So last night we headed to PetSmart to get a new fish. A cooler fish. A brighter-colored fish. Oh, and it had to be a girl. So we found a pretty blue Beta marked “female” and picked it up. I got a new one for the bowl in my room (as my Beta, Spaz, has been gone for at least a good 8 months… it was time to move on) and Jachin got a new Beta for the bowl in his bedroom (since his last Beta, Cool Blue, had died of starvation and lack of attention nearly a year ago). The girl at the check out rang up our fish and then said to me, “Now, you know these all have to go in separate bowls, right?” And I said, “Oh, we like to put them all in one bowl and watch them fight it out to the death, betting on which one will be the last one swimming.” I didn’t really say  that. But I totally wanted to. I then noticed that I didn’t have my wedding ring on, and when I go anywhere with my children without sporting a wedding ring and make-up, I’ve realized that people think I’m the kids’ stupid 14  year old sister.  It’s irritating.

Here are the new fish, along with their new names:

Zoe’s new fish –a girl — to be named either Abby or Rozalina. Zoe can’t decide yet.

Jachin’s new fish (who will no doubt be subjected to the same neglect as the last fish) named Mario.

My new Beta (he looks totally mean, right?) named Rocky Razor.

Before we left the store, we meandered down the hamster/guinea pig/rat aisle. We found the freakin cutest dwarf hamsters you’ve ever seen. I really wanted to get one or two, but ultimately resisted. One of them was trying furiously to break out. The anxiety of living at the pet store was just more than his little two-inch body could bear. I so wanted to take him home. The kids did, too. I took a video documenting his cute neurotic nature.

You’ll hear Jachin listing his 10 reason’s to buy this sweet little hamster. I like number 7: his food tastes like cereal. Don’t ask me how my son knows that hamster food tastes like cereal. (And what kind of cereal do I make my kids eat?!)  The people walking down the aisle next to us thought that was an interesting observation as well. Stupid 14 year old sister, making her little brother eat hamster food!!

Jachin: Hey Mikey, we had to return Brawl last night. The five days were up.

(If you are a third grade boy, you already know that Brawl is “Super Smash Brother’s Brawl”, the sweetest video game on the planet. Jachin had rented it with his allowance money.)

Mikey: Oh no! You don’t have Brawl anymore?  How will we wi-fi?

Jachin: I’m working on a plan.

Jachin walks over to the table where I’m sitting, sorting papers.

Jachin: Mom, can we sell Zoe to get money to buy Brawl?

Me: What do you think?

Jachin: Darn.  (Then he turns back to Mikey:) On to Plan B!

Mikey: You can just come over to my  house and play Brawl whenever you want.

Third Grade Girl: You guys are gross. Stop talking about it or I’ll tell the teacher.

Jachin to the Girl: What are you talking about??

Jachin to Mikey: But I want my own Brawl so we can wi-fi whenever we want.

Girl: Stop saying that! You guys are rude.

Jachin (even more perplexed): What the heck are you talking about?

Girl: I’m telling the teacher you’re being gross.

Jachin: We’re gross for talking about a video game??

Girl: Oh… it’s a video game?

Jachin: Um, yeah. You know, Super Smash Bros. Brawl…

Girl: Oh… I though you were talking about girls’ bras.

Jachin gives Mikey a weird look. They both exchange icky looks. There is a lot of eye rolling from both camps.

Jachin: Why would we want to talk about dumb girl stuff?

Third Grade Girl is embarrassed. I think she actually wears a bra. Which is upsetting to me because I didn’t wear a bra until, like, 8th grade. But when I replayed the conversation in my head, replacing “Brawl” with “Bra”, I can see why she was so upset. This poor girl thought she was surrounded by pervy 8 year old cross dressers.

I just smiled and kept sorting papers, thanking the powers that be that my son’s world still revolves around Brawl instead of bras.

“This dumb fortune doesn’t even make sense!” she cried.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“It says ‘Boots and water are in your furniture. Have fun!’ What the heck does that mean?”

