you see it? Your dream is just on the horizon and it's waiting for you.

I Am Suffering . . .

2011-12-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

. . . from post-Christmas-mortem.

My decorations that once looked festive, cheery, and quixotic, now look drab and jejune. (Do you know why I know that word? Jejune? Because I have been lying around watching Frasier reruns instead of doing all the organizational things I was going to do over the holidays. And instead of skiing, because it is freaking raining in the mountains. And because I just feel like it.) (Jejune means dull and insipid, if you must know. And even if you mustn't.)

All that food on my counter from my lovely neighbors that once looked exciting and thrilling (the food, not the neighbors. Although most of my neighbors do look exciting and thrilling. Not to be weird, but you know, sometimes people just look exciting and thrill . . . oh, never mind) now just looks old and fattening (once again, the food, not the neighbors.)

Weird how that happens, isn't it? Leading up to an event, everything that surrounds it seems wondrous and bright. But once it's over? Eh.

So what to do?

Well, I'm going to put up a gold glitter tree after I take down my good-for-kindling-Christmas-tree. I will hang it with icicles and call it my January Tree.

I'm going to have my kids make snowflakes and hang them all over the mantle. Along with whatever I can find that looks all crystal-y at our local crafts store that is going out of business and now everything is 70% off. (Which gives me an odd feeling-mix of sadness and I-FOUND-A-DEAL joy).

I am going to eat a lot of salads containing winter fruit for lunch. And I'm making a giant garbage bag-sized load of homemade granola, with pecans, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, brown sugar, and cinnamon in it for us to eat at breakfast.

Then I'm going to write each day. And read each day. And hug my people each day.

I don't know why this stuff makes me feel better. It just does. Possibly because my house needs the cheer and the smells of something festive in winter. And without Christmas, I've gotta make up some lovely January traditions instead. These are the start of mine.

Oh, I can't stand it! I have to take just one last nostalgic look (with a bow to Maegan for putting me back onto Big Bang Theory):

Awww. Now I feel all festive again!

Happy New Year, peeps!

Embrace the Suck

2011-12-28T05:16:00.001-07:00

Sometimes life just doesn't go our way. On Christmas day I came down with a nasty cold and lemme tell you, I am not good with sick. I blow my nose like a moose in mating season.

As I sniffled through the Muppet's Christmas Carol my step dad, who was once in the military, whispered in my ear, "Sometimes you have to embrace the suck."

I had never heard that military slogan before and all night I kept thinking of it's meaning. My dear friends, some day's are not going to go our way. The battle toward our dream is a hard but rewarding fight. While there are beautiful moments that recharge our drive there are also going to be rough days.

Maybe we should start thinking like the men and woman in the armed forces.
They are strong and brave. These warriors know how to embrace the suck. And they are better for it. Let's keep going, keep moving. Let's fight for our dream.

Make Someone Happy

2011-12-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

Have y'all seen "Arthur Christmas" yet? We here at Challenging the Gnome are big fans, but we're biased, since we were already big fans of James McAvoy (who plays Arthur) and Bill Nighy (who's the voice of Grandsanta). Christmas may be over, if you want to get technical about it, but in my mind, the holidays aren't done with until January 2nd.

If you're anything like me, you're still recovering from your sticky toffee pudding and chocolate-induced sugar coma. Here's a happy song to help you along, which, when I think about it, kinda sums up the goal of this blog: If we can make just one person happy, we're happy too!

Wishing you a Happy Day After Christmas and a Joyous Week Leading Up to the New Year!

Happy Holidays

2011-12-25T01:28:00.001-07:00

All of us here at Challenging the Gnome wish you a safe and Merry Christmas.

May you have loads of eggnog, yummy food and dear people surrounding you.

We are grateful to have you as friends.

Tour de Tree - Welcome to My Evergreen

2011-12-23T05:00:00.002-07:00

This is my Christmas tree for 2011:

Kinda looks like an A.D.D. elf threw up on it.

I have several friends with impeccable taste whose trees look like they could be department store window displays. They're gorgeous. And organized. And Feng Shui'ed.

Mine is not.

But, what I like about mine, despite its unorganized elf-vomit-ness, is that it is unique. And it represents my family.

Would you like a tour?

I hope so. Because otherwise I just wasted a whole lot of space on my iPhone

Dear People: Voilá, Le Tour de Tree de Famille Miller! I'll try to keep it short.

Fasten your eyes upon that angel-topper. It's the only domestic thing I've ever done in my life. It took me four hours to make. It took my friends 1. I had a headache all the way down to my ankles by the end of it all. I carry it with me everywhere I go.

This little dude is from Germany. I bought him there myself when I was a mere 24 years old. It was the second time I'd been there. I was retrieving my brother from a 2-year stint in Austria, and we detoured to our former German stomping grounds near Kaiserslautern. I bought the little archer (who appears to be eating his bow) at a store called "Harry's" that catered to Americans.

That wasn't short. I promised to make this short. I'll do better.

Homemade by my kid. A billion years ago when she was in elementary school. I heart it.

Another homemade-by-my-kid there in the background. I have two of those glittery paper-plate doves. I like to tuck them into big empty spaces.

The chimney sweep is one of the first ornaments our family bought when we moved to Germany in 1975. I loved his tiny-ness. The stars are one of the first I bought when I married and settled in the Rockies. I loved their hangy-ness.

Cute little angel riding a deer delivering a tree. Another from 1975. It's very petite.

The fan is from my sister, who felt sorry for my lack of Christmas decorations when I first married, and made me some cute ornaments. She's the artistic one. She'd have made the angel-topper in 15 minutes flat. With a 5 minute break in the middle.

This is still not short.

My little bro just sent me this plaid fisherman. It's a Steinbach, from Germany. All these little red-nosed guys are Steinbach. I hearty-heart-heart Steinbach.

I have a series of these little flat angels on the tree. They were the second set of ornaments my mom bought for our first European Christmas, lo those many years ago.

That gorgeous Waterford Crystal tree in the background was given to me by my best childhood friend shortly after I married. (Hey, Cappy!)

Hand-melted glass nativity. I think we bought it at the Christkindelsmarkt in Nuremberg. We always hang it near a light so it will glow. My 2nd daughter-child insists.

One of the Three Kings. I have two of him, one of the other, and none of the last. Wha?

Love this guy. He's from East Germany. I think. Might have been Romania. I was a kid. What do I know? I love how the wood is stained rather than painted up.

Candy Cane Santa is one of the first ornaments I bought after having my 3rd child (I accidentally typed "34th child." Sometimes I think that's true.) Note the king in the background. He and another king were also bought at the Christkindelsmarkt. We only have two. Someday I'll tell you why my sister only bought two. Someday. Note the blob of glue on his hand where his gift should be. Breaks off every year. This year he's giving a blob of glue, because I'm tired of fixing it.

This is my oldest girl-child when she was just a few days old. Notice her wicked awesome eyebrows. She still has those. Also her freaking scalp-load of hair. Still has that too. My step-father ran out and had this made at K-Mart right after I gave birth to her. She's pretty cool. So is my step-father.

Original art by the wife of my son's former percussion teacher. Her name is Lynde Mott, and she is brilliant. Her house is a work of art. Her porch is a work of art. Someday I'll hire her to paint some of my walls. When I'm rich. Next Friday. (I have goals.)

Original art by my kid. Its a matched set. And I think it is really cool. We got us some future famous pasta artists in our house. They already do my walls.

Germany juxtaposed with the Wild West.

See the other Pasta Tree in the upper left corner? Told you it was a matched set. There's also a little popsicle-stick Santa one of my kidlets made on the right.

But the real focus here is the origami crane. My fabulously talented and lovely friend Robin (of Rurification) made it. She sends me a new one every year. They're all on my tree. It's totally cool.

Aw. This brings a tear to my eye. I bought this about 5 months after we moved to our village of Katzenbach. I was 10 years old. I remember taking my meager money, gathering up my courage and my older sister, and walking to the next village (Hutchenhausen) to a toy store. There I found some little pinecone angels and walnut Santas. I bought them. I think they cost 3 or 4 Deutschmarks all together. (So like, $1.50 or $2.00) *weep*

Robin of Rurification Alert! Yep. She made me a set of gorgeous little stuffed hearts when we were just about to move away from Indiana at the end of graduate school. I love them. Also note the flat angel, and the German mushroom, and the American Santa that looks like it is sinking into Quick-Fir-Tree-Sand. Yep. No pattern at all to my decorating.

Are you sick of this yet? German dude on the left, Rocky Mountain dude on the right. Costco icicle in the middle. Beads from Idon'trememberwhere in the back.

Rrrrright! Wee li'tle Santa grippin' a tree and a wooden thingy. Bein' watched over by a Scottish Clothespin Reindeer made by a kid. Probably mine. They have them near Glasgow, don't you know. Clothespin Reindeer, not my kid. I made that up.

Second King in the series of two.

Hahahaha! Funny memory. At least to me. This one is from Florida. My hub and I were with our fabu friends, the Macfarlanes. We had left the Rockies for graduate school in Indiana. We hadn't seen the Macs in ages. So, we met in Florida for the new year, and partayed hartay. One day we found a Mall. I mean a MALL! WE'D NEVER SEEN A MALL BEFORE! And it had bookstores and Christmas stores! AND EVERYTHING! So we spent a million dollars on books SO WE COULD BRING THEM HOME AND, SAINTS BE PRAISED, READ! And then we bought ornaments. I bought a series of Terra Cotta St. Nicks.

(So. It's possible that we were high on friendship and giddy on being young, in love, and on our own, and we went overboard on the shopping-thing. I don't know why we thought it was such an amazing thing to find a mall in Florida.)

Are you still with me? Because I would totally understand if you weren't. I'd be hurt, but I'd understand. This is the last ornament. Well, the last one I took a picture of. Mostly because dinner was done, and I'm so a.d.d. that I put down the phone, then lost it because I couldn't' remember where I put it, and then I didn't feel like taking any more pictures. Aren't you lucky?

This is a German Christmas Witch.

I don't know why.

She just is.

And she's adorable. Love her and her little crow. She probably brings good luck.

See? It works! I'm lucky that you're still reading this thing!

Well. Thank you for being here. And I hope you, and yours, and your tree, will have a lovely, marvelous, happy holiday this year.

Merry Christmas!

Never forget, you are gifted beyond measure

2011-12-21T05:13:00.002-07:00

When I think of all my friends, I am amazed. Some are writers who are honest with their thoughts and make people laugh, others are great with nature and some can write a review for a romance novel that makes me get on Amazon pronto. And if you wondered if I'm chatting about you, chances are I am.

My friends, each and every one of you have been gifted beyond measure. You have an extraordinary talent and it's remarkable.

I do not know about you but there are moments that I wonder why I have been given a certain set of problems. I see where my road has lead me. I shared a room with my mom until the age of 12. We are tight. I have a father who I wish I got along with and yes, I'll be the first to admit, I am a recovering pill popping addict-10 years and 4 months sober.

The fact of the matter is- our struggles make us, well, us.

Everything that you have been through is not in vain. You have learned a lesson and in turn that lesson feeds your talent. Cherish your struggles because they make you stronger.

Yes, Virginia

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Christmas has always been synonymous with magic for me. Santa Claus was my first taste of believing in something bigger and better than the world I could see around me. I never wondered too much about how he managed to get the job done. He got the job done because of the magic. That was good enough for me when I was five and it's good enough for me now.

I know there aren't many who haven't read or at least heard of "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," but since it's almost Christmas, and since it's easier than ever to be affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age, I think I'd like to share it here again. This essay is best read aloud, but it's up to you. Don't be shy about substituting any name at all for "Virginia" - your children's, or even your own. I won't tell. The author, Francis P. Church, wasn't only answering the little girl who wrote to THE SUN. He was writing to anyone who needed a reminder that the "most real things in the world are those that neither men nor children can see." (Check out the original link here.)
"Dear Editor,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET"

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virgina, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

Batman and Writing. It All Works Out In The End. Pretty Much.

2011-12-16T05:00:00.006-07:00

Hey.
I've been working on my book for, like, ever now. And not to whine, but, *whine* I thought it would be easier than this. *end whine* I mean does anyone appreciate, when they pick up a little paperback to throw away a weekend on (er, but since I'm a writer I know that that sentence should actually be structured such that it doesn't end on a preposition. Like this: "when they pick up a little paperback upon which to throw away a weekend." This is why I will be published soon), what it took to write the thing?

Well, I'll tell you so you know, if you don't already: It took blood. Sweat. Tears. 87 metric tons of chocolate dipped oreos with little peppermint sprinkles, $5,000 in therapy, a new wardrobe (oh it's necessary, trust me), a new laptop because the first one slipped in the diet coke puddle on your desk falling almost to the floor where you instinctively reached to grab it but ended up batting it through the window onto the garden flagstones instead, a gym membership (which has nothing to do with the chocolate dipped oreos), physical therapy for writer's elbow, and a pair of new prescription glasses. Also a new wardrobe. Can't emphasize that one enough.

That's what it took.

Yet half the time what the writer started out to write was not what they ended up with. You know, you had this vision, right? And it was golden! It was going to be beautiful. So you wrote and wrote, and instead of coming off like a superhero, what you got was, well . . . something like this:

Yep. Something that was a bit dorkier and chubbier than you had hoped for. And several times it even tried to slink away and turn into something else when you weren't looking. But you sighed and turned away to do a little self-talk, a little "hey, I'm doing the best I can. And it's not too bad. I mean, it gets the job done, right?" And then you kept going.

I suppose it's all about the process anyway. What we learn along the way.

Which is a good thing. Because most of the time when I get things right, I don't even know why. I just know it ended up being okay. Kind of like . . .

Yeah. There's hope for us all.

Keep going, keep climbing

2011-12-14T05:00:00.001-07:00

Some days just don't go as planned. I wanted to jet my lil toukus over to my writing group on Thursday. After spilling soda all over my white lacy dress, I get a phone call from someone dear to me. This year has been a struggle for him, he is losing his eye sight.

So , instead of doing what I want, I pop a U-turn, get cussed at from a HOTT driver in a grey truck and trek on over to my friend's house. He needs a shoulder to lean on, I am there.

My friends, we are in the fight for our dream. It's a long, hard battle but the fact of the matter is- we have people in our lives who need us. Sometimes we have to forgo our needs for theirs. And that's okay because being a pillar of strength to someone can refresh and inspire you for your own dream.

