Tomato soup and an almost-migraine

Someone's been reading my mama's blog!

What a lovely surprise to see a comment in response to one of my posts. Thank you, Avid Reader. You must truly read avidly if you've managed to find my work.

Patrick is off today to San Diego for five days; the ride to and from BWI early this morning went alarmingly well. The girls were patient and good. As soon as we got home I began to dismantle the diningroom in preparation for its transformation. No small task: I had to disassemble the table as well as take a hundred pount ugly mirror off the wall (which despite falling three feet to the ground did not break -- does this mean seven years of good luck??). Tonight I'm going to paint the base...a sort of scary tomato soup color. On Friday and Saturday I will paint the tinted glaze over it (a more benign brick). Am I avoiding the novel? Let's just say I've figured out how to faux finish the ugly door to the basement to look like natural wood.

I've had a headache for two days now that isn't responding to anything. When I'm not worrying about brain tumors (thank you, "House"), I'm in blinding pain. I'm sure the paint fumes and five days alone with the kids will help make it go away...

Patience.

I've been grappling with something huge lately...whether to push to get the book submitted while my agent is out on maternity leave or to just resign myself to the idea of waiting until she's back after Labor Day. While her assistant has been helpful - offering some very good comments (as well as some not-so-good ones) - I feel like she (and my agent's partner) don't really have any real vested interest in my future, or the future of this book. Christy, on the other hand, has always been a tremendous champion and fan. She's also a terrific critic, and I haven't even gotten her feedback (other than her general sense of how the book is working) yet. I have had to ask myself why I feel this intense need to get it done NOW ("Right Now!" as Kicky would say). I think it boils down to finances. It sure would be marvelous to sell the book NOW, but at what real cost? Argh.

A lot of what got me thinking about this is the book/signing event I went to at Politics and Prose the other night. Nicole Krauss ("The History of Love") seems to be enjoying the antithesis of what I have experienced with the publishing industry. She's on a huge book tour. Barnes and Noble just named her book one of the Discover New Writers books. THOL is the #1 Booksense pick for May, and The Today Show picked her book for this month's Book Club selection. Though she was articulate, bright, and (goddamnit) nice, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy. How much of my slumpy bumpy career is simply due to bad luck and bad business?

SO...I plan to revise like mad all summer so that the book will be waiting for Christy when she comes back. Patience. Patience.

In the meantime, we're enjoying this amazing spring. Today we're going to have a picnic at the Mall. The caterpillar should be emerging any day now from it's cocoon. Roses, irises, and peonies are in bloom. Patience.

Almost rich.

so close...

Last night, for a few hours, my father was a multi-millionaire. His bank notified him that a significant wire transfer had been made into his savings account. They wouldn't disclose the amount. When he checked his statement online (after much sleuthing to figure out his own password), he found a balance of $110 million dollars. Needless to say, we had it spent within hours (in our imaginations anyway, as there was a hold on the funds). We had foundations built, debts paid off, convertible Jaguars in the driveway, and houses built all over the country (including a custom designed lighthouse playhouse in our backyard). We tried to think of the multi-millionaires in our lives who would have felt suddenly consumed with generosity toward my parents. We also tried to figure out what kind of lawyers we would need. Then, this morning, the money was gone. And my dad was charged $38.00 for the wire transfers. My sister went to work. My dad went golfing. And I tried to figure out how it is that this sort of thing always, and I mean always, happens to my father. This is the same man who once got five out of six numbers right on a lottery ticket (which is, surprisingly, worth only about $1000). I also sighed a little sigh of relief. Really. What kind of dangers would come along with that kind of loot? Now, if somebody wants to make a slightly more modest deposit into my account...say maybe a million?

Ladybugs.

The merbabes.

Today we captured ladybugs and are housing them in a temporary Tupperware shelter. They took to their new environs right away and have been making love like mad since this morning as their inch worm buddy blushes.

We also read Eric Carle's "The Grouchy Ladybug." Now Kicky keeps saying, "Hey you, wanna fight?"