Jachin went over to assist her. He read it silently and said, “No Zoe, it says ‘Boats and water are in your future. Have Fun!’”

She heaved a big sigh. “That doesn’t make any sense, either!”

Saturday, April 19th was the Salt Lake City Marathon. Along with — of course — the marathon, there was also a half-marathon, 5k, and a jaunty kids’ 1k. So of course I’m thinking sweet, an event for everyone in the family!

Jon had already signed up for the half-marathon weeks ago, and I went ahead and signed myself up for the 5k and the kids for the 1k. Then I sat down and started thinking hard about how exactly we were going to pull the whole thing off. Jon’s race started at 7 at the U of U, my race started at 7:30 at Liberty park, and the kids’s race didn’t start until 10 back at the Gateway. So, ummm…. hm.

Well the answer, of course, was my mom.  How many times do you find yourself in a debacle and the answer turns out to be your mother?

My mom was already playing host to my sister, Sam, and her boys for the week. So mom signed up Paige for the kids’ run, and Sam signed up Parley for the kids’ run. And then all of the kids had a sleepover at my mom’s Friday night. My sweet and crazy mom (with the help of my sister) then carted 5 kids up to Salt Lake on Saturday morning via Trax, the light rail system that my kids are completely freaked out over because of an unfortunate incident a few years ago when I tried to take Jachin, Zoe, and Paige all to the zoo via Trax and  left Paige at the U of U stop on the platform while the train rode on… but that’s another story. Saturday morning, all was fine with the Trax ride, and no one was left behind on the platform, chasing after the train with wild, crazy eyes and panicked screaming. Everyone arrived at the Gateway on time, in their t-shirts and runner’s bibs. Elmo was there… or so we heard. But with 600 kids and their parents, we never actually got a glimpse of him. Jachin was fine with that, as he actually “booed” when it was announced that Elmo would be giving high-fives at the finish line. I mean, come on… how baby-ish.

It was decided that I would do the 1k with the kids, because we wanted them to somehow stay all together with no one getting lost, y’know, if at all possible. So off we went. Small kids — who are unfamiliar with the idea of “thinning out” early in the race — went sprinting full speed. Kids were falling down everywhere. And of course, when kids fall, they don’t get up quickly and move off to the side to assess their wounds… they lie in the middle of street, screaming, while other kids continue to trip over the kids who have already tripped.

It was a party.

Paige fell over one of these screaming children, but I quickly picked her up and told to keep on keeping on. She was fine, and showed off her road rash in pictures at the finish line.  Creamies were had by all, and medals were awarded simply for finishing. Everyone was feeling pretty good about themselves.

Jon did fantastic in his race. We’re still waiting for the official “chip time”, but his self-time was about 1:43. Yeah… that’s nicely under two hours, people. He got a medal, too. The only one who didn’t receive a medal? Me. My 5k time was actually slightly slower than my 5k time from last month, but this course was a little longer. And a little uphill in some parts. And I wasn’t running with anyone else… I mean, other than the 2,000 strangers who were passing me… These are all the things I tell myself at night when I start thinking about my lousy time.

Fun stuff, though, racing. The kids have caught the bug, I think.  Jachin says he’s ready for a 5k now. Know that if my 8 year old beats me at a race, I will cry.

And now we are off for naps and ice.

I’ve decided to take a break from the blog. It would seem that my life has no balance, and the blog has been getting a disproportionate amount of time and energy. Time and energy that should be put elsewhere.  This probably seems weird since most of you are saying what time and energy? you hardly ever post?!? It’s a mystery, for sure. There is some sort of time/energy vortex that opens when I sit down and open up my blog. I sit for long periods of time, stewing and vexing, and then in the real world there isn’t much to show for it. (I request that some more scientific studies are done on this anomaly. But not by me.) I feel badly that there is time and energy being sucked from other areas of my life that deserve more attention. I’ve wanted to write “for real” for sometime, and if I would put as many words-per-day into my novel as I put here… well, maybe I’d be an actual novelist by now. Or not. Who knows…

So farewell for now, friends. If I can get it all together, get all my balls in the air, and then figure out how to get the blog back in there without all of the balls falling… well, that would be ideal, wouldn’t it? You can keep me on Google Reader, maybe I’ll surprise you sometime. For now, though, I’m focusing on family and other interests. I’ll still peek in on your blogs, though, from time to time.