Drumroll, Please

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

The lights are my favorite part of this season. There's something kind of magical about them. I spent the weekend in full Christmas Vacation mode, covering every feasible surface in my house with Christmas lights.

The Christmas tree(s).

The mantle.

The gnome shrubbery in the den. (Can you spot the Gnome?)

The palm-tree shrubbery in the front room.

Harry Potter (the cat, not the boy wizard).

The Divine Miss Q (we'll see if she ever writes another guest post after this).

And, in a move that would make Russo (not to mention Clark Griswold) proud, I twisted my ankle stepping down off my window seat when I was hanging lights in my bedroom window. Not to worry, we had plenty of ace bandages in an appropriately festive color.

Yep, it's a dangerous business, stringing Christmas lights. But someone has to do it.

P.S. Have you checked out our latest guest post? Scroll down to last Friday to read about author Jennifer Beckstrand's journey to publication. I especially liked the part where she talks about taking fourteen years to write her first novel. Maybe there's hope for me yet - I'm only going on three!

Guest Blogger: Jennifer Beckstrand - Author of Amish Romance, "Kate's Song"

2011-12-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dudes! Did you know there is an entire Amish Romance genre out there waiting to be read? I did not. But my friend Jennifer Beckstrand does. And she has written a wonderful Amish Romance series, the first of which will be published in Spring 2012. I've asked her about her journey to publication, and she was kind enough to respond. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: JENNIFER BECKSTRAND!

You know how about four kids into your life you suffer from chronic insomnia because you can’t stop wondering what you forgot to do that day—like hug your child or go to the bathroom?

That is basically how I started my writing career. One night, a few months after the birth of my fourth daughter, I lingered on my pillow unable to sleep and decided to make up a story. A romantic story, because, really, it’s the only kind worth reading. My story had a sinewy hero and a very nice looking heroine and I liked it quite a bit. I started looking forward to bedtime (technically this is not true—I have always looked forward to bedtime) so I could further explore my Western romance in the still of the night.

One day, I decided to put the story on paper and fourteen years later, I had a 130,000-word Western historical romance, Rachel’s Angel, which won best novel in the League of Utah Writers Contest (2008) and first place in the Inspirational category at the Utah Romance Writers Conference (2009). A beautiful woman and her brother appear on the CW ranch with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the marks of violence on their faces. Despite his misgivings the foreman takes them in and trips off a chain of events that will change their lives forever. I love it, and hopefully, someday it will be read by the masses.

One agent wasn’t interested in my book because she said it wasn’t “steamy” enough (okay, not steamy at all). Another agent judged my manuscript in a contest, and I could tell without her having to spell it out for me that she hated my story with a white-hot passion. Oh, well. The first thing all aspiring writers must make peace with is that not everyone is going to like their work. This is a very difficult and painful realization.

Finally, Mary Sue Seymour of The Seymour Agency showed some interest. After looking at my manuscript for several months, she emailed me and asked me to call her. Note: If an agent asks you to call her, this is usually a very, very good thing. She said she thought I was a good writer but that Western romances weren’t selling well. Was I interested in writing an inspirational? She wanted me to try my hand at writing an Amish romance—a huge category in the Christian fiction market right now.

Amish? I knew nothing about Amish except they rode around in buggies and wore little white hats. “That’s what research is for,” Mary Sue said.

When an agent requests that you write something, in most cases, you do not in a million years decline the offer. I decided to go with an entirely different story than my Western, and acquired several published Amish romances to get feel for the category. Beverly Lewis is a must for any Amish romance reader. She is a wonderful writer and has an amazing grasp of the culture. I also read some Beth Wiseman, Cindy Woodsmall, and Shelly Shepard Gray. I loved Cindy Woodsmall’s “Sisters of the Quilt” series. Very sad and very romantic.

I was understandably anxious writing about an unfamiliar culture but felt confident that since I love romance and a good story, I could come up with both in this unusual setting. I sent out a call for help and my relatives showered me with suggestions and plot ideas. My older sister, Allison, who is a Phd., was and is a great help to me. She points out my lapses in logic, which, unfortunately, happen frequently.

Ideas don’t come easily to me, but I have found that if I ponder and think and contemplate and stew, my muse will wake up and a great plot or character will speak out. But I have to spend the time. This is hard since I am task oriented to the extreme. Luckily, it is not too hard to ruminate while puffing on the treadmill or running a vacuum over my carpet or taking a shower. I am notorious for long, indulgent showers. They are my guilty pleasure. I do my best thinking in there.

After reading lots of fiction and even more non-fiction, ideas germinated, characters demanded my attention, and storylines popped into my head like dandelions. Some had to be plucked, others I gleaned. Along the way, I came to a deep appreciation and affection for the Amish people and their simple, humble way of life.

Any story worth its salt is going to have conflict at its heart. I can’t remember who said that a story doesn’t begin until something bad happens. This is a challenge when writing Amish fiction because the people are so nice. A divorce in the family peppers a story with instant conflict, but the Amish do not divorce. A school bully creates tension, but Amish children are taught to treat others with charity.

For Kate’s Song I evaluated what kinds of conflicts the Amish would struggle with. Since my daughters are singers, I thought of how heart-rending it would be if they had to give up music because their faith required it. The Amish do group singing, but baptized members reject solo singing and the playing of musical instruments. As my story begins, Kate, an Amish girl, has left her community to pursue a singing career. One summer she returns home to decide how God would have her use her voice. Should she leave her community for the glamour of the opera or be baptized and silence her unique talent forever?

Six weeks after my life-altering visit with Mary Sue, I sent her three synopses along with the first fifty pages of Kate’s Song. Soon thereafter, ON MY BIRTHDAY, Mary Sue called with an offer to represent me—and a charge to “hurry and finish that book.”

I am a hopelessly poky writer. I interrupt myself and go back and reread and edit and sit for minutes at a time trying to construct the perfect sentence. And then there is my personal commitment to my family. So, the kids would leave for school and the frantic writing would begin until the bus dropped them off down the street. I have it easier than some. My youngest is now fourteen. Writing with young ones at home would be virtually impossible for me. Thus the fourteen years it took to write my first book.

Nevertheless, five months later, I finished the book, whisked it off to my agent, and signed a three-book deal with Guideposts Books within a couple of weeks for my series, Forever After in Apple Lake. My Amish romance, Kate’s Song, comes out on May 1, 2012.

The other two books in the series are completed, and I am starting on a new Amish series that I hope to have plotted by the first of the year. Time to hop in the shower!

My twilight loving sister knocked out a Harry Potter fan

2011-12-07T05:23:00.003-07:00

Before I forget, we are pleased to announce that Jennifer Beckstrand, (Amish romance author) will be guest posting for Janiel on Friday. I personally cannot wait!

This winter season has been all about moving. My parents moved into a charming cottage with a winding driveway over Thanksgiving. Of course a Holiday in my family cannot be met without drama. And the major scuffle was between my two sister-in-laws.

I mean the holidays are stressful enough but when you add moving into the mix something horrid happens between clashing personalities. Okay, so here's the dirt.

One of my sister-in-laws is a MAJOR Twilight fan and the other prefers Harry Potter. She even named her pet bird Dumbledore.

So, while I am helping my brother move the sofa, the Harry Potter lover begins dissing Twilight and how it's a book about finding a boyfriend and not a real novel-blah, blah. The Twilight lover goes postal. She begins flicking her nails in the air and cussing.

My brother drops his end of the sofa as I go careening to the wood floor. The fight is on. All I hear is a mash-up of words between the two, "Kristin Stewart, goblins, J.K.--shut the crap up."

My Harry-Potter-loving-sister lunges at Mrs. Twilight. This is the clash of two fandoms. One has a bloody nose, the other a ripped shirt.

Sadly, neither of them won because they ended of breaking my mom's beloved Santa candy dish. And a fight between Harry Potter and Twilight now means nothing because no one messes with my mom and her Santa decorations.

The good news- the dish was salvaved and so was Mrs. Twilight and H.P. Lover's sisterly bond. The two had to take a glass making class together to salvage the sucker and I got to be their referee. JOY to the world.

So . . . yeah.

2011-12-05T23:09:00.001-07:00

You may have noticed that I didn't get my regular Challenge of the Month post up on Monday. I tried to. I knew the gist of what I wanted to say. But for some reason, the words wouldn't come out right. Sort of like baking a cake: you have the recipe, but then you realize you forgot to put the butter in, except all the butter has mysteriously disappeared from your kitchen, so you use applesauce instead, but then you remember like one minute before the buzzer goes off that you didn't adjust the ingredients for high altitude, so the poor cake still comes out looking like a demented flapjack or something.

It was kind of like that.

Lately, writing in general has left me feeling a little like Penny from The Big Bang Theory. (Okay, maybe I just wanted an excuse to link to a Big Bang Theory clip. But this very scene really has been running through my head this week while I struggled to work on my book and my blog post that wasn't. Who hasn't felt the need to shout "I'M A FAILURE AT EVERYTHING AND MY BREATH SMELLS LIKE FLY" at least once in their life?)

I'll be back with a proper blog post next week. In the meantime, please accept this Christmas song from the Muppets. Or scroll down to Janiel's Grown-Ups-Have-Epic-Snowball-Fight-at-One-A.M.-While-Kids-Sleep post. And stay tuned for Russo's post on Wednesday, which will also be epic, because Russo's stories are always epic. That is all.

Christmas, James Bond, and Death By Snowball.

2011-12-02T05:00:00.008-07:00

December COM: Christmas Magic

This picture has nothing to do with James Bond or snowballs. It is, however, the inside of my brother's Christmas tree. So, you know, it's seasonal. And stuff.

We idled behind a rotting hay stack, peering through the fog and snow. Waiting. I had a

pile of snowballs on the snowmobile in front of me. My husband let the engine splutter

off so we wouldn't give our position away. But he kept one hand on the key, the other on

the accelerator so we could leap out the minute his little sister and her husband peeled

into view, and pile-drive them with snowballs. It was just after Christmas, and we were

in the middle of a wicked snowball fight in the field between my husband's parent's and grandparent's houses. It was one in the morning and we were winning.

Bruce had that psychotic glint in his eye; the one he gets when someone challenges

him to something on his own turf and makes the naive assertion that they might win.

Mwa haha! Bruce will wear them down into tiny little nubs of their former selves. It was,

after all, only by his sheer determination that the rattle-trap blue-light-special snowmobiles on which we had been schussing the snow were even running. Those babies weren't snowmobiles so much as 10 billion rust molecules holding hands. Whose solidarity was fueled by a middle-aged man reliving his glory days as a James Bondian ice-ball sharp-shooter and driver of sexy vehicles. (You can see why I became his little Bond-girl.)

We waited, then waited some more. Somewhere out there Bruce's sister and her

lawyerly husband--whose plotting skills are legendary (I used to pick my kids up from

playing with their cousins and find them painted red and white--the enemy football

team's colors. A team my evil lawyer brother-in-law heartily supports in the face of

everyone else in the family. But that's another post and possibly a law-suit)--were

skulking. Oh yes. They were skulking. That's what you do in the fog and snow in the

middle of the night.

And then raoooowwwwrrrrrrr! There they were. Oozing out of the mist like some sort

of two-headed nightmare wraith. On motorized skis. Wearing parkas. The little one on the back screaming at the big one on the front not to kill them. My husband cackled (he does that) and simultaneously turned the key, slammed the accelerator forward, and howled a battle cry. I nearly fell off as we leapt right across their wake, startling the living shortcake out of them as well (a very satisfying thing for me, as I never manage to startle so much as a cookie crumb out of anyone most of the time.)

Bruce gave the order to fire, and I launched our entire supply of snowballs at them, hitting Angie smack on the back of the head. (You have no idea how shocking that was. Ordinarily I can't hit the broad side of pretty much anything. And Angie didn't then, and doesn't now, have anything resembling a broad side.)

We made a few more passes until our nemeses gave up. And I'm sure it had nothing to

do with the way my husband was standing in the snowmobile beating his chest.

Okay, okay. They got us pretty good too. But I still think we won. In the end though,

it didn't matter. It was Christmas holiday. We were at grandma's house with all the

cousins and in-laws. There was fresh pie on the counter (nestled in my father-in-law's

epic pie crust) and kids snuggled and sugar-plum'ed in their wee beds. Magical? Oh

yeah.

I sure wish I knew what power it is that Christmas has to transform life into something

beautiful and peaceful and warm, no matter what is actually going on. We need to

bottle it and sell it so we can pull it out of our pocket and take a whiff whenever we start feeling stressed and bothered. I mean a little christmas-tree-cinnamon-mulled-cider-chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire-wicked-awesome-snowball-fight washing over me always smiles me right up, no matter what. The Spirit of Christmas is a palpable thing.

How 'bout you? What Christmas memories do you have that you'd like to bottle and

keep forever?

Katy Perry- incredibly inspiring

2011-11-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

This weekend I watched a special on E about Katy Perry. Love her or hate her, she said the most fascinating quote, "You got to go on a journey to fulfill your dream."

Granted I paraphrased the quote a touch but the message is still the same. My friends, we are on a path to our dream. And each day we struggle to reach our goal. No matter what we are pursuing we often imagine the end result-be that publication, a finished art piece or etc. But the truth is-this moment, right here, leads us to our dream.

The tears, frustration and friendships that we form while pursuing our hearts desire is the journey. You can't have the end result without the journey.

There is something beautiful that awaits you. Your dream is going to help people. Keep going, keep climbing.

Contest Winners!

2011-11-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

Hello, Gnome Slayers! Divine Miss Q here. Did y'all have a nice Thanksgiving? Good, because I sure didn't, and here's why: no leftovers. None. Or if there were, I didn't get any. But I'm not bitter. Nope, not me.

Anyway, I know Monday is usually Maegan's day to post, but I guess she's still recovering from Thanksgiving or too much Christmas shopping or the new Twilight movie or something.

So here I am, writing her blog post for her again, even though I didn't get so much as a scrap of leftover turkey. But again, I am not bitter. I'm a dog, and I'm always happy.

I have not one, but two contest winners to announce! First, the winner of Sarah Jamila Stevenson's book, THE LATTE REBELLION is . . . Cassidy Jo!

Aaaaand, I hope you didn't forget about the Gnomies' last author interview contest, you know, the one for Loraine Scott's new book, NYC: MURDER, BROOKLYN STYLE? Because neither did they. *cough* The winner of that book is . . . William Kendall!