Just ordered "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. Again, always a sucker for lit-hype. She's reading at Politics and Prose this month. If nothing else, I'm building quite a library of signed first editions.

Home

Funny, I've only been back from San Diego for just over a week, but the whole vacation has this sort of dreamy, hazy quality to it: like a weird thick marine layer. It was not what I expected, making me more homesick than I had anticipated. It also gave me a sense of delirium, forgetting at times where I was, that the beach was no longer my home. On return I told the lady I was on my way to San Diego. She said, "Honey, you're in San Diego." I copped a jet-lagged, weary, world traveler stance and corrected myself, "Baltimore." I came back to two cases of pink eye and one strange virus which I managed to get a slightly milder version of. Nothing like eye ooz and swollen glands to bring you back to reality.

I also came back to an e-mail from my agent that she's excited about the book, though she has some fairly major revisions she'd like to see made. And then, yesterday (before the notes/comments arrived), her baby made an early arrival. Now it may very well be until Labor Day before I can proceed. I am frustrated and anxious. I feel like I'm waiting for something huge to happen, and someone just told me I had to hold my breath until it does.

So I'm filling my time. I just signed up to teach an additional class this summer. I also put my feelers out again for the murals. A few bites today. I've got a request for some safari animals in a basement stairwell. I'm thinking elephants and giraffes. Maybe a baby gorilla.

Anyway, all that aside. Here's a recap of the trip: I had a chimichanga the size of a small child. I also had my favorite pizza, hot pastrami sandwiches, and more beer than I should have. I got to meet little Bella, my friend, Heather's new baby. I also napped. NAPPED. It truly was a much-needed respite from the real world.

Off Like a Prom Dress

So I'm off to San Diego later today. . .and though I absolutely hate flying, I can hardly wait for the solitude. I've got my CD Player, two books, and cash for little baby wine bottles. Bliss.

And I also got some fantastic news yesterday that I plan to carry with me...Christy (my agent) wrote that she really likes the book thus far. A tremendous relief. Is it possible to third-guess yourself? Anyway, I trust her absolutely, and so it means a lot when the words are kind. She plans to finish this weekend and come up with a game plan next week. This is the thrilling part...

More after the trip.

Bloom

Tulips.

You wouldn't believe the things that are blooming in our yard. After this winter, I was fairly convinced that nothing would ever WANT to grow in our barren little patch of the world. But now the rhododendrons, tulips (in every shade of red, orange, and yellow), and argh...just as I'm waxing poetic here with what's blooming P called to tell me it's going to cost $800 to fix the breaks in his car. Nothing like a little acid rain on my parade here.

Two more days until my highly-anticipated and much-needed vacation to San Diego. Alone. I have not been alone in years, it seems. Most of my plans for the trip revolve around the food I miss: fish tacos at South Beach, chimichangas at El Rodeo, cheesesteaks at Theo's and sitting on the deck at New York Giant Pizza. Nevermind vodka lemonades on the roof at Sunshine Co. and beers at the beach. The beach!! I can't believe how much I miss the beach. For a native Vermonter, I sure grew accustomed quickly to the sound of waves crashing and seals barking.

This trip should also give me a good chance to get my mind off the book which sits, still, with my agent. She's due to have her baby in just over a month. I can't imagine that she'll be able to tackle this project before she goes, but I have high hopes.

I bought a new book for the trip: "Prep" by Curtis Sittenfeld. I'll admit it -- I got sucked in by the hype, otherwise I would have waited or the paperback. I'm typically a wait for the video kind of girl (read, cheap). But I am drawn to the books with acknowledgements thanking the author's publicity team. TEAM? That's Random House for you.

I am close to finishing the Bohjalian book whose pace slows down considerably after the accident scene. Still quite good, though. I am looking forward to five hours of time -- alone -- to read on the plane.

Would the NEA fund her next project? 