Until we meet again…

The best session, though, was the one led by Ann Dee Ellis. She was pregnant, funny, smart, a little nuts, and a kindred soul if I ever did see one talk. (I’d say “a kindred soul if I ever did meet one”, but I didn’t actually meet her.) She held up a copy of The Bell Jar and asked if any of us had read it, and my hand flew up. She proceeded to tell how she identified completely with the story… and I nodded. And listening to her talk I thought, holy cow, I want to be this chick’s friend… but that would be weird to say that to someone, so of course I didn’t. Our seemingly similar paths ended when she said “I didn’t read this book until I was in graduate school…” Huh. Graduate school. Maybe we aren’t twins after all.

That’s when it really struck me how frickin far behind the learning curve I truly am. People who should be my peers would be my instructors. I’m old, man. I can’t imagine that if I’d actually gone to school on a normal time table I could be teaching writing at a college instead of learning writing at a college. Recounting this to Jon tonight, he said “Are you sure you want to go to school this fall?” I said, “yes.” He said, “You’re going to be sitting in classes with 18 and 19 year old kids.” I said, “I know.” He said, “If you wait another 10 years, you can go back as an old granny, and then people will say ‘oh, look at that cute old granny going back to school, good for her.’ If you go back now, people will just think it’s weird.” I thanked him for pointing out the painfully obvious things that I’d already been thinking about for two days straight. But seriously, putting off school another 10 years just because it will be embarrassing? Would it really be any less embarrassing in another 10 years?

But here we are. The forum is over, and I have much to think about.

And I’ve just realized — again — that I’m not getting any younger.

Book signing frenzy.

I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. I was so going to be be in my element. I’d be surrounded by others with similar interests. It would be a melting pot of creative juices and well-wishing mojo. Or this is what I thought. And it was sort of like that… kinda.

I spent the day actively listening to the speakers, taking copious notes, nodding when someone said something that I could identify with. I went solo, though, and it seemed as if I was the only “single” soul in the building. Everyone else had a posse, a group of creative cohorts with whom to share the experience. I made a few fruitless attempts to break into the conversations of other groups, but everyone seemed tight-knit. So instead I just sat back and observed. And what I observed was a hundred people all trying to do the same thing I want to do. A hundred people who all thought they could write, just like me. A hundred people who think they’ll be the next big author, just like me. I was adrift in a sea of me’s.

I sat in on a few really great sessions. The first was led by Kirby Larson , who is a Newbery Honor author. She gave a few pointers on collecting research and finding your character’s voice. Her pep talk made me think that maybe finishing a novel and eventually being published was something I could almost do.

The second session was led by Anne Bowen, a picture book author and retired teacher. She gave fantastic insight into the structure of a picture book (something I knew nothing about before today), and also touched on pacing and text. It was great stuff. I was taking notes at a furious pace. My mind was going over how I could apply all of these things to my fledgling picture book. My rhyming fledgling picture book. It was at this point she pulled out the old quote about how it is rarely a good idea to try to rhyme, which took a significant amount of wind from my sails. Because I so love my rhyming story. It’s precious. I love that it rhymes. It has meter and rhythm. But now I’m not so sure about it…

The third session was led by Sara Zarr, the author of the award winning YA novel “Story of a Girl”. She talked about writing authentic YA material, telling us it was good to be “gritty” and “raw” when it lent itself to realistic teen fiction. There was more furious note-taking. It was also good stuff. Then there was some discussion among the people in the room — some writers, some educators — that mentioned “fantasy” was on it’s way out. Fantasy is waning. Apparently teens don’t want to read so much of that anymore. They want something more realistic. Which is great… because my fledgling YA novel is fantasy. So it was good to hear up front that teens probably won’t want to read it.