Congratulations, winners! Be sure to send the Gnomies your mailing address at 3gnomes@gmail.com and they'll send the books your way.

Oh, and I'm supposed to say thank you to everyone who entered and thank you, everyone for reading.

(But really, I don't ask for much in life. I'm not a picky eater. I would have been happy with just a cooked carrott. Or a piece of a roll. One little bite of sweet potatoe, as long as it had a marshmallow in it. Marshmallows are my favorite!)

Black Friday. No Unnecessary Deaths, Please.

2011-11-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

Hallloooooo?
Anybody there?
Or are you all out shopping on (Dun, Dun, DUNNNNN!!!)
BLACK. FRIDAY.

Yeah. I pretty much don't get that. A few years ago I went out at 4:30 in the morning, braving 15 degree temperatures in a town whose wind-chill never makes it above 40-below, so I could get a screaming deal on a Playstation. Also some of those disturbing Anne Geddes dolls. You remember those, right? They were little animals with baby faces. Women at the Target I had lined up to get into were beating each other with umbrellas and snow gloves to get to the dolls. Knocking each other out of the way, tipping carts, screaming.

I remember standing there staring at the melée and thinking, Sweet Mary Francis on buttered toast! They're just DOLLS! And slightly weird ones at that. I ended up just grabbing a few that had been knocked to the side, throwing some money at the cashier, and running out of the store.

Something similar happened with the playstation. You have no idea how dangerous a Toys R Us can become at 4:30 in the freezing morning.

In both cases my kids were excited. For 8 minutes. The dolls were forgotten within the year. The Playstation started sprouting weeds until my youngest got old enough to play with it. Now it gets some exercise. But most of the games we got for it have actually started molding.

The other thing about Black Friday is this: I get that retailers need a little boost to get all the red ink out of their ledgers (hence the name: Black Friday). But seriously? I need better deals than the ones I see advertised to get me out the door that stinkin' early. Last year I wandered out a few hours after sunrise--like at 9:00 a.m.--and most of the stuff I wanted was still on the shelves.

So, what's the deal? Why do we get so worked up that we are willing to hit the stores before roosters have unfrozen their little chicken-butts and waddled outside to crow, just to grab an item for a few bucks off? I don't think it's worth the loss of sleep. Or the loss of human kindness. I mean, it's just stuff, people! Nobody's worth as a human being is on the line here. We're not bad parents, friends, siblings, children, etc., if we don't get that special Black Friday deal.

I say we do this: Promise the retailers that we'll shop our guts out all day long if they give us those same deals at, say, 8:30 a.m., rather than 4:30. We need to maintain peace on earth. That's what this season is all about anyway, right?

This year I'm going to take my daughters out at around 10:00. Maybe 11:00. We'll spend the morning drinking cocoa, eating Grandma's muffins, and helping get her Christmas decorations up--listening to Harry Connick while we're at it. We'll mosey out whenever we mosey out. And we'll be thinking about all of you and hoping you're having a lovely, relaxed day-after-Thanksgiving as well.

We should call it Peace Friday from now on. All in favor?

Happy Turkey Day

2011-11-24T05:44:00.002-07:00

There are no words that could express the gratitude we have for our readers/friends.

So many of you return to read our words each week and we are in awe. We are lucky to have you in our lives. More than that, we are grateful for you!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Give yourself some time to recharge

2011-11-23T05:22:00.001-07:00

Some people go shopping to refresh their minds and spirit, other people play video games or sports. Me? I have to get in touch with Mother Nature. And lemme tell you, Nature loathes me.

I swear every time I venture out into this wide world, something horrid happens. You, my dear friends, know about the recent skunk episode. If not, here you go, http://threegnomes.blogspot.com/2011/10/embarressing-moment-alert.html

Anyways, this weekend was a farm filled weekend. For three days I resided near a black barn that was nestled in the mountains. Not only did I milk a cow, I also made a farm hand seriously grossed out when I slipped in the goat dung.

I touched a lily pad. Okay, that happened when a rock near the water wobbled under my foot and my sorry-butt went careening into the lake. But hey, I touched a lily pad and that's what matters. Plus, I got a nice shot with my camera, so all is good.

I walked in the rain and got chased by a ticked off goat named Louis.
Drama followed me around every corner and strangely, I feel rejuvinated. Which leads me to a novel idea, instead of pushing ourselves to exhaustion, let's all take a moment for ourselves.

Do what recharges you-doesn't matter what it is, just recharge your battery.

*And remember to check out Maegan's post (it's right below mine) to enter into our giveaway and read about the journey of a fascinating author.

Author Interview! Sarah Jamila Stevenson

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

I met Sarah a few years ago through our shared love of all things Welsh. I soon learned that her talents extend beyond that - she is a writer and visual artist as well! Sarah's first book, THE LATTE REBELLION, came out in January, and we are so excited to have her here on the blog today. Be sure to check out Sarah's website for more info on her many and varied creative endeavors. She also blogs at Finding Wonderland.

We love to see our writer friends get published! You may have noticed that we like to celebrate by giving books away, and this time is no different. Since it's cold outside and we're talking about a book that features a latte on its cover, leave a comment on this post telling us your favorite drink for staying warm and you'll be entered to win a copy of Sarah's book. I'll announce the winner next Monday.

And now, on to the interview!

Tell us about your book, THE LATTE REBELLION

The Latte Rebellion is the story of a moneymaking scheme that spins hilariously—and disastrously—out of control, but it's also a story about growing into who you are as a person. The narrator, high school senior Asha Jamison, decides to form a fictitious "movement" for students of mixed race or mixed ethnicity, called the Latte Rebellion. Originally conceived as a fun way to sell t-shirts and raise money for a post-graduation trip, over time Asha realizes that the tongue-in-cheek ideals of the movement really mean something to her after all. But when she rushes headlong into the real rebellion, it takes a toll on her personal life and her academic future.

Where did the idea for this book come from? Why did you want to write it?

In some ways, of course, this book stems from personal experiences—my own, growing up as someone of mixed ethnicity, but also the experiences of various multicultural friends and family. But these were all simmering in the back of my mind: at first, I was focused on writing a sort of madcap "caper" novel, a funny book, and not long after that, the phrase "latte rebellion" popped into my head while I was on a long car trip.

With a couple hundred miles' drive to go, I started thinking about what a latte rebellion might be, and soon Asha's character popped into my head. She's named after a song by the band Cornershop, "Brimful of Asha," and I think of them as making sort of multi-ethnic, "hybrid" music, and that's one of the elements that started bringing the ideas together for me. And once I started thinking about the fact that there aren't very many books out there that talk about the experience of growing up with multiple cultural identities from a young person's viewpoint, I became very eager to write that book. I was just as eager to write the book in a way that was accessible and fun and funny, rather than taking the premise too seriously.

What made you want to become a writer? When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I've always enjoyed writing, ever since I was a kid and used my mom's old manual typewriter to make my own "magazines." But for most of my life I was focused on a different creative area—visual art. In fact, I was pretty sure I was going to end up illustrating the covers of books rather than writing their contents! But I had always written stories and poems, and I even had at least two ideas for novels that I had started and then abandoned (fortunately for everyone—trust me) about 30 or 40 pages in. So I guess the possibility was always lurking in the background.

But I didn't think about writing as a career until about 1999 or 2000, when I was working at the website IGN.com and doing a little freelance humor writing for them on the side. I realized how much I was enjoying it, and decided to take a fiction writing class online to see whether I might be interested in pursuing it further. As it turned out, I really wanted to keep at this writing gig, but I felt like I needed a lot more practice and guidance to know where I wanted to take it, so I applied to graduate school for creative writing. After finishing an MFA at Mills College in Oakland, I felt a lot more comfortable with my own skills and I started sending my work out into the world!

Could you tell us a little about your writing process?

It's a little different for every project, but this is what my process usually looks like: I get a bunch of random ideas over a period of time and write them on nearby scraps of paper, some of which get lost. I compile them into a Word document at some point when the random ideas are starting to take a coherent form in my brain. Usually at this stage, I have a list of ideas that are either uselessly vague ("I want to write a dystopian book") or tangentially detailed ("I should totally use the word 'luminaria' somewhere in this story"). When I look at them all together, though, connections start to form, and once the ideas start to flow, I usually don't have trouble coming up with a general storyline and main characters. I ask myself a lot of "what if" questions. Sometimes even before the bones of the piece are clear in my head, I can't stop myself from starting to write.

Once I've started writing, the details start to become clearer as I go. Often I don't know how exactly things will end when I start writing the story, but usually I've figured it out by the time I'm about a third of the way in. Then the problem is how to get from where I am to the ending! Once I've figured out the plot, though, I usually draw myself a little flow chart or diagram showing the different strands of the story and how they relate. This helps a lot with timing and figuring out the order of scenes. This all sounds very disorganized as I type it out...I guess it probably is.

The theme of this blog is challenging our "Gnomes" - those things that hold us back in writing and in life. Do you have any Gnomes of your own and would you mind telling us what you do to slap them upside the head?

Sometimes I suffer from a veritable plague of Gnomes! So I definitely relate to the theme of this blog. I'd say the most pernicious ones for me have to do with getting discouraged or disheartened, letting my self-confidence slip, and forgetting to enjoy what I'm doing. There's also a very annoying Gnome that I like to call "crippling what's-the-point-itis." Sometimes I just have to take a break from a project and think about something else for a while, letting my right brain rest and recuperate. When that doesn't help, one of my favorite ways to slap the Gnomes upside the head is to revisit books about the creative process that I've found inspiring and comforting: two of my all-time favorites are Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I also really like What It Is by Lynda Barry. There's a great blog on the topic of staying inspired as a writer, called Wordswimmer (http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/), which I also visit from time to time. And when I really need to just sit down and write, I'm not above bribing myself with treats.

I'm sure glad to hear I'm not the only one who suffers from crippling what's-the-point-itis when it comes to writing. Thanks for stopping by, Sarah!

Sock it to Twilight. An Homage in Honor of Breaking Dawn. Brace Yourselves.

2011-11-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

All right Twilight fans! In honor of Breaking Dawn, Part One: The Fade To Black -- which opens TODAY (I KNOW! SQUEE-CITY!) (except not really. i'm sort of the anti-squee, in this case), I give you the Twilight Sock Puppet Troupe.

Two young women, cousins, who have never read the books (but one of whom has a parent--I won't say whether it's the mother or the father, but he's a cop--who listens to the audio books in his ~~cruiser~~, er, car) have created a marvelous homage to the series--with a focus on New Moon. It was recorded on an iPhone in the basement, using cast off socks for the main characters, and comes complete with paper scenery and narration. Sort of. Also, it has an alternate ending. Truly, it is an independent film of epic proportions whose volume you must strain to hear because, did I mention? it was filmed on an iPhone.

I have to say I was impressed with the insight into the series that my daughter and niece display in this clip. Especially having never read the books or seen the movies. Also, they're pretty hilarious and cute. You can see their little heads occasionally behind the stage, and hear them burst into giggles here and there as they make little mistakes. All of which adds to the charm, I think. I'm not biased.

Anyway, for you, on this momentous day, we present: TwiEclipsingMoonDawn.

Russo's horrid day

2011-11-16T05:31:00.005-07:00

You know those day where nothing goes well? Yep, that would be today for me. I awoke early for an intense day of writing and this is what I see-

My best friend, Jameses lounging in his Snuggie and eating my Coco Pebbles-N-Lucky Charms together in one bowl. First off, EWW. Second off, sitting next to him is my foster cat, Lux. She has a smug look on her face as she has attacked my edits for the day. There's paper all over the floor and Jameses is just eating away and sobbing about some sad sap on the Dr. Phil show.

I shrugged my shoulders-just another day in my house? Wrong, it got collectively worse. In the late afternoon, I was dancing while doing the dishes. Not really the smartest idea but Kanye was blaring so I had to dance. Needless to say, I slipped on the floor.

Later in the day I broke my decorative dish in half. And I wonder, is it is bad sign that I broke a dish with the following saying:

Yep, it's official. I am jinxxed because not but 5 minutes letter I trip down the stairs. My new potted plant tips over and fall on my knee-brilliant.

My friends, some day's just aren't going to go in our favor. And that's okay because usually the day after a sucky day rocks-so, bring on the fun, I say, because tomorrow will be be much better.

As Samwise Said . . .

2011-11-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back.

I just spent two weeks in Middle Earth. I stood on the very same path where the Hobbits first met the Black Rider, walked barefoot on a black sand beach, gazed at the stars through a telescope on a cold, windy mountain, ate lunch in Lothlorien forest, witnessed the haka and a sheepdog demonstration (not at the same time), rode a kiwi horse (for exactly five minutes thanks to the changeable island weather), sailed through a glow-worm cave on an underground stream, crossed Lake Wakatipu by ferry at night, had close encounters with sea lions and yellow-eyed penguins, and sang LOTS of Welsh songs at various venues for sundry audiences, including a vineyard (for the sheep), inside Waitomo cave (for the glow worms) (yes William, that actually happened), and the Wellington Opera House (for the humans).

That's me, having a moment with a waterfall in New Zealand.

I did NOT, however, kiss Richard Armitage. Not that I wouldn't have liked to, but still. Never happened.

Last Monday, my dear gnomie Janiel hinted that I also had a close encounter with the North & South guy, who happens to be in New Zealand, filming The Hobbit. (Which I take as a HUGE compliment, btw, so thank you for that, dear gnomie Janiel.) I just felt like I should do the responsible thing and set the record straight. Again, not that I wouldn't have liked to, but you know, I was all busy singing and stuff and he was all busy filming and it's really hard to coordinate schedules but I should have had my people call his people to maybe arrange something I mean I was there I should have at least tried . . .

Wait, what was I talking about?

New Zealand! Right. My new favorite place. I wish I could have found a way to stuff the whole country in my luggage and bring it home with me. It sure is fun to travel to far-off places, but there's something to be said for coming home, too.

Even if I didn't get to kiss Richard Armitage. Or get so much as a glimpse of those pretty, pretty blue eyes . . . Whoops, there I go again.

Our pal Richard as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit. Man, he's even handsome as a dwarf . . . Sheesh! Okay, I'll stop now. For reals.

Expectations. Death to their Expectatiousness!

2011-11-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

You know where fairy tales come from? Hopes and dreams, that's where. Desires. Wishes for happily ever afters and handsome princes and long-haired princesses in towers, and eternal bliss being just a horse-ride-into-the-horizon away. All in the face of reality. In the face of how incredibly tough life can be at times. We do that. We dream for something better. Long for it.