Five Steps

Now that I actually have time to devote to my children, it seems the littlest might finally be able to reach some significant developmental milestones. Do I blame myself that Esmee, at fifteen months, isn't walking yet?? Yes. Kicky was walking at ten months, I am convinced, because for those ten months she was simply the be-all, end-all of my world. I quit writing, reading, eating, and sleeping back then. Poor little neglected E. But yesterday, after much love and coaxing, she took five whole steps. With a look of pure terror and exhileration, she walked from the ottoman to the couch.

I've been reading...what a treat...a lot since I finished the book. Right now I'm half-way through "Before You Know Kindness" by Chris Bohjalian. He's a fellow Vermont writer, and (despite the fact that he once never returned a request for a blurb) I really respect his work. This novel is meticulous. Every time I read someone who spends so much time on each detail, I feel like I hurry through scenes in my own writing. I don't know whether I am afraid of rambling or just lazy, but there's a certain economy to my dialogue, description, etc...

I've also had time to spend in basking in the sunshine while Patrick plants and tills. We've got a vegetable garden in the backyard and a lilac bush out front. I feel like we live in the country, instead of just a few miles to the White House. We have squirrels, cardinals, and a bird that sings, "Right here, right here."

Eight Steps

I'm feeling a certain ennui since "finishing" the book. Everyone always compares finishing a novel to giving birth. I've done both, and let me tell you, they are two very different things.

I think of the days after letting the book go more like the grieving process:

1) Denial/Shock: It's done?! It can't be done. How did I manage to do this?
2) Anger: Four years of graduate school, student loans that could have bought me a brand new Lexus, and instead all I get is this?
3) Bargaining: If this one gets picked by Oprah, I'll never cuss, drink, scream at my kids again.
4) Guilt: I really suck. There are much better writers out there.
5) Depression: I really, really suck. There are much, much better writers out there.
6) Loneliness: So I choose to spend most of my time alone manufacturing make-believe people living in make-believe places. What kind of loser am I?
7) Acceptance: Well, this is what I do. Maybe they'll like it, maybe they won't. Doesn't matter.
8) Hope: Maybe they'll like it...maybe they'll really, really like it??

I think the last dud of a novel (the one I spent nearly a year of my life writing) has really shattered me for this one. I am second-guessing almost every word. Every punctuation mark. Since the manuscript made it's cyber journey northward to New York, I have felt nothing even remotely akin to relief or excitement. Just anxiety. Sheer fear. Nevermind the coincidental and ironic recent e-mail onslaught from readers who want to know when the next book is coming out. How do you say that it may not? That there may never, ever, ever be a publishable book again?

On a lighter note: we took the girls to see Debbie Allen's "Dancing in the Wings" (based on the children's book) at The Kennedy Center last night. My eyes and throat swelled up with joy at the ants dancing ( a sort of drumline dance of about fifty kids dressed up like ants). The strangest things are moving me lately (did I mention the pile of blue glass on the street the other day? the man sitting in a kitchen chair in front of his row house on 15th St., listening to jazz on a portable record player?).

At least it's spring. Kicky plucked three brilliant dandelions from the yard yesterday.

What now?

So I don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I just got off a ship and still have my sea-legs. Every time I get a free minute I feel this familiar overwhelming urgency to sit down at the computer to work on the book. But there is, at least for now, no book to work on. I hesitate to start a new project; since I know this respite is temporary, but I'm antsy.

Today was the first truly beautiful day since we moved here. Seventy wonderful degrees (I love each and every one of them) and sunny. I took the girls to the park in the wagon (which still has some sand from OB in it), had a picnic, and then came home and basked on the front lawn while Kicky played "hopstock" with sidewalk chalk. Still feeling at the periphery of this bug, I wound up crashed out during Esmee's afternoon nap as Kicky watched God only knows what on tv.

I'm making plans for the Weeki Wachee research trip. My wheels are spinning. I suspect I'll be ready for a bit of Florida sunshine by next winter. I'm thinking old school family roadtrip. Too bad I ditched the Volvo wagon.

