It's Okay

My blog has been so quiet lately, hasn't it?

And that's okay. Because my kids and my husband have all been home. It's been Christmas. Now it's New Years. I'm having a baby sometime in the next three weeks.

Priorities, right?

And you guys probably needed a break reading my blog, too, because you're all out living your lives and enjoying your families or hobbies or traditions.

This is a post to tell you that I have to keep reminding myself every day that it's okay not to be blogging. In my heart I know it's okay not to be blogging. And I know you all know it's okay for me not to be blogging.

So we're all okay with each other, right?

And, lest I forget...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

~I hope your 2011 is blessed beyond measure.~

(Tomorrow I'm planning to post a book review because I just finished Jellicoe Road, which is definitely a blog-worthy book. But we'll see how those intentions pan out because, technically, it's still vacation around here.)

Cheesiest Christmas Song Contest Winners!

I loved reading through the entries for the Cheesiest Christmas Song EVER contest. (Thanks to everyone who entered and left comments. I wish I could send chocolate to everyone!)

In giving in to my inner Scrooge, I got what I deserved:

ALL THESE STUPID SONGS STUCK IN MY HEAD FOR FIVE DAYS.

Thanks a lot. But I did ask for it, didn't I?

Some of them I had to look up and that, too, was a mistake. UGGGH.

But thanks for playing everyone. It was a lot of fun for me and I hope for you, too.

And the (randomly selected) winners are:

BIRD

and

MICHELLE

*wild applause*

And, because I feel so bad for her present circumstances, I'd also like to send chocolate to Krista V. because her house is on the verge of being flooded and they had to evacuate.

So, will all three of you send me your mailing addresses (or in Krista's case, an address where you can temporarily receive mail) and I'll send you some Chukar Cherries? (I know Bird knows how good these are because she grew up in Prosser, the town where I live.) My email address is a2sonnichsen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Also, winners -- and this is important -- tell me if you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate. I made the mistake once of sending someone dark chocolate who didn't like dark chocolate. I didn't realize there was such a thing as not liking a certain kind of chocolate because I am a chocolate-of-any-kind junkie. But, if you have a definite preference, please tell me so I can send you something you'll love (not just eat to be polite or, worse, regift).

I'll leave you with a drawing my four-year-old wonder child brought home from preschool last week. Kind of reminds me of the true meaning of Christmas (*guffaw*).

Because, of course Jesus really needs a TV this Christmas.

Let It Snow

If you haven't already, don't forget to enter my cheesiest Christmas song contest here. I'm giving away chocolate. All you have to do is leave the name of a cheesy Christmas song in the comments section of this post before midnight PST tonight (Monday).

Easy, right?

Now, go and make merry!

Only five days until Christmas. Have you made your list and checked it twice?

We had snow yesterday and woke up to more snow today. I wonder if it's too much to hope for a white Christmas?

Chant with me: *No chinook! No chinook! No chinook!*

A Story A Week: View from the Tenement

Our tenement row got its own cloud today.

A dark, black one that stretched from one edge of the neighborhood to the other. The blue sky came peeping along the edges and that’s how I knew it was our very own cloud.

Monday is the day we do the wash. Mam has a poem to tell us which days are for which purpose. She looked up at our cloud through the window, then came back to the rocker shaking her head.

“You don’t know what to do when the weather don’t cooperate with your poem, do you, Mam?” I always say the words she won’t say.

“No, Teish, I suppose not,” she said without smiling.

But then again, her not smiling don’t mean much. Perhaps I’ve seen her smile three times in my whole life. Her mouth is so small, maybe it don’t stretch at the edges enough to smile. Maybe smiling is a discomfort. And she only says as many words as will fit in her mouth at once. When she was young back in the old country, she had eight teeth yanked because her mouth couldn’t fit them all. But Gran told me that, not Mam. Of course it came from Gran, because Gran never stopped talking.

Gran’s dead now, though, going on two years. Two years of silence in our little hole, as Da cheerfully calls our room in the tenement.

The wind picked up and that fool cat was at the door, scratching for all he was worth. I could hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of his claws, enough to drive anyone wild. He always comes up here in a storm. Da says maybe the people who lived here before us were kind to the cat and he never forgot.

Mam shook her head at the sound. She’d begun mending by the licking light of the fire, because her fingers do all the work her mouth don’t.

“Some storm this must be coming,” I said. I knew what Mam would want me to do. I went to the door and creaked it open and stuck my foot out. “Shoo, cat! Just wait in the hall, why don’t you? You’ll be more than dry.”

The cat skittered away, tail fussed like a chimney brush.

He’s a scrawny old thing. Digs in the rubbish for scraps. Good luck on you, Mr. Tom, trying to get the scraps from the tenement children. Some of them children haunt the rubbish heaps for anything. Like those O’Reilly kids, for instance, the ones down the hall. Whilst I’m home complaining of more mush, they’re out digging through rubbish. Maybe Da is right and we have more to be thankful for than we think.

When I’d shut the door and kicked it in the spot to make it stay, Mam said, “Thank you, Teish,” and then the rain began to fall, big drops fat as my thumbnail. They splattered against the window sill, so I went and shut it tight, and blocked the chink up with the old rag we keep just for that purpose.

“I’ll be soaked through on my way to school,” I said.

Mam said, “Take my scarf then.”