And that's why they're called fairy tales. Because they aren't reality . . . unless we make them reality. By doing the work. And being flexible. And being willing to be content.

Ah, there's the catch: being willing to be content with what we've got. With what we can get. Finding in what we already have, the prince/princess/castle/magical powers/blonde locks/sword of Gryffindor, and being happy with it.

When I was a kid I had serious imaginings of what my life was going to be like once I slipped the family ties and headed out on my own. Imaginings I counted on. I haven't met a lot of people who felt like they had an ideal childhood; there's always one thing or another getting in and mucking things up. And mine was no different: parents who divorced, stressed-out siblings and self, a serious bout of anorexia that could have taken me out, resulting health issues, feelings of loneliness--you most likely know the drill. Whether it's health or finances, family or friends, something or someone somewhere is going to disappoint us in life. The trick is not to avoid those things--we can't--but to deal with them in such a way that we still have joy and enjoyment in life. That we still see all the lovelies that are there. And that life is deeper for the experience.

I will tell you that my complete dependance on what I thought life was going to be like nearly sank me. I had decided what type of wife I would be, what type of mother, what type of husband and kids I would have, and what I would contribute to the world--but none of them happened. At least not how I planned.

My visions of the Martha Stewart/Donna Reed-esque home I would create? BWA hahahaha! I mean, it ain't a pigsty, all right? But if dinner is on the table by 5:00 everyone knows the aliens have landed and something is inhabiting my body. If the clean laundry pile has magically moved from its permanent spot next to my jewelry armoir (which is filled with thread, scarves, iPod chargers and earbuds, gloves, and a bazillion earrings left over from the 1980's) into neatly folded piles for my children to retrieve and put away (those who aren't old enough to do their own laundry, thank you very much), people run outside, filled with embarrassment at having walked into the neighbor's house.

And motherhood? This is not what I planned on looking like to my kids:

Which one is me?

But I do. We'll just leave it at that.

And finally, there's marriage. Did you know that two perfectly good, normal, kind people can "Expectation" each other to death? They can. It's so easy to disappoint one another in marriage: "This isn't what I thought you'd be like! You have to change!" Yep. And that's death. Can't go there. Run away from that sentiment, RUUUUUNN FOREST!

So, after twenty-blinkin'-five years of marriage, and work, and kids, and life changes, and moving, and job losses, and disappointments, and joys, and laughing our guts out, and anger, and bad parenting, and good parenting, and brilliant moments, and awful moments, and sadness, and happiness, and general "Wha?"when nothing turned out like I imagined--what have I learned?

Be content.

Look at what you have, not at what you don't have. Change what you can. Look for the good in what you can't. Expect the best, even when you don't get what you thought was the best. In that case, find out what the best is in that situation. And be. Happy. Because in this world, we need happy. There is sunlight. There are flowers. There is central air. There are indoor toilets. There is food. There is love. There are friends. There is creativity. There is genius. There is medicine. There is chocolate. There are movies. There are nice people. There are cars. There are trees. There is jam. There is family. There are kisses. There are books. There are good qualities in everyone. And there is funny, funny stuff. We can be content.

Now if I can just apply this philosophy to my life on a daily basis, I'll be good to go. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

Peace-out, dudes.

Life is a mash-up of joy, sorrow and serenity

2011-11-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have been filled with tragedy. Someone very dear to me is losing their eyesight at a very young age. This person is my rock, they have been through so much already and the thought of them losing their sight makes me pause and reflect.

I write this blog post not for pity or condolences, I am merely trying to to figure out why life can be so beautiful and yet so cruel.

My friends, there is no escaping the truth-life is a complete mash-up of joy, sorrow and serenity. You have not really lived until you face something that is frightening. The trick in surviving is not in the cliche quotes-'it's always darkest before the dawn,' or 'stiff upper lip.'

No, the trick in really living is to look a frightening situation in the eyes and realize-you are stronger than any obstacle that is thrown in your way. Never forget that truth.

The pic was taken during one of my weekend exursions-so peaceful.

Maegan Flies Home Today . . .

2011-11-07T08:00:00.005-07:00

. . . which is why there's no witty, succinct, pithy, incisive, quietly adorable November Challenge of the Month post from her today. Nope. We'll have to wait until next Monday for that. Along with pictures of her singing with the Welsh choir. And touring the glow worm caves. AND KISSING RICHARD ARMITAGE. Quite positive she did that.

But we won't know for sure until she gets back. So sit tight until then. And in the meantime feel free to check out Maegan's other posts here. Or Janiel's other posts here. Or Russo's other posts here. Or Janiel's other posts here. Did we mention Janiel's other posts here? Because they're here.

Anyway. We'll be happy to get her back. Maegan. Not Janiel. Maegan's the one coming home. Yay!

Thanksgiving Boots and Sliced Persimmons

2011-11-04T05:00:00.002-06:00

November COM: Thanksgiving Adventures

Coolest Thanksgiving I ever spent was in Italy. Just me and my mom and my new Italian leather boots that I made us leave the cozy hotel for to run up and down the streets of Rome before the stores closed for the night. I needed something fashionable to show for my trip. I was fourteen. Fashion and I were just starting to shake hands. Dorkdom and I were parting ways. It was sort of an epic moment.

My dad was stationed in Germany, and we were on the downward side of our 3.5 years there. The 'rents and my older sister had just been to Greece together for an assignment my dad was on, so Mom decided I got to go to Italy. And she decided we'd do it over Thanksgiving. No idea why my little brother got shafted in this deal. My oldest brother and sister were across the Atlantic in college, so they missed out by default. But little bro? I kind of think someone owes him a trip.

Anyway, the year was 1978 (Yeah, yeah. shut it. I'm old, a'ight?) Mom and I hopped a bus from Ramstein Air Base and headed south-west. It took a bazillion hours and we had a stubborn German driver who would not stop as we crossed the Alps, even though you could smell the back brakes burning clear up in the front. He finally gave in at the rest stop at the top of an Alpine pass--which was deep in snow--when he found that his brakes were irreparably frozen to the rear tires. You had to wonder if he'd been trained in what to do with flammable tourists when their bus caught fire at the top of the mountains. But whatev. We lived.

I can't remember if he thawed it out or we got a new bus. Think he thawed. In any case, we set off again through the crags. The moon came out as we drove, and it was like a flood light. The mountains were so black against the sky it almost looked like they weren't there at all. As if someone had cut them out of sky-paper and left a jaggedy mark on the edge of the stars where they'd been.

Italy was magical. Not psychotically clean like Switzerland, where you could have an appendectomy on the sidewalk with no ill effects. But it was lovely with dramatic buildings and colors and trees and hills. Ancient bridges, and hotel rooms with toilets right there next to your bed and no walls to separate you. Watermarks twelve feet up on buildings where the Arno had flooded a few centuries back. Doors to Basilicas all carved up to represent scenes from the bible by local artists with names like Michelangelo Buonarroti--whose further work we saw on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Remarkable. The man lay on his back for 4 years atop scaffolding he built himself, arms outstretched, mixing colors and painting every standout scene from this world's religious history as recorded in the bible. There's nothing like it.

Except maybe the Pietá, his statue of Mary holding the body of her son after his crucifixion. Michelangelo carved her bigger than her son so she could cradle him, and her tenderness and love would be emphasized. Her face is the loveliest thing I've ever seen.

Thanksgiving day itself was spent in Rome after viewing the above works of art. The owners of our hotel knew it was a special American holiday, so they brought out a feast. No turkey, but platters and platters of meat and vegetables, fruit and bread. I don't remember pasta, so I suspect they were trying to keep it as pilgrim-ish as possible. I do remember thinly sliced meats and cheese and the most remarkable fruit I'd ever had. Perfectly ripe, tomato-like and sweet: a persimmon. I couldn't believe anything tasted like that--honey dew, peach, and apple. I haven't had one as good since.

It was a lovely day at the end of a lovely trip. A much shorter drive through Bolzano and the Northern Alps got us home, with gifts, leather, memories, and a goal to go back and explore the Coliseum, Caesar's Forum, and Buonarroti's art in depth. With a nosh on another persimmon.

And I got to do it all in my Italian leather boots.

(Which, okay, didn't look exactly like this. Pretty much not at all like this. Mine had cool late 1970's rubber soles and pointy toes. Disco was just middling-out over there and the '80's styles were coming in. But you get the idea.)

My family is dysfunctional and more

2011-11-02T05:22:00.003-06:00

Challenge of the Month: Crazy Turkey Day adventure

Most Thanksgivings are filled with food, family and sometimes, fighting. For me, its not a Holiday if the cops aren't called. As my brother says, "We put the fun in dysfunctional."

Let me give you the dirt. A Holiday usually starts with a 10 minute prayer given by my father, who rambles on and on. And just when my eyelids are as heavy as an anvil, my Aunt interrupts him and says, "Oh, just shut up already."

And thus the chaos starts.

I usually plop down in the best seat in the living room-a purple plushy chair near the fire place. I can watch the madness perfectly from my cozy perch as I nibble on my Southern cornbread.

My Uncle, who has one singed eyebrow from deep frying the turkey, carves into the hunk of meat. Okay, normal enough but did I mention he carves the turkey with brand new scissors? Yep, he's on probation and can't use a knife. I smile at his persistence. He knows Thanksgiving is important to my Aunt (his wife) so he focuses on making each slice of meat look beautiful on the plastic red plates.

My other uncle, who is a recovering addict, helps my lil cousin put green olives on his toes. My cousin giggles repeatedly at the frog toes.

All the while, my Aunts and Uncles try to get the other riled up by calling each other majorly dirty words. I mean, words I wouldn't even call my worst enemy.

My Auntie opens a can of beer and burps, while my triplet cousins yammer on and on about some Disney Channel movie. Normal as normal can be until the neighbor-guest begins to pontificate about something that doesn't even matter at the moment, which really riles up my Auntie.

The neighbor and my Auntie get into a heated argument and the neighbor has no idea what tornado he has walked into-Sure, my relatives may seem cruel to other but that's because they are family. They can diss each other but if any outsider disrespects my family, they get eaten alive.

Needless to say, the neighbor gets thrown out of the house, which pissed my dad off. And then all I hear is a slew of cuss words flowing out of the mouth of my Aunts and Uncles. They all combat each other with words as the turkey is passed down a long table.

To me, the madness is calming because underneath all the angst is an understanding-these crazy, dysfunctional relatives would have back in any situation that would scare most people.

Sure, I had a ridiculous upbringing. At age 8, I learned how to pickpocket. When I was a gawky teenager, I could pick a lock with 2 bobby pins. But there has also been goodness, through my dear fam I have also learned how to battle my nasty lil demons. Most importantly, I have learned loyalty, which is the best gift. I'll take the dysfunction any day.

Halloween Short Story Challenge: Eleven Steps

2011-10-31T08:00:00.002-06:00

Eleven Steps by Maegan Langer

Organized again. Stretched across the lawn in one neat row: my children’s army of soccer balls. The kids don’t notice. They dash past them on their way to the bus every morning. The formation stays put until practice every afternoon.

My wife looked at me sidelong the first time it happened, like she took it as some kind of symptom. But she didn’t say anything.

I don’t say anything either.

I know he did it.

Sometimes I stare out the upstairs window after everyone’s gone to bed. I squint through the blinds at the balls scattered across the grass in the dark. I stand there while the sprinklers come on. I’m still there when they stop, leaving a glistening wet sheen over all in the moonlight.

I know he’s there, somewhere. Staring back at me, daring me to watch all night.

Laughing at me.

Still there they are: a path from the front door to the sidewalk clearly delineated in soccer ball stepping stones. I’ve taken to walking that path every morning, counting each step, one for every ball, deliberately setting one bare foot in front of the other in the dewy grass.

Always eleven steps.

How does he do it?

I reach the end of the path and stoop down to collect the paper, careful to keep the coffee cup in my right hand level. This morning, I have to pause mid-stoop. Something novel has caught my eye.

The sewer grate. Centered directly opposite the last ball, a short couple of steps from the end of the path.

This morning, I take those extra steps. I peer down between the bars, at the sun’s reflected light in the dirty water below. I imagine a pair of sallow eyes staring back up at me, wreathed in grimy, gray skin. A tiny, lipless mouth parts. He sticks his tongue out at me before scuttling back into the pipe.

Gotcha now.

I make my way back up the path.

Eleven steps.

Someone is speaking when I return to the kitchen. A woman’s voice. Probably one of those damn early-morning news commentators. But the TV on the counter is blank.

“I said, anything you wanna add to the grocery list?” my wife asks.

No honey, just pick up whatever you like.

She looks at me for a moment. Searching for more symptoms.

I hate it when she looks at me like that.

So I smile at her. Have a good day at work, I say. I’ll be here, just like yesterday, same as tomorrow. I promise to work on my portfolio, monitor the market, thoroughly peruse monster.com. This is only temporary, I want to tell her. I want to tell myself.

Just a little hiccup.

Don’t worry.

I love you.

When the house is empty, I return to the soccer balls. I stand behind the line and face the goal across the yard.

But I’m really thinking about the sewer grate.

He’s still there: grubby little fingertips and jaundiced eyes just peeking at the edge of the curb, waiting to see what happens next.

Carefully, I nudge the nearest ball out of the line with my toe.

It. is. on.

I pull my foot back, holding it in midair behind me before swinging it forward to connect with the displaced ball. It shoots across the grass, stopping just short of the goal. I kick the next one and it settles in the driveway. Now I get a running start. The third ball sails right over the goal frame.

Score!

More running starts, farther and farther back. The soccer balls come to rest in the rose bushes, the porch, they plop into the half-empty kiddie pool, they fly over the fence, they roll into the gutter across the street.

One left. I gather it up in my fingers and stroll to the grate, balancing it in the palm of my hand. Of course he’s gone by then. He’s so quick.

But he can’t have gotten too far.

I leave the last ball on the grate, letting it roll back against the curb. I fold my arms and tilt my head to the side, admiring my work.

Then I stroll back across the grass.

Back at the computer, I can’t keep my eyes from straying to the window every few seconds.

All clear.

Soccer balls still scattered.

Still no line.

Still no . . .

He’s done it again.

In the daylight.

Right under my nose.

Damn.

I don’t bother with a robe. I explode onto the porch in my shirt sleeves and pajama bottoms, slamming the door behind me. I’m running up and down the path, turning circles, glancing over my shoulder, shielding my eyes from the sunlight.