I know, I was totally throwing a pity party for one. There was an imp on my shoulder playing the world’s tiniest violin, just for me. I walked out of the last session thinking that I would have to scrap everything I’ve been working on for years. Start all over. *sigh* And no doubt the new stuff would be crap as well… (more violin).

I walked to the campus bookstore and licked my wounds by buying bags full of paperbacks.

Paperbacks are soothing to the soul, the smell of new paper and the smoothness of the cover… paperbacks are like a massage in book-form. I picked up the Sara Zarr book and a few non-kid books, as well. I also picked up “My Friend is Sad” by Mo Willems, because Mo is the man. If I ever met him, I just know that he’d somehow be like a long lost brother I never knew I had. (I imagine that we would have a secret handshake and inside jokes.) I came home and immediately read it to my kids, and it was met with truck loads of belly laughs. Like I said, Mo is the man. If only I could write like Mo…

Tomorrow I go back for another day of sessions and schmoozing. Except that I really need to learn to schmooze better. My networking skills are lacking. But tomorrow I will try to jump in more and let the imp play the violin a little less. And I’ll try to stay out of the book store.

“So guys, there is a princess from another world. It’s a magical world. There is a war raging between the races. Blah, blah, blah…”

(I didn’t really say the “blah, blah, blah”, I’m just trying to cut to the chase.)

Then I said, “I can’t figure out the name of the magical world, though. CS Lewis has “Narnia”, Tolkien has “Middle Earth”, the kids from “Bridge to Tarabithia” had Tarabithia… I can’t figure out the name for mine. What should it be?”

There was a pause from the backseat for a few moments. Then Jachin spoke up.

“What about ‘Baghdad’?”

I tried not to laugh. “Baghdad is a real place.”

“I know,” he said.

“And it’s not very magical,” I added.

“But there’s a real war going on there, and you said your story has a war in it.”

“True. Good point.”

Then Zoe spoke up. “What about ‘West Coast’? Is there a real West Coast?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s California.”

“Oh.”

“What about ‘Art Class’?” Jachin threw in.

“Art class?” I asked.

“Art class is magical…”

Then we passed Cortland Ridge Condominiums.

“What about ‘Cortland’?” Jachin asked.

We passed the drugstore.

“What about ‘Walgreen’s’?”

So….. I’m still sitting here thinking about it. It’s already been 5 years. No rush.

Zoe and fellow “good” pirate, Sean, used the deck for a lookout:

Items needed for pirate look-out:

*A barstool for makeshift eagle’s nest.

*Old viewmaster = pirate binoculars.

*The hammer (which they had just finished using during a rousing game of “break rocks on the sidewalk”…) was the pirate weapon of choice for their team. I stressed that the hammer was for display and intimidation only. No “bad” pirates were to be chased with the hammer.

*A flower, to spruce up the joint. Pirate lookouts can tend to be drab.

Next, the passageway to the pirate lookout must be riddled with booby traps, to throw off the opposing pirate crew:

Good items for booby traps: an old glove that was finally uncovered after months of being buried under snow, an old kitchen rug, a pink Barbie garden trowel, and an orange soccer cone. Gets the bad guys every time…

And for the main event, the “bad” team’s pirate ship!!

Because in the ghetto when using your imagination,

rusty wheelbarrow + soccer goal = kick ass pirate ship.

Arrr, mateys… that’s how we roll…

 Hey face: stop breaking out, already!

Often write about having writer’s block.

Does that come in green, perchance?

Jason Statham doesn’t know I exist.

Neither does James McAvoy, the cutie.

Me, Bike, Car, equals love triangle.

Can you put cheese on that?

Wanna hit a movie? With nachos? 

I’m tired and a little punchy. I can probably do better, and I could probably keep going all night. But — mercifully — I won’t. As a side note: Yay for me, I wrote 1,800 words to my novel today. So needless to say, six more good words are just eluding me at the moment. I’ve had my allotment of good words today. And, sadly for you, you won’t find them here on my blog.

I’m tagging Leslie and Sam, if you guys want to play along!