Pixie Dust

In the past, I have always sent my manuscripts out via the post office...with much ceremonially fanfare (good-luck dances, crazy wishing prayers, etc...). Now, with my first e-mail submission, clicking the Send button suddenly carries all sorts of new significance. I've never made such a nervous click of the mouse in my life.

The novel went out about five minutes ago to my agent.

Think good thoughts.

'Tis the (flu) season

I swear to God if I accidentally delete one more post (I just spelled that poast) I will quit the blogging life.

Anyway...SO in the last week, our little family has endured simultaneous chest colds, stomach flus, and mysterious high-fever achey-body-shakey complaints. I have never cleaned up so much vomit in my life. The girls are better now, thankfully, and Patrick has recovered as well. I, on the other hand, have managed to teeter on the edge of this in a way I've mastered since becoming a mother...who has the time to languish sickly with two kids? It's lurking, though (in the depths of my throat, chest, gut).

I finished the novel on my grampa's birthday...last word, "arms." I cried a little bit, drank a mini-bottle of champagne and saved the cork to join the five others (another hoody-goody compulsive habit). Now I'm revising madly. I want to get it off to Christy tomorrow or Tuesday. I need it out of my house, head.

I painted two murals this week...the biggest hit was the ballerina for a little girl down the street yesterday. I like being able to finish a project in a day. I should never have become a novelist. I have a poet's attention span.

Waiting

I'm waiting on a lot of things these days, it seems. Waiting to finish the novel (until Monday...which would be my grandfather's birthday -- and I've got this hoody-goody voodoo superstitious thing about finishing my books on a significant date, not sure why such the last one was such a bust despite the cool finish-date). Waiting to do my taxes. Waiting to boil the eggs for Easter.

I started painting the murals for my first client yesterday. Frogs. Lily pads. Three birds on a branch. It was amazing how nervous I was painting someone else's walls. Perhaps the fact that she no longer has any of the base coat paint left...sort of like writing in pen instead of pencil.

Tomorrow we're throwing a brunch/Easter egg hunt...very small. This damn cold wet March weather is not abating, so I think the Easter Bunny will likely leave eggs only inside.

Night-Blooming Cereus

Funny how things that didn't quite fit into my other books are finding their way into this one. Today, in the next to the last chapter, the night-blooming cereus metaphor just, finally, belongs. I thought it belonged in Undressing the Moon, but it didn't. IIt only took four years to find the perfect spot. Anyway, I am feeling melancholy about this book coming to an end. It's like when a good friend moves away. Post-partum depression. I'm dragging, dragging my feet (and all other appendages as well as a heavy sack of rocks) as I near the end.

On Friday I'll be painting frogs and snails for a 15 month old. I met with his mom today, to discuss said frogs, and ended up staying to chat for over an hour. I'm finding the other moms here is so bright (this one a lawyer who has decided to stay home -- a Harvard grad, no less). Tomorrow is another Purim party at Kicky's school. And this weekend we hunt for eggs. This poor child is going to be so confused.

Dyna Day

Writers by Day...

Remember this show? It was on Saturday mornings in 1976/77, part of the Krofft Supershow (along with "Sigmund and the Seamonster" and "Dr. Shrinker"). Electra Woman (Deidre Hall from Days of Our Lives) and her sidekick, Dyna Girl were writers by vocation, crimefighters by necessity. I always identified more with Dyna Girl (being a brunette and all). Today I had a Dyna-Kinda-Day, exhibiting some pretty serious superheroics...not fighting crime per say, but exercising my superhuman ability to multi-task. I managed to write another chapter, do two loads of laundry, secure a new mural client (frogs and ladybugs), knit about four rows of a baby blanket, file three months worth of paperwork, do two days worth of scungy dishes, feed the kids three almost-square meals, and bathe them both simultaneously without anyone drowning. Of course, they were stuck in front of the TV most of the day, prompting Kicky to announce (to no one in particular), "I'm a PBS kid!" Probably better than whatever I learned from Sid and Marty Krofft.