Then I remember the grate.

I’m bent over, grasping the bars and heaving backwards with all my weight. He’s moving around down there. I can see the ripples in the water, hear him splashing. The grate doesn’t budge, so I reach my hand into the space and grasp wildly with my fingers before yanking it out with almost enough force to topple backwards.

He bit me.

Blood oozes onto my fingertip in bright, scarlet drops. Something moves just out of my vision. I glance up, still holding my injured hand.

He’s there.

Watching me.

Hunched on all fours, scaly tail lashing back and forth, like an angry cat.

“Dale, what are you doing?” My wife is standing in the driveway, a grocery bag in each arm. My children’s faces stare out at me through the minivan windows. They look white and uncomfortable, like they don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Honey,” she calls. “What are you looking at?”

The tiny, lipless mouth parts again, but this time he doesn’t stick out his tongue.

He’s smiling at me.

Slowly, he twists his bare skull. The yellow eyes follow me as I step backwards across the grass.

Eleven steps.

Halloween Short Story Challenge: Gargoyle

2011-10-28T05:00:00.013-06:00

Sculpture by Kraig Varner (www.kraigvarner.com)

Gargoyle
by
Janiel Miller

The gargoyle never blinked when Olivia looked at it, and so Olivia never blinked back. They just stared at each other every day right before Mother came to pick her up—she on her tippy toes, he on his pedestal in front of the Classics.

Olivia would raise her hands like she wanted to touch his smooth stony cheek, but she never would. It was against Library rules. So she would just stand, her hands outstretched, reaching for his face or his curly brows, sometimes his strong shoulders with their hard leather-like wings, or even his hooked fingers, but never quite touching the speckled granite from which they were carved.

She would whisper then, “I wish you would come alive. Then you could play with me.” But it never happened. The gargoyle just sat and stared at her, never blinking, guarding the shelves stuffed to the ceiling with stories from Shelley, and Shakespeare, Stoker and Brontë—stories too old for the girl. This wasn’t where her books were kept. So each day she would go get them from the children’s room—a whole stack—and bring them back to read beneath the statue. Curled up and happy.

And when it was time to leave, Olivia would sigh and wave. Then she would touch the sign that said “Do Not Touch” as if it were the gargoyle. She’d walk out with the woman in the dark blue coat with the phone and the gloved hand that tapped the back of the little girl’s head as she tried to turn for one last look. And her eyes would say, Come play with me, statue. Come play.

If you had asked her, Olivia couldn’t have said why she liked the gargoyle. But she did. She was sure, if it had been alive, that it would be nice and ask her name and eat the apples she’d bring for it. For him.

One day she decided to name him.

“Romeo,” she whispered into his grey pointed ear, standing again on her tippy toes. “Your name is Romeo. I hope you like it.”

Olivia’s mother was a teacher at the University. She taught literature, which is the same as stories, but she called it “Li-tra-chure.” Mother had read a terribly sad and romantic tale called “Romeo and Juliet” to Livie, every night for a week. And then the girl had asked for it again. Mother had said it “spoke to her.” Olivia supposed it did, but not in a way she could hear. In a way she could feel. All those families and cousins. Sword fights. Everyone loving and hating everyone else. What would that be like, she wondered, as she sat her afternoons away beneath the gargoyle Romeo, with her stack of books and her li-tra-chure friends. Waiting for her mother to come get her. Family was not something she had a lot of.

There was Mother, of course, but Livie hardly saw her. Nanna was kind, but quiet and slow and very old fashioned. And the Saturdays spent at her house were filled with ticking clocks and coasters. Nanna would give her chocolate milk and lemon wafer cookies that left crumbs on Livie’s sweater no matter how careful she was. Then Nanna would sigh and say that Olivia needed some friends her own age to play with.

But there was school. And then the Library.

And especially, there was Romeo, the gargoyle who guarded the grown-up books with the Do Not Touch sign right there in front so you wouldn’t.

One Saturday—a day when Olivia never showed up to sit and read—she came into the classics room. She had no stack of books in her arms. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet. It was one thing to spend a bit of each afternoon at the Library. It was quite another to spend an entire Saturday. Without Mother or Nanna. Or anybody.

Livie marched right up to Romeo. She put her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out. Like it was his fault she had to spend the day there. In a big boring place full of dusty old books, all alone because the sun was out and no one was inside.

“You’re no good,” Olivia said to the gargoyle. He just stared back from beneath his carved grey eyebrows. “You don’t do anything. You just sit there and don’t play and I have to stay here all day because momma has a meeting and Nanna is sick and I don’t want to.” Livie looked at him. At his bumpy hairless head with the pair of stubby horns. At his two pointy ears, and the sharp little teeth that stuck out over his lips. Lips that smiled like he knew something funny. And she looked at his strong arms that ended in clawed fingers and sat curled around clawed feet. At the very tip of one wing that looked like a bat’s, swooping around and just barely touching the pedestal.

“Huh,” Livie said. “You’re no good at all. Why don’t you play with me? Stupid statue.”

She started to walk away, but something stopped her. Olivia turned back around, very slowly, and walked to Romeo. She looked down at the Do Not Touch sign on the gargoyle’s pedestal. Then she squinted her eyes into a frown and stuck one little finger out. She moved it up. Right. To. His. Nose.

Touch.

“Hm,” she said, with a kind of smirk. Then she turned to leave.

But,

Something rustled.

Something creaked.

Something that sounded rather big and a bit like wings, unfolded in the air. And then there was a whoosh and an enormous thud right behind Olivia.

The girl froze. The quiet air shrieked, like a thousand cars slamming on their brakes in a thousand tunnels. And the shriek didn’t come from Livie. It came from something else’s mouth. It was not a good sound. It made her insides feel like they couldn’t breathe.

Livie wanted to run, but her legs were stuck. She wanted to look behind her to see if Romeo was still there, but she didn’t dare.

And then it didn’t matter anymore. Because right in front of her dropped the gargoyle. And he was no longer stone.

His muscles were like giant knots on a tree trunk, and they moved and rippled beneath his speckled skin as he swayed back and forth, standing then crouching. Furling his wings out then snapping them back in. His breathing made a gurgly whispery sound and he waggled his curly eyebrows over and over again.

Then the creature lunged forward, legs stretched behind him on the floor, clawed fists down in front, until he was eye to eye with Olivia. Yellow eyes. Big and liquid, like a cat’s. The girl sucked in a breath but didn’t scream.

“Rohh-meee-ohh,” the gargoyle rasped. Then he blinked.

Livie didn’t know what to do, so she blinked back. She could feel him breathing right onto her cheeks, and it was like fog, cold and wet.

“Run,” Romeo whispered. Then his eyes popped. He opened his mouth wide, showing a double row of jagged white teeth, “RUUUNNNNNN.”

Olivia found that suddenly, she could. She could also scream, which she did over and over again until it became one long shriek almost as loud and high as the gargoyle’s when she first heard him. Her feet whipped her around and she tore down the Classics aisle, past Hamlet and Frankenstein, Dracula and Hyde. Her hair came out of its ribbon and whipped her eyes in dark strands as she turned to see where Rom—the monster was.

She couldn’t see him anywhere and couldn’t hear him, and she wanted Mother with her dark blue coat, and Nanna with her coasters. But she kept running. And when she came to the end of the aisle, Olivia grabbed onto the bookshelf with one hand and used it to rocket around the corner. Where she slammed into a brick wall.

Named Romeo.

“Ahhh!” the beast said, and swiped at Livie where she had rebounded onto the floor. His wings beat the air around them and knocked books off of shelves. Olivia scrambled backward as the gargoyle advanced on her, sweeping pictures from the wall, and pushing chairs aside. He wasn’t that big, but he was solid. And Olivia was not.

The little girl struggled and crabbed backward until her head finally bumped against a wall. And there was nowhere else for her to go. Olivia whimpered. Then she pushed her feet beneath her body and rose to a crouch, folding herself into a tiny ball.

Romeo gurgled and stood still, wings whispering. He stood, and Olivia crouched. She kept her head tucked against her knees. What was he going to do? She’d read enough books to know it couldn’t be anything nice. Maybe . . . maybe she could say something to him. Maybe if she was nice . . .

“Please,” Livie said in the tiniest squeak of a voice. “please.”

The gargoyle didn’t answer. He was just. . . quiet. Then after a moment or two, when she couldn’t stand it any more, Olivia turned her head. Just a bit.

Romeo was bent over, looking at her with bright yellow eyes. He had one eyebrow up, and his lips were pursed together. He scratched one horn. Then he cocked his head the other way to look at her from that side.

Finally, the beast reached out. And with one hooked finger he tapped Olivia on the nose. He smiled, showing all of his teeth, and said,

“Tag. You it.”

Then he leapt into the air, up and over the bookshelves, and was gone.

Livie sat for a moment.

Then she stood.

And she smiled.

She tore back up the Classics aisle. Only this time, she wasn’t scared.

Halloween Short Story Challenge: Lighting yourself on fire is a serious faux pas

2011-10-26T05:02:00.008-06:00

Halloween Storytime-Guess what, this story is totally true.

On crisp Halloween night a girl named Rus-crap, let's call her Bette. Anyways, a girl named Bette crushed on a bloke who looked an awful lot like Orlando Bloom. Not the Orlando Bloom of 2011 but more like the one a decade earlier when he played Legolas on Lord of the Rings. This guy of Bette's heart was rocker-hott, long blonde hair with leather pants and a leather cuff on his wrist. Can we say swoon?

Anyways, back to the Halloween night from hell. Rus-er, Bette accidentally lit herself on fire.

The goal of the night was to dress in a super yummified costume. Bette wanted to go as a SWAT team member, cute lil skirt and all. But due to lack of dinero, she had to go as a vamped up Snow White. Which super-hottie Rocker didn't mind at all.

On that night, they bought a whole slew of pumpkins and ran them over with his Mustang. Which did you know if you run over pumpkins repeatedly, you will get a flat tire? After laughing so hard their lungs hurt, they explored the whole town hand in hand.

When super-hottie Rocker took her home the moment of the big kiss at the door step loomed over the two. Rocker put his hands through his long hair and then grabbed Bette's waist. He stole a long, passionate kiss.

Bette was majorly grooving on the guy. She adjusted her feet and grabbed the bloke's hair. She felt a lit Jack o' Lantern near her toes but didn't care. Rocker had her hooked with his soft lips.

And she continued to not care, so much that her long dress grazed over the top of the lit jack o' lantern. The hem of her dress caught on the flame of the candle and because Karma has it in for her the dress caught on fire.

Russ-er, Bette didn't even notice until Rocker sniffed the air and said, "Do you smell a fire?"

Flames danced around the hem of her dress and thankfully, the only thing that saved her legs from burning was her leather boots. Well, her leather boots AND Rocker, who came to her rescue.

The actual fire was put out but in its place a new fire had totally taken over Bette and Rocker. Ah, the flames of love. And man, do they consume and fast.

Nothing Ruins Your Day Like . . .

2011-10-24T08:00:00.000-06:00

I love Halloween. I love everything about October. One of my favorite things about this time of year is the parade of scary movies on TV. I just finished watching The Unborn for the first time. I'll admit: the trailer scared the blinking firebugs out of me. I mean, terrifying. Truly. If you don't believe me, you can watch it for yourself here. (But be warned: TER-ifying.)

This is why it took me two years to watch it. I wanted to, but I was too sceered. So when it turned up on TV, I thought maybe it was time to finally face this thing head-on. You know, grab the bull by the horns. Get it out of my system. Plus, I was too lazy to do anything else.

Well, let me tell you. The Unborn? Not. Scary. Just a bunch of flashy effects painted around a weak story and flat characters I didn't care much about. Not even Idris Elba and Gary Oldman - who I love - could rescue this sad, sad excuse for a fright fest. Seriously, dudes! What went wrong?

"At least I have the Dark Knight to fall back on."

"I wonder if that regional manager position is still open at The Office . . ."

It's one thing when you're expecting cheese (whatup, SyFy channel). It's quite another when the trailer is scary and the actual movie is not. Sigh. I hate to say it, but I'm feeling rather disappointed at the moment.

Whenever something like this happens, I like to play a little game called, "Nothing ruins your day like . . ." Nothing ruins your day like a lame-o scary movie. Nothing ruins your day like biting into a piece stale chocolate. A sewage back-up. Road construction. Kanye West. Know what I mean?

What about you guys? What are some of the things that ruin your day?

BLOOPER REEL! The Ridiculous! The Embarrassing! The Silly! The Us!

2011-10-21T08:52:00.001-06:00

SO. Welcome to the Blooper Reel And Other Embarrassing Stuff. We're sort of horrified to be putting this up here, but we are willing to sacrifice our dignity for our readers. Because you're that wonderful, and we're that devoted.

First up we have an attempt at beginning the whole Loraine Scott interview in rather a creative and entertaining way. It being the month of Halloween and all, we thought we'd go a little "Blair Witch," and do a spoofy, slightly creepy, somehow inspiring and enlightening beginning that was reminiscent of the amateur/art-house-filmed horror adventure that took place in Blair county. Or Blair something. I'm not sure. I've never seen it. Just the commercials. Anyway, we went all dark and spooky to meet Ms. Scott, and this is the result: The Blair Gnome Project. Which, after we saw it, we determined to be too goofy to add to the actual interview footage. Instead, we'll show it here. Note Russo's giggles, Maegan's quiet shyness which masquerades as dignity, and my general spazziness, which works on stage, but is kind of awful here. Ah well. Enjoy. The Blair Gnomes:

Here we have Maegs and me suddenly realizing our mouths are full of gum, which won't do for the interview. Luckily Russo steps in at the last moment to save the day, bless her:

My kid was kind enough to take time off from her life as a college student to film us. Here you get a split second of her voice. You might recognize it from the Blair Gnome clip above. (And don't give me that look, young lady! I'm giving you your 15 minutes of fame! Except it's 3 seconds! You should be grateful!)

Russo preferred to offer quiet support on this venture, so we didn't get a lot of footage or audio of her or her questions. Instead, we got some interesting close-up footage of how her hands entertain themselves when her mind is otherwise occupied. Busy little cutie-patooties, aren't they?

Busy as well were Maegan's feet. Cute. Dainty. And tap dancing all over the place. Lookee:

And finally, since this is an interview with a writer of murder, I thought maybe we should go ahead and create that Halloween-y mood by including a little blip that we originally cut out because of it's . . . well . . . you'll see:

All right, my darlings. There you have it: Your Gnomeslayers--instilling in you confidence that we shall overcome and slay our gnomes! Yours too, most likely, while we're at it. But probably by accident.

(And P.S., don't tell Maegan and Russo that I got the footage of their busy hands and feet. They don't know and would probably kick me off the blog.)

(P.P.S. - Forgive the lousy quality. Apparently my camera isn't as good as I thought it was. It does add a certain je ne sais quois quality to the whole thing though, doesn't it? DOESN'T IT? I agree.)

Author Interview! Loraine Scott, Maestro of Murder and Mayhem, Part 2

2011-10-19T05:00:00.004-06:00

Here we are again, my dears. The lovely Loraine Scott and her cozy book of murder. Today we learn a bit about how one crafts a murder mystery. Which has always been a mystery to me. I admire anyone who can think that way. I mean as a writer. Not a murderer. Just to be clear.

Voilá, Loraine (along with the elegant Maegan, and the loud Janiel. Russo is lending support from off camera, bless her):

Were you taking notes? I like the idea of the binders of info to keep track of everything. Sometimes you need paper and pen in your hands rather than keys on the computer. Bit more personal that way.

On to the Mickey Mouse room. Loraine can do anything. We kid you not. The reference to Maegan's dress came about because Loraine took on the job of hemming Maeg's choir dress so she can wear it on her Welsh Choir tour to New Zealand. And just so you know, NEITHER RUSSO OR I ARE JEALOUS THAT SHE GETS TO GO. Nope. We are happy, HAPPY FOR HER WE TELL YOU. (And in truth, we are.)

So. Um. Mickey:

And now you know all about Loraine. She's cool. Her writing is cool. Leave a comment, win her book, and you'll be cool. Oh wait! You already are! Well, you'll be entertained then.

Tune in Friday for the Interview Blooper Reel--some of which is downright embarrassing to some of us.

See you then!

Author Interview! Loraine Scott! Maestro of Murder and Mayhem - Part One

2011-10-17T05:00:00.000-06:00

Hello All!

Today we are thrilled to bring you another Author Interview. Loraine Scott has been a part of your three favorite Gnomeslayers' writing group since . . . forever. She has recently published the second in a three-book mystery series, and we lost no time rushing over to her joint to interview her.

We'll be posting short video interviews with Loraine this week - starting today. Then, if y'all who are interested will leave a comment in the comments section telling us either your favorite mystery of all time (any media), or the first mystery you ever read, we'll enter you in a drawing for Loraine's latest book: NYC: Murder, Brooklyn Style. (You can also click on that link back there, go to Loraine's blog, and buy the book yourself, if you like.)

So. A few caveats: I edited and created this movie at 1:00 in the morning. I inexplicably titled it "Loraine Scott: Missionary, Cop, Author." Inexplicably. She's been all of those things, but why did I put "Missionary" first? I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me.

Also, we'll post a video, as I mentioned, today, and then another on Wednesday. Then on Friday we'll post the Blooper Reel! Judging by the way I titled the clip, the bloopers should be good.

Righteo. Here you are, dear readers and writers. Loraine Scott. Author, Cop, Missionary, Mom, Grandmother, choir-dress-hemmer-so-Maegan-can-wear-it-in-New-Zealand, and all around cool chick.

(That screencapture above is hilarious. At no time did Loraine sleep like this during the interview.)

Enjoy!

Titus Androncus: Halloween Shakespeare. Brace Yourselves.

2011-10-14T08:28:00.003-06:00

*Caution: Squeamish Alert* If you are, you shouldn't. Watch the clip, I mean.

So. The Shakespeare Festival. Sounds like someplace you'd go to be elevated. To be set adrift on a river of Renaissance revelry. To immerse yourself in the language, ambiance, and romance of that which makes us love the Bard. Yes?

And then there's Titus Andronicus--The most bloody, gruesome, violent, barbaric, and horrifying of all of Shakespeare's plays, and his most popular in his day. It's a script that is unabashed in it's debauchery. So much so that very few in modern times have attempted to stage it. Too hard on the audience. Too hard on the actors. To much criticism to set yourself up for as a director.

Enter American Fork High School and the State Shakespeare Competition.

The drama teacher at this school doesn't shy away from difficult questions or themes. And he has a brilliant eye for the big picture. So naturally, he decided to do a condensed version of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus for the Ensemble division of the competition this year. With kids ranging in age from 15 to 18. And pulling no punches with the subject matter.

His scene won.

Do you want to see why? Aside from them being stinking amazing? Instead of stepping around the violence, the director chose to portray it all as a sort of Cirque du Freak, using garish characters and colors and extreme costuming and special effects (well, stage effects with makeup and sets, anyway). The result was that instead of just feeling bludgeoned by a blood-fest, I came away with a clear picture of what happens when anger and revenge take over in one's mind. What extremes it can go to. And that our world really really needs to check itself. Even my daughter, who is extremely visual and sensitive, came away from this amazed, thoughtful, and astonished. "Mercy is nobility's true badge."

So. Here's the clip. Be aware that there are depictions of stabbings, dismemberment, forced cannibalism, and rape (which happens off stage)--all of which are in Shakespeare's script. Also be aware that this clip will likely not offer the same impact that this scene had live--partly because of audio and distance issues--but I hope you'll get the idea that I think the director and Mr. Shakespeare were trying to get across. I hope it isn't offensive to anyone, as I don't think it was done simply for the shock value. I'd be interested in your thoughts. And I'm a little nervous. :)

A brief synopsis of what you'll be seeing (and this is with a LOT of the violent plot removed): Titus Andronicus returns to Rome victorious over the Goths. He has the Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and her three sons as prisoners. We meet his daughter Lavinia, whom he loves. Titus declines the throne of Rome, offering it to his son Saturninus. Then, despite Tamora's pleas, Titus sacrifices her eldest son to avenge his sons' deaths during the war. Saturninus, who has denounced the Andronicus family, shocks Titus by marrying Tamora. Tamora exacts revenge on Titus by setting her remaining sons on Lavinia. They rape her, then to prevent her telling anyone, cut off her hands and tongue (yeah. sick, bad, and wrong.) Titus goes nuts, captures Tamora's sons, and kills them himself. Then he uses their blood and bones to make a pasty (pie), that he will feed to Tamora at a feast. At the feast Titus shows to what depths he has lost it by breaking his daughter's neck, so neither she nor he will suffer any more. Then he tells Tamora that she's eating her sons, force-feeds her, and everyone kills everyone, and it ends.

Hmmm. Sounds like a bloodbath. I remember it being horrifying and cool and awful and wow, in sort of a Heath Ledger/Dark Knight kind of way. But maybe I'm warped. Which is weird, because I'm so not. Anyway. Brace yourselves. Here it is:

Um.
Happy Halloween!

I got mistaken for a hooker

2011-10-12T05:00:00.002-06:00

Yep, the title is right. And to think I wasn't even wearing my thigh high leather boots.

Lemme give you the dirt. I was a tad cranky because I wasn't able to see Lion King with Maegan and Janiel this weekend. The past few days have been filled with redunkulous demands. So, instead of stressing I found a way to bargain with my bestie, Jameses. I would deliver his four large boxes of hair products to a salon downtown, if he would go to the bank for me and take some money out of my account. I needed some dough for a serious shop-a-thon.

After our errands, we'd meet up up at the sushi bar for grub. So, after nearly falling flat on my face while walking up ten flights of stairs in my bold buckled stiletto-heeled booties. And getting stuck in traffic. Not to mention accidentally flashing the bloke in the car next to me, I arrived at the bar and plunked my toukus down on the stool. Jameses kissed me on the cheek and passed me a wad of cash.

The server, who looked like a cross between Frankenstein and Chris Brown, couldn't stop staring. He stared at my booties and curve hugging dress and said, "We don't allow your type in here."

Jameses went into a fit, his eyes nearly went cross-eyed as he said, "Is it because I'm gay?"

The guy did a double take and said, "We don't care about that, its just . . . you can't pay a hooker and expect me not to say something."

I launch into a giggling fit and start flipping my head around, trying to find the lady of the night. I take a sip of my lemon water and say, "Wait, where is she? I wanna see."

The server then fidgets as he stands in place and says, "Ma'am, don't play coy. I know what you are."

My excitement vanishes as I realize I won't see the hooker because this bloke thinks I'm the hooker. I'm baffled because why wouldn't he think differently? I'm wearing stiletto booties and being handed a wad of cash by a man who freely kisses me on the cheek and smacks my rump when I hit the restroom.

So, instead of getting pissed at this server's assumptions, I smile widely. At least he thinks I worth a wad of cash. Sure, the bills might be ones but the server doesn't know that, all he sees is a wad of $dinero.

The lesson is simple-sometimes people will judge you. You can't control where their mind will go but the trick is to not care. Which is harder than ever at times.

The Raven

2011-10-10T08:00:00.000-06:00

*WARNING: This post is intended mainly for our readers of the female persuasion. Guys, you may want to click right on by. Or feel free to keep reading, but don't say I didn't warn you.*

In college, my Animal Reproduction professor was very passionate about his subject. One of our final assignments of the semester was a creative art project (keep in mind, this was a science class). The guidelines were simple: the project could take any form we liked, as long as it had something to do with reproduction.

You can imagine I was at a bit of a loss. I've always liked art, but art mixed with biology? It was difficult to reconcile the two different halves of my brain. With so many possibilities for medium and subject matter, I had no idea where to start. Plus I was already frazzled over preparing for my final exams. So I shoved the reproduction-as-art assignment to the back of my head and concentrated on not failing another organic chemistry exam.

But then a weird thing happened. Persistent, little cawing words kept floating up to the front of my brain. They went something like, Not again, nevermore. Sleep and Ibuprophen I implore. Nevermore. Nevermore . . .

It's amazing what your subconscious can do for you when you give it a chance. Suddenly, I had my repro art project all figured out without even trying! (Yeah, it was more fun than studying chemistry.)

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I studied, bored and weary,

Over many a complex and curious volume of forgotten lecture lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of something gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis but stress," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door."

"'Tis the stress, and nothing more."

But, distinctly I remember, the signs of this curse of my gender.

Like clockwork, it appears unbidden at the door.

Regularly, it descends as uninvited as before.

Annoyed, I wished the morrow was not a day of finals sorrow,

So that I could stay at home, safe behind my bedroom door.

Sleep and Ibuprophen, I implore!

These things I require, these and nothing more.

Thus I sat, stiffly boiling, dismayed at this interruption in my toiling,

this inconvenient, disastrous, insufferable monthly chore.

Though the hour was ungodly, yet I still had much to study,

but for this all-too-familiar caller rapping at my chamber door.

Every time it comes, I plead, not again! Nevermore!

Yet it waits, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,

perched outside my chamber door.

A burden to be lifted

Nevermore. Nevermore.

This is why I don't write poetry. But at least I got full points on the assignment. Check out Poe's original version here.

Postscript: Sadly, I can't remember most of the other students' projects, but to this day I give props to the girl who made a uterus-shaped pinata out of papier mache.

Teenage Halloweenies

2011-10-07T05:00:00.001-06:00

October Challenge: Favorite Halloween Things

Hello All!
Today my fonts are funky and my presentation persnickety, because I am writing this post on my iPad from a cozy hotel room in a little university town quite a bit south of where I live, and safe from the snow and windchill outside. I am surrounded on both sides and below by junior high school students, and am just a few blocks from a beautiful, if chilly, replica of William Shakespeare's Globe Theater in England.

It isn't supposed to snow this time of year. And watching King Lear prance about beneath an open roof without his shirt on as he goes slowly mad due to the treachery of two of his daughters, and his banishment of the third (and favorite), did nothing to warm us up. By the time Lear's jester was poisoning himself from grief and the King's hair had been pulled out in lunacy-induced patches until he resembled Christopher Lloyd, I, and all the little Thespians with whom I shivered, decided enough was enough. So we abandoned His Royal Crazypants right before he put his own eyes out, and came back to the warmth of our rooms and in my case, the chill of Mr. Ben and his friend Jerry. (Correction: It isn't Lear who gets his eyes put out, it's Gloucster. And by all accounts we missed a marvelously gory scene that made people shriek. Maegan? You should go down and see it, yeah?)

What does all of this have to do with Halloween? Not much. Except that the State Shakespeare Competition always takes place early in the freaky month of October, and it's one of my favorite things about this time of year. I get to work with incandescently hyper newbie teenagers, teach them English in a new (old) tongue, watch them go from befuddled, to confused, to perplexed, to Ahhhhh! to I get it! to "check me and my bad Hamlet out." It's maddening and energetic and explosive and . . . hang on a sec. I'm hearing them slamming doors and stomping and it is past curfew. We don't want to get kicked out. I have to go down and go Opera on all of them. Give me a mo . . .

(I'm serious. That just happened.)

My favorite thing about Halloween? Teenagers.

(I seriously have no formatting on this thing, so pretend my headings are underlined, and when emphasis is needed I have put to clever use Italics and font changes. Also pretend that this is being written by JK Rowling, or The Pioneer Woman, or someone equally scintillating. I mean, while you're at it.)

Favorite Teenage Costume: My friend went as a tornado - she wore a grey sweatsuit and glued little farm animals and houses and furniture all over herself. When people asked what she was she spun around and made a roaring sound.

Also, my little pre-teen had me make (I'm sorry. Let me say that again: she had me MAKE) (I am domestically impaired. That I MADE anything is just this side of the discovery of cold fusion) a costume for her wherein she was Frankenstein's monster carrying Dr. Frankenstein on her back. When I get home and can post pictures, and can find one, I will. Post it. Here. If you want. Did I mention it was a miracle that I made it?)

Favorite Movie: We used to go see "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" at a little old theater where everyone had it memorized and yelled out advice to Don Knotts, which he regularly ignored.

My teenagers have finally reached a point where they can watch it without having bad dreams about organs playing by themselves, and garden shears stabbing the painting of a woman.

Favorite Food: Gingerbread cookies cut like Jack o' Lanterns, iced and decorated with red hots and mini chocolate chips, and then all eaten by my kids and their friends (and me) within minutes after they're done. Also, my kids' halloween candy.