View from the End

Today I wrote the climactic scene of the novel...and it was the most shivery, fantastic writing moment that I have had since the pond scene in Undressing the Moon. And here I was, with no one in this time zone to share the sheer crazy of being almost done (and it working, working). Patrick wasn't answering his cell. And really, I'm not sure who this really matters to anyway. How do you describe the ridiculous elation of telling a 293 page (thus far) lie?

Still buzzing with it all, I picked Kicky up from school and took her to her best friend, Ella's house for an impromptu playdate. Esmee infected every toy in the playroom with her own special recipe of snot, drool, and dribbled milk. No one seemed to mind. And now the girls are screetching and chasing each other around the house -- a pre-bedtime pagan toddler ritual.

Tomorrow begins the wind-down. The slow spiraling. The denouement. It's all downhill from here.

Fever Weekend

Finished the final Betsy chapter today. And the final 1968: Fall chapter as well. A wonderful paragraph about a blackberry made all of the recent efforts seem worthwhile. Now I'm trying to come up with an apt title. This is the hardest part. Everything I come up with is either trite, pretentious, way to elusive, way too sentimental, or already belongs to another book. I'm thinking about something like "Two Rivers Elegy." Friends and husband nixed "Blackberry Elegy." (I told you I fancied that blackberry paragraph.)

On the mommyfront: last night we almost took Kicky to the emergency room when I realized that she wasn't trying to get out of dinner but was actually very, very sick. After I managed to teach her how to put the thermometer under her tongue, we discovered that she had a fever of nearly 104. Not to worry, the doctor said (after I had already played out in mind a diagnosis of meningitis, acute lymphoma), they aren't typically concerned about a fever until it exceeds 107. 107??!! As it was, you could practically see the heat rising off of her...wavy little desert highway aura. I brought her to the doctor this morning, and after having to trick her into allowing the doctor to "tickle" her throat with a Q-tip, the diagnosis wasn't even Strep, but a "virus." And because we have a deductible, this little virus will cost us around $80. And the saddest part is that doctor's orders were to stay home, missing the Purim party at her school. We did our best to replicate the festivities in the living room. Patrick and I donned costumes from the dress-up box and banged on instruments as we listened to the Big Band station on our digital cable. Afterwards we made a lemon cake covered in jellybeans. Tonight she went to bed feverless. But alas, Esmee was dripping from eyes and nose, and I feel that certain little tickle in my throat...

Meltdown at the Playground.

This morning I started writing the chapter where Betsy dies. I've been anticipating this for so long now; it seems strange that I'm actually at the point in the novel where it happens. And though we know from Page 1 that it's going to happen, there is something sort of heart-wrenching about actually illustrating it. All of sudden there Harper is, standing in the middle of the road, in the rain, holding her....there's a point where I start to believe in my characters. I think I'm finally there.

I put the book aside to pick Kicky up from school. Ella couldn't go for milkshakes today (or unofficial Friday ritual), so I did the lazy thing and got a frosty from the Wendy's drive-thru. Feeling high from the book and a double cheeseburger, I gave in to Kicky's pleas to go to the park. It was a gorgeous day, and there were about six thousand kids at the park. I have no idea what happened, but as I struggled to keep Esmee from eating a fistful of wood chips, I became "that mom"...you know, the one with the bossy kid. The one whose child is screaming at all of the other kids, barking orders at the slide, chasing kids off of their tricycles. All of the neighborhood moms...most of them seemed to know each other...silently watching their children being terrorized by my monster. Huddled and whispering. Conspiring, I'm certain, to ban us from the park.

So...in an effort to save face, I called Kicky over, said that it was time for Esmee's nap. Like it would be that easy. Within seconds, I'm scooping her off the slide (Madelyne Toogood, I feel for you honey) and carrying her, kicking and screaming, away from her victims.

And so, like the library (a whole other story), the park has become one of those places we can't go.

This weekend I am meeting with one of the neighborhood moms about painting a mural on her daughter's wall. Maybe I can ingratiate myself this way. Mama Frankenstein.