Halloween candy teenage memory: When I lived in Germany we had to go on base to trick or treat because the Germans didn't know what it was and thought we were possessed when we showed up on their doorstep dressed up like Pippi Longstocking and carrying a stuffed monkey. There were rumors of gangs of teenagers roaming the base and calling themselves "The Bag Rippers". They would (ready for this?) pull out knives and rip the bottoms of the trick or treat bags of innocent little ghosties and witchies and steal all the candy. This caused all of us little peeps, including those who decided to dress up as Oliver Twist because we really liked knickers and our sister had a pair of 1970's flowered knickers which made us look like Charles Dickens meets The Mammas and the Pappas, to clutch our trick or treat bags tightly to our chests and toss threatening looks at everyone we passed in order to not get our bag ripped.

Luckily for THEM, the Bag Rippers never ran into some of us. Plus, I think they were just a rumor.

Favorite Music: Oooh! Phantom of the Opera is fun to play as little Halloweenies come to the door! This has nothing to do with teenagers. Although my son is a teenager and loves Jimmi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Favorite cool thing a teenager did on Halloween: We have a neighbor who used to be associate dean of the theater department at our local University, and he and his teenage sons set up EPIC haunted houses and themed yards. One year they actually had the Black Pearl sinking into their front yard, complete with Pirates hanging from the masts and fog shrouding the grass. His sons were live pirates who would attack when you got close. Epic in it's awesomeness.

VERY FAVORITE TEENAGE HALLOWEEN THING: All of my young college-aged nieces and nephews come over for Chili (plain or 3-way: over spaghetti noodles, and topped with cheese and oyster crackers. I'm serious! Go to Ohio. They do this there. It's YUM) and mulled cider and games. And for those that don't scram to their own Halloween partays, the unmitigated delight of helping me take my littlest dude(s) (the older littlest dudes, who are well into teenage-hood, haven't decided if they're too old to trick or treat yet) around the neighborhood to beg candy.

I LOVE this time of year. Even if it comes with unseasonal snow, grundles of Junior High students, and too much Ben and Jerry's too late at night. The leaves, the smells, the traditions, the family, the excitement and energy in the air all makes me want to bottle it up so I can open it in winter and take a whiff.

Ahhhhh.

(Sorry! No pics! I'll post them when I get home.)

Embarrassing moment alert

2011-10-05T05:10:00.001-06:00

October Challenge: Halloween month adventures

This week was my step dad's 60th birthday and the one thing he asked from me was to head out of town and hit fruit stand way.

He expected a purely country experience where we browsed though side street produce stands and heard the crunch of Fall leaves on the ground. His eyes shined as he talked about his picturesque weekend where the family sipped apple cider on a porch, listened to nothing but the quietness of the mountains. Unfortunately, what he got was the exact opposite of his wish.

Sure, we drove up the mountains and enjoyed the cool fall weather but we also got a flat tire. No biggie. My date, who was a country boy from the deep South, helped fix the flat. I was completely baffled that this bloke was mine and began to pace the asphalt. I stared at the trace of black smudged all over his cheek and thought, "Oh, yeah, this dude has earned his bonus points-changing a flat, spending time with my 'rents."

So, instead of watching my footing, I get distracted as my mom begins screaming, like she has a squirrel in her shirt.

And instead of acting cool and just glancing around to see what was up, I began screaming as well. Me and nature so don't mix.

My mom's hands are shaking and she says, "Skunk, look out."

But she's too late, I end up tripping over the skunk and as a sweet gift to my sorry-butt the lil animal emitted his nasty smell all over me.

The skunk tottered off and at this point, I am shocked. I stand there with my mouth open and staring at everyone's grossed out faces.

My mom glances at the fixed SUV and says, "You smell like someone wiped cow dung all over you."

I cannot stop giggling as I say, "Really? I thought I smell like lavender and cake."

I then get delegated to the back of the SUV by the groceries, produce and etc. My long legs are crammed and I am sitting on a flashlight. I smell like cow dung, as my mom repeatedly reminds me. I am as uncomfortable as a hobbit in a hatbox.

With a sigh, I wipe the dirt off my legs. I lean to my left and rest my head on the seat in front of me. To my surprise, hott country guy turns and faces me. He places his calloused hand on my arm and wipes the hair out of my face.

There are no thoughts of skunks or flat tires, I feel rejuvenated and calm.

Needless to say, Fall is my new fave season-thanks to a country boy from the deep South.

Potions, Plastic Bugs, and Picture Books

2011-10-03T07:30:00.001-06:00

October Challenge: Favorite Halloween Things

1. Song.

2. Book. When I was little, I loved this picture book about a boy (I think) who lived in an apartment building and thought his neighbor was a witch. When she invites him over for Halloween, he learns that she's actually a kind woman who's just batty enough to be charming. The only other details I recall are that she does yoga and she uses a wiry strand of her own hair to pick a lock on a doorknob. She may have had a bunch of cats, too. (Is this sounding random enough, yet?) I can't remember the name of the book, but I've been looking for it for years. If you recognize it, please let me know in the comments! I would be most grateful. We're talking mid- to late-eighties era.

3. Movie.

4. Costume. One year in college, I glued a line of little plastic spiders crawling out of my ear and down my neck and bobby-pinned fake cockroaches and a rubber rat into my hair. I completed the look with plain, blue hospital scrubs and went about my campus business as if everything were completely normal. I'm not gonna lie. People were impressed. Alas, I did not get a picture, but you can believe it was pretty awesome.

4a. Costume. No, I have never dressed up as Ian McKellen for Halloween, but I do like the idea. With a t-shirt like that, you could be Ian McKellen, you could be Gandalf, you could be Magneto, or Magdalf, or Ganneto, or some strange combination of all five. See what I mean? Brilliant.

5. Treat. Witch's Brew, because dry ice is fun. (But also dangerous, kids.)

6. Memory. When I was in 5th grade, my school had a Halloween story contest. I took first prize: a package of Reese's peanut butter cups plus a tiny notion of, Hey, maybe I should look into this writing thing . . .

If you're curious about this embarrassingly self-aware, somewhat preachy baby writing attempt, I've included the story below.

Wow, you really want to read this, huh? Okay, but keep in mind that I was eleven when I wrote it. Also, I was a strange child. Here it is, unedited (even though I really wanted to). *cringes, plugs ears, looks away*

"A Nightmare to Remember"

The girl screamed! Geneva jumped. "It's only a movie, silly." Andy, her five-year-old brother giggled. She blushed. He was her baby-sitting charge for the night. He was also seven years younger than her. Even he wasn't afraid of "Aracnophobia."

The storm raged outside, brushing the trees up against her family room window. It made them look like they were alive. Yep, she thought. It's definitely October.

Geneva looked at the clock and gasped. She clicked off the T.V. and said, "Time for bed." Andy sighed, and followed her up to his room. He was very obedient for his age.

Geneva helped her brother put on his pajamas and brush his teeth. He was rather stubby, with straight brown hair and sparkling green eyes.

On the other hand, Geneva was tall and thin. Her long, blond hair fell in loose curls around her shoulders. Her eyes were a dull blue. She had high cheekbones.

She reluctantly kissed her brother good night and went into her own room. Geneva changed into her night shirt and crawled into her bed. Her parents were due home soon. The house was full of creaks and snaps. Then it fell dead silent.

She heard a voice singing in the distance. The voice was eerie, yet beautiful. She arose out of bed, and was suddenly walking along a beach. She wanted to turn and run back to her bed. But the voice beckoned her. It dragged her on.

The water wasn't crashing up over the rocks like any normal beach. Yet it was just sitting there. The water was black. It sent chills up and down Geneva's spine. The air was very foggy.

Finally, she came to a boat. It was shaped like a canoe. But it was much wider.

There was a man standing next to the boat. He wore a black cloak. The hood covered his eyes. Geneva approached him. He took off the hood. His eyes were a deep yellow. He said nothing, but helped her step into the boat.

She could still hear the voice. It got louder as the man pushed it off the bank and slowly paddled across the black ocean.

Out of the fog appeared an island. The boat docked. Geneva and the man stepped out of it.

The man led her through a spooky forest. She could no longer hear the voice. Only music. And a whole bunch of different voices. The man led her through a clearing. There was a huge pot. It bubbled over. And a fire was lit under it. Geneva saw witches, gravestones, ghosts, demons, and jack-o-lanters. They were all singing and dancing. But the jack-o-lanterns weren't ordinary. They were alive. They danced around on skinny green legs.

When they were out of the clearing, Geneva heard the voice again.

The man led her through a clump of trees, and into another clearing. Geneva saw a figure standing in the clearing. The figure turned around, and looked her straight in the eye. It was a woman. It was her that had been singing. She was the most gorgeous creature Geneva had ever seen. Her long, black hair was pulled in a loose knot behind her head. Her eyes were so brown they were nearly black. Her skin was smooth and young and slightly pale.

Geneva turned her attention to a large black cat the woman was stroking in her arms.

"Geneva, you came." The woman startled her with the words. "I am Devauna."

"Where am I?" Geneva asked.

"Don't you know? You are on the island of Halloween. The most magical place in creation." The woman replied.

"Why am I here?" Geneva asked. She was full of questions.

"I am Devauna, the ruler of this island, and the creator of Halloween. All of the other holidays are about good and happiness. So I created a holiday that was all about ghosts and demons. The human race naturally added on to that. They created jack-o-lanterns and vampires and so on. I also wanted it to be fun for children. I loved seeing the children put on costumes and go walking around their neighborhoods, trying to get candy and treats. I sent my demons out to the world to see how Halloween was getting along. But when they returned, they told me that the world had taken advantage of Halloween. Teenagers used it as a night for nasty ticks and pranks. It caused great unhappiness. I didn't mean for Halloween to be unhappy. I wanted it to be great fun. And scary. I am a good witch. I really am."

"Yes, but why am I here?" Geneva asked.

"I need your help. I need a part of you, Geneva. I need a part that only an innocent child can give me. I need a part of your heart. The part that is dedicated only to Halloween. You must give it to me Geneva. You must. But you do not have to do it now." The witch set the cat down. "Here." She slipped a silver ring on to Geneva's left ring finger. It glowed a green light. "Take this. When you are ready, twist it once to the left, then three times to the right." Devauna said.

The man took her hand and led her back to the boat. They paddled across the black ocean once again. He left her there on the lonely beach.

Geneva's eyes shot open. The morning light poured through her bedroom window. It was only a dream! She laughed out loud.

She jumped out of bed and looked at her hand. Then she turned ghostly pale. There, on the ring finger of her left hand was the silver ring that Devauna had given her.

It was real. Every moment of that ghastly nightmare had been real. She couldn't deny it. The proof was right in front of her.

Peace-Out. Right Now!

2011-09-30T05:00:00.028-06:00

Do you worry?

Freak out?

Constantly stress over mistakes you made in the past? Like that time when you ordered salsa on your Mexican-ish-but-not-authentic-pulled-pork-salad-with-black-beans but you really meant to order pico? Or when you forgot to file your taxes?

Do you worry about the future when you might not get accepted into law school, or your kid might qualify to attend the University of Walmart, or you might not survive child-birth, or the economy might go kerblooey just when you open your new underwater BB-stacking business?

Does the present give you hives because you can't do anything about the past or the future, and both of them are slapping you upside your psyche?

Me to. And the thing is, it's exhausting worrying about all the stuff I can't change. I always do it, and it works out exactly the same way every time: I can't sleep, I lose hair, can't write anything creative because all of my synapses are exhausted from worrying about the past and the future, and my friends are all mysteriously busy and can't do lunch, which I suspect is because I talk constantly about the past and the future.

In all honesty, this is me. Has been me. But I don't want it to be me. I remember as a kid when I became aware that the world wasn't a warm fuzzy and perfectly safe place like I'd believed it was. It was about the time Hurricane Agnes hit Maryland and our basement flooded. I had always said my bedtime prayers, and suddenly they morphed from saying "Thank you for the sunshine and flowers and lightening bugs, and make Eric-who-always-wins-the-spelling-bee-and-is-really-smart-in-math like me back," to this: "Please keep fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and anything that makes us bleed away from us." Every. Night.

But I'm tired of it now. So I've been thinking that I am going to dump the past, forget the future (except for reasonable goals and planning), and just live in the moment. This moment. (This one *. Yep, that little * right over there. That moment.) And I'm really really serious. It's too much for me to carry around my past mistakes and all the bad, sad, or scary things that ever happened to me, along with everything that might happen in the future. I can't take it. I'm just going to focus on right now. Diving into the pool of now if you will, and swimming with the current. Looking with magnifying lenses at each moment (*) and what there is to enjoy and/or learn from it.

Like right this minute, I am typing on a really cool MacBook. And I am writing on a blog with two other writers with whom I am lucky to be associating, because if you haven't noticed, they're quite lovely.

Right now, I am writing for you - someone kind enough to stop by and read our wandering, rambling, spazzy musings on life with a bit of writing-angst on the side. Someone who often leaves insightful comments. Or doesn't, and we get the positive vibes anyway. Someone who is really cool and valuable to a lot of people in this world.

This very minute I am writing because I am blessed to live in a country where I am free to learn how to do it. Free to write what I think. And free to feel what I feel.

Finally, I am writing at this precise moment in an unusual bit of quiet, because my husband has my, er, more vociferous dudes with him doing guy stuff, and my girls are otherwise occupied. So, here I sit. I blissfully quiet. Writing with friends, to you, our other cyber friends.

I like this moment. And that's all I'm going to think about right now.

Peace like a river, baby.

(Bugs in Irish Sunset. Ain't they purty?)

Navy EOD-what can you learn from these brave warriors?

2011-09-28T05:49:00.000-06:00

One of my fave shows is Surviving the Cut on Discovery Channel. They delve into what it takes to make it in the military elite. This week they focused on the Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal crew. They are highly trained technicians who analyze and handle explosives.

I bet you're thinking, "Great, what does this have to do with me?"

You want your dream? You gotta learn from the finest go-getter's ever. Every day they give 100% because they know if they slack there are no do-overs. Navy EOD's are relentless- they continue on despite physical exhaustion. The key to their success is to shift their mental focus. Having a bad day? Clear your mind. Forget about your tiredness, hurt muscles or etc.

Stretch yourself as hard as you can- the end result will be worth it.

PS- If you want a more in depth look at the Navy EOD crew, watch The Hurt Locker. Please note the movie is pretty intense and not for everyone.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2011-09-26T10:00:00.001-06:00

October has always been my favorite month. Maybe because it's my birthday month. Maybe because Halloween is the best holiday ever invented. This October is fixing to be truly epic. Wanna know why? Oh, good! Because I have a whole list of reasons.

1. Not one, but two books that I can't wait to read are coming out in October: HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by Sara Zarr and THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater.

My personal reading tastes lean more towards stuff with at least some element of fantasy. Nevertheless, I'm a huge fan of Sara Zarr's contemporary YA books. She doesn't shy away from subject matter that isn't exactly warm and fuzzy and her narrators are always so honest and spot-on. Plus all of her books have such pretty covers.

I've talked about my Maggie Stiefvater obsession before. Her stories always contain an element of fantasy, sprinkled with a healthy dose of teen angst, sarcasm, and romance. Honestly, she had me at SHIVER. Her books also have pretty covers. Maybe I'm just a sucker for pretty book covers.

2. Odd that I've never mentioned this on the blog before, but I love Sting. A lot. I grew up listening to his music. Long before Viggo, there was Sting. How considerate of him to release a Best of 25 Years album just in time for my birthday!

Don't stare too long. You could go blind.

3. Disneyland! My favorite vacation spot in the world (apart from Wales, of course). First stop: the re-vamped Star Tours ride. Then it'll be nice to visit some old favorites: Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, and I haven't been back since they came to their senses and restored Captain Eo. I mean, really? Honey I Shrunk the Audience? I'm sure glad that's over.

4. New Zealand! This could become my new favorite vacation spot. But I won't know unless I go there, right? So it's a good thing I'm going there. As soon as I finish up at Disneyland, I'm heading down to Middle Earth to tour with the North American Welsh Choir. Which reminds me, we haven't had a Welsh song in a little while.

Run For Fun! Kill Me Now!

2011-09-23T05:00:00.002-06:00

I hate running.
And not just a little bit.
I hate, loathe, despise, and abominate running.

Dancing. That's what I like. I could dance and dance until the moon turned blue. Even at my age. I used to dance six hours a day. It was like breathing to me. And I was in wicked-awesome shape, too. I could run up hundreds of stairs without the slightest gasp. Had quadruceps on my quadruceps. And I almost had a 6-pack (Okay, fine. It was a four-pack. But I wasn't on a food-free diet, and I wasn't doing steroids. So, you know, I kind of think it was legit.)

That was then. This is now. Now I have four kids and no six hours a day to dance. But I've gotta move, or my back freezes up like teenage boy on his first date, and my ribs go out and leave me to spend the evening by myself.

So I run. And I do it every day. And it bores the living shortcake out of me because there are no leaps, no battements, no voltas, no botafogos, and definitely no heel-turn-spins. Also no buck-rhythm time steps. My four-pack is a one-pack, my quads look like my hams (which look like the honey-baked ham we had for dinner), and I wheeze jumping up from the couch to answer the phone. But I run.

So, this last weekend I was whining to my husband about it as I went out the door to drag myself through a few miles of not dancing and not having fun while not dancing. And he said "Why do you hate running?"

After looking at him like, duh, I said, "Because I don't have fun doing it."

Then he said, "Why? Why don't you have fun doing it?" (this from the man who just finished a 100-mile foot race through the Rocky Mountains. Yeah. We'll discuss his mental fitness later.)

So I said, " . . . . . . . . "

And he just looked at me right back.

Finally I realized he was telling me that if I wasn't having fun running, it was my own fault. I could have fun running, if I decided running was a fun thing to do. Like, fun because it was time spent by myself; me time, if you will. Fun because I do it in the morning and mornings are peaceful. Fun because my legs are moving and my lungs are moving and this tells me I'm alive, and at my age that's a good thing. Fun because my blood pumps and my muscles hurt the next day, which means they're getting strong. And above all, I grow a butt and it fits into my jeans instead of hanging out somewhere around the backs of my knees.

OH! *insert sound effect that accompanies epiphanies here* So like, whether or not I enjoy what I am doing has to do with the attitude I bring to it. I decide whether I hate, loathe, despise, and abominate it or not. And if I do, I shouldn't be surprised that it isn't fun.

Huh. Well. I think life should be fun. So, rather than waiting for someone else to make it fun, I'm going to make it fun. I'll start by grinning at the gym tomorrow. I hope it fools my legs into thinking they're doing a wicked Samba on the treadmill. Because that would be fun!

(Now, if you feel like it, tell me what you do to make odious tasks more enjoyable. I'd love to learn!)

A lil pep talk just for you

2011-09-21T05:55:00.000-06:00

Is it possible to get tweeked on Green Tea? I ask that with a smile because I, unknowingly, ingested the equivalent of 4 tea bags of green tea. At the moment, I am more spastic than a squirrel on speed.

Anyways, today I'm wondering why we, as dreamers, are so hard on ourselves? While sitting in a gorgeous sitting room at a fancy schmancy hotel I felt horribly out of place. Most of the ladies in this room are dressed in flouncy floral skirts with velvet shoes. Me? I am garbed in my usual plaid chucks with my brand spanking new leather headband.

I can't help but overhear random strangers bag on themselves. Even my sister babbles on and on about how horrid she is at everything. After a while, I began to wonder why we (myself included) only see the faults in ourselves. Why don't we see how awesome we are?

Maybe you haven't heard a compliment in a while or maybe you are depleted from the demands of life. Well, never fear, Russo is here. And lemme tell you that you are freaking incredible.

The fact that you are chasing your dream is rather remarkable. Never forget that your efforts are making a difference. You are fighting for your dream-no matter what is thrown in your path-keep fighting. And never forget-you're freaking incredible.

A Good Story

2011-09-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

My mom has a certain criterion for whether a movie is good or not. Actually, we as a family have a criterion: if Mom stays awake through the whole movie, it's good. If she doesn't, it's not. By this measure, there are way more bad movies than good in the world, but that's not what I'm talking about today.

Whenever my mom is describing a movie she likes, she'll say, "It's a good story." My whole life, this has been the most important factor in evaluating the movies I watch. Is it a good story? As I've gotten older, the Good Story scale has also bled over into the books I read. It's how I decide how much value a book has for me. Is it a good story?

When I say good story, I don't mean plot or narrative structure or the try-fail cycle or any of those other mechanical terms we learn about in writing classes. It's more subjective than that. It's something you feel. It's the moment where you say, "Oh! Okay. Someone else out there gets it too."

Anyway, a few months ago, I was talking to Janiel - okay, I was whining - again about how hard and frustrating (discouraging, soul-sucking) it is to write a book. Finally she said, "So why do you write?"

Good question.

I didn't have an answer at the time. I had to go in a corner and think for awhile. Seriously, why was I doing this to myself? There had to be a reason, beyond my pathological compulsion to finish everything I start.

And there it was: I wanted to tell stories. Good stories. I wanted to add my own to the vast canon of human imagination. Granted, they might be retellings of stuff that's already out there, but so what? All those Good Stories haven't been around this long for nothing. You'll find that they crop up just about anywhere, once you start looking: a poem, a song, ancient myths, scripture, a rerun of 3rd Rock from the Sun, I could go on . . .

It's true that I don't always enjoy writing, but I do it because I love Good Stories. I believe my book is one such Good Story, even if I want to strangle it sometimes. And so I will keep at it until it's done.

We know my reason, now let's hear yours. Why do you write? And what are some of your favorite Good Stories?

Open Your Mouth Wider, I Can't Hear You

2011-09-16T05:00:00.003-06:00

This is my kid going a little crazy on the webcam. He sort of looks like he was painted by Edvard Munch, don't you think?

Yeah. This is pretty much how my child lives. He speaks in ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME, and eats hyperbole for breakfast. He is hilarious and exhausting. And I wonder how he can live like that.

Here, for instance, is an interchange we had right after he biffed it in a major way on his scooter as he was going to school. A Very Large Puddle was involved, as well as Some Rocks:

"Are you okay, honey?"

"NO! I'M NOT OKAY! I AM BLEEDING LIKE CRAZY!"

"Wellll, it's not too bad."

"YES IT IS! LOOK AT ALL THAT BLOOD! IT'S ALMOST ON MY LEG!"

"Er, What happened?"

"I'M NEVER RIDING A SCOOTER AGAIN!"

"Oh, sweetie, I'm sure its--"

"MY CLOTHES ARE WET!"

"I know. We can dry them. What hap--"

"EVEN MY SHOES ARE WET! I'M NEVER RIDING THAT SOOTER AGAIN!"

"You need to ride it, or you'll be too afraid to get back on and then you won't have that joy anymore." (Notice the outstanding parenting technique here, where I ignore his pain and regale him with parenting 101 tenets.)

"IT ISN'T JOY, IT'S CRASHING!"

"Hmmm. All right. Let's get you home and put some hydrogen peroxide on--"

"WHAT?! NO WAY! YOU'RE NOT PUTTING THAT ON ME! I ONLY WANT TRIPLE-ANTI-BIOXIDE!"

*giggle* "Um. Okay. It'll be fine, sweetie, promise. It will only sting a little. Probably not at all."

"IT BETTER NOT! AND CAN I HAVE SOMETHING TO DRINK? AND MAYBE I SHOULD STAY HOME FROM SCHOOL AND JUST LAY ON THE COUCH AND STUFF. CAN YOU HURRY? I'M BLEEDING, YOU KNOW."

Yeah.

The thing is, he really feels it. And I used to run all over myself trying to calm him down and help him see that things weren't that bad. But now--I realize that if I let him just express all those feelings, even in all-caps, it passes. Relatively quickly. It's when I try to fix his feelings RIGHT NOW that it drags on and gets worse.

Hmmm. So. Maybe there's a message in here. About just relaxing and letting things run their course and then seeing what is left before doing anything. Just . . . living in the moment. Respecting the feelings you (and others) are having. Letting yourself feel them, acknowledge them, and then letting them go. This is what ALL-CAPS-BOY does when I let him. And he always goes skipping out of the room, having forgotten what was wrong, and moving on to the next thing.

Feelings aren't bad. They're just indicators that something is bothering you. Figure that out, and you can move on.

So, I finally did talk the little dude into scootering to school. And I went with him. He spent the entire ride telling me exactly HOW TO RIDE A SCOOTER WITHOUT FALLING DOWN. We got there half an hour late, but we got there. And there are plans to scooter again tomorrow. AND IT'S OKAY, MOM. WE LEARN FROM THESE THINGS.

Yep.

We DO!

How NOT to wear thigh high leather boots

2011-09-14T05:09:00.000-06:00

Do you ever just have one of those day where nothings going right? Today I went to a friend's wedding. Where most people attend an event with zero drama, I have to make a complete idjut out of myself.

The only thing that went in my favor was the fact that the bridesmaid dress was stunning. I know, rare right? Maybe you, yourself, have a horrid bridal fashion memory-I'm dying to know about it. Anyways, the dress was dark blue and beautifully long (And with my long legs a flowing skirt is a miracle. )

Anyways, back to the horrid day. I was just leaving my condo when I slipped and fell on the newly waxed floor. I completely destroyed my crocodile embossed high heels. Great, I thought, that's the second pair of shoes I've broken in one month.

So, I had to make a shoe change in less than 5 minutes. Instead of opting for a simple black shoe like a normal person I had to add some flair. Out came the thigh high leather boots. I figured they were wedding appropriate because the hem of the dress glided along the floor.

How was I to know the line of the boots showed in every picture? Not only was I mortified but I also got cussed out by the bride, who hadn't eaten anything all morning. Oh, she was livid at my sorry-butt. So, I scrambled around in my clutch to find her a granola bar and stat. She calmed down, grateful for the food. Mid her apology for her snipping comment, a bird flew over head and pooed on my hair. Everyone is watching-her mom, who has more class than the Queen, the hott guy who's my date and the bride's teacup poodle.

Somehow, I look more ridiculous than the dog who's wearing a yamaka.

Anyways, the lesson of the story? Roll with the difficult times because they might just bring the best reward ever.

Lemme give you the dirt. At the end of the night, I sat with my legs elevated in regal fainting couch. In walks my super-hott date, who declares that the country club has a vacant pool. We stroll up the little hill and while everyone celebrates the bride and groom leaving for their honeymoon, I gaze at the moon lit water. I can see super-hotties reflection. And on a day filled with drama, bird catastrophe and more, I let go of the stress. Exhale deeply and leap into the pool.

Getting My Emma Frost On

2011-09-12T10:00:00.000-06:00

This week, Janiel, Russo and I will get together with our writers' group for our monthly meeting. For the first time in a long time, I'll bring a short sample from my book to be workshopped.

And I'm scared, y'all.

Not because the people in our writers' group are scary. They're all lovely, wise, talented writers who have already taught me a whole bunch over the years. You may know them from their work over at Smashing Stories.

No, I'm scared because - as Janiel has so colorfully put it - sharing your work with a critique group is kind of like placing your naked baby in the middle of the street so all the townspeople can come out and throw rocks at it. And since it is, after all, your baby lying there on the cold asphalt, you feel every one of those rocks. They might as well be pelting you instead.

But here's the thing. Good writing does not come out of a vacuum. It's easy to get trapped inside your own head without even knowing it. When you rely totally on your own perspective, you tend to fall on one of these extremes:

OH MY GOSH THIS IS THE GREATEST STORY EVER I AM A FREAKING GENIUS EAT YOUR HEART OUT SHAKESPEARE!

or

OH MY GOSH THIS SUCKS I DON'T DESERVE TO CALL MYSELF A WRITER MAYBE I'LL TAKE UP POTTERY OR SEWING OR UNDERWATER BASKET-WEAVING . . .

Neither of these are true. It's really somewhere in the middle, you just don't realize it because the only perspective you have is your own. And this is what the critique group brings: outside perspective. They can pick out all the moles and blemishes and extra digits on your little naked baby that you don't see because it is, after all, yours. You won't get it right the first time, my friends. And that's okay. No one gets it right the first time. Let me say it again: No one gets it right the first time.

I know this. I get it. But I'm still sceered.

So, this weekend I started thinking about how I could psychologically prepare myself for our upcoming writers' group. I needed inspiration. A symbol, if you will. And then it hit me.

Emma Frost. For those of you who aren't geeks like me, Emma Frost is a mutant (a la the X-Men) with the ability to morph her skin into diamonds, like this:

And what are diamonds? Only the toughest substance on the earth! Ain't no stones getting past that! Even when she's not all sparkly, she's still tough. Check out her expression in the first pic. That is stoic. That is untouchable, man. I'll bet she never even blinks. Oh yeah, I'm totally ready for a good workshoppin' now. Pelt away, writerly peeps!

She'd make an awesome Halloween costume, by the way. Russo probably has a pair of boots just like that . . .