Da says we’re blessed being on the first floor as we are. Underneath us are shops. All I have to do is go out our door, out the hallway door, run down the front steps, and I’m right in front of Mr. Kelly’s grocery. It’s the simplest thing in the world.

“Washing next Monday instead, Mam?” I asked, picking up my slate from the table by the wall. The cloud made the window dark, so the fire was all there was to see by. I moved closer to it.

Mam nodded.

“We’ll make it through,” I said. “I don’t have to change my knickers every day.”

Mam gave me a look. I knew she’d like it if I changed my knickers every day because Gran always made her do it when she was a girl. But those were different times, I tell her, and Gran was fussy.

Da works at a factory. Mam’d like to get a job, too, as a seamstress in one of them big rooms where the women keep the treadle going all day long in a strange, tapping dance. Mam’d be good at the sewing.

But Da says don’t push our luck by sending Mam out to work, that we could be living in abject poverty like a lot of people around us do. Like those O’Reilly children whose da hasn’t been able to work since they got off the boat. And their mam died in the passage. Only thing that keeps them alive is that the oldest boy who’s my age got a job at the machines.

Da says I’m a lucky girl to have both parents and to keep going to school and that I’d better keep up with my figures and spelling because then I’ll get a good job someday. He says lots of girls are going out as secretaries now, and that if Mam could read, that’s what she’d be doing. That’s what I’m holding out for.

If I were a secretary, I could get Mam, Da and me out of the tenements all together.

The rain drove against the window rat-a-tat-tat, like hard pecking. I wonder if Mr. Kelly’ll have a flood to deal with like last time.

“The pan, Teish,” Mam said.

I’d nearly forgotten the pan. I fetched it from the cupboard, set it under the leaky spot that always runs down the wall.

“Good lass, Teish,” Mam said.

When I came back, I pulled the iron bed closer to the fire and settled down on top of the quilt Gran brought from the old country. I think we must have the prettiest tenement room in our block, on account of the quilt and Mam keeping everything lovely thanks to her poem and not having to go out to work. I unbuttoned my pinching shoes and curled my legs under me. Mam never minds me sitting like this.

Then I worked at my figures until school time, like Da would want.


Thank you to Teish who gave me the three inspirational words for this story: abject, whilst, and dance. Thanks for the challenging words, Teish! They definitely knocked me out of my comfort zone. I think I've rewritten this story more times than any of my other short stories. The story grew out of deciding on a historical setting where a character might use a word like "whilst." Then the word "abject" made me think of abject poverty, which made me think of tenements. I had to do some research, though, since I didn't know very much about them when I started. I admire people who write historical fiction. There's a lot to get right, and I apologize if you're an expert on turn-of-the-century tenements and I screwed anything up!

Verse Novel Challenge: Carver

I did it! I finished Caroline Starr Rose's Verse Novel Challenge!

The last verse novel I read (I actually hope this counts because technically this may be a verse biography) was Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson.

I loved it.

Marilyn Nelson captured George Washington Carver's character on so many levels. And again -- what I always admire so much in verse novels -- is how she was able to capture his character so fully, yet with so much simplicity and brevity.

Poets are amazing.

I loved learning about Carver as a scientist, an educator and mentor, a bridge-builder between the races, and a devoted Christian. He was eccentric, yet humble, and one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century.

What an amazing and full life he led. This book was inspiring.

And the Dashingly Handsome Sidekick even perked up when I said I was reading it. See, he's a science teacher and I guess George Washington Carver is one of his heroes. But after reading this book, I'm thinking, "Well, honey, of course he is. Once you hear about this guy you can't help but admire him."

Carver: A Life in Poems joins the ranks of the other verse novels I've read in 2010:

1. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
2. I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Schroeder
3. Far From You by Lisa Schroeder
4. Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown

If you've never picked up a verse novel, please do! Up next in my verse novel line up is Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards. (Just because I've finished the challenge doesn't mean I have to stop reading verse novels.)

I've read one other verse novel, which was exquisite. (Since it's not published (YET) I couldn't include it on my list.) I beta-read Dora Tsang's Square Blue.

And congratulations to Caroline Starr Rose, whose debut novel May B. just found a new publishing home! Click here to read her news if you haven't already. Yay, Caroline!

Cheesiest Christmas Song EVER & Contest

Some days you just have to let yourself be a Scrooge. This week on my blog you are allowed to be as Scroogie as you'd like. This is a guilt-free place where you can roll your eyes and groan at the overload of Christmas cheer to your squeezed-little-heart's content.

And to celebrate this freedom, I'm having a contest.

It's easy. In the comments, nominate your choice for the CHEESIEST, HOKIEST, SCHMOOZIEST Christmas song EVER. (And just make sure you're a follower of the blog, too. But that's not hard. Just click on the Follow button.)

If your comment is selected (at random), I'll send you a box of our city of Prosser's famous Chukar Cherries (just ask other people who have won these, they're super delicious) ... because maybe all we need is a little sweetness to chase that Scrooge away.

This contest is open internationally, so please don't hesitate to enter! **Contest will be open for five days, closing on Monday, December 20 at 11:59p.m. PST. **

And now, without further ado, my own nomination for CHEESIEST, HOKIEST, SCHMOOZIEST Christmas song EVER.



Song Synopsis: A poor little boy in tattered clothes is in a shoe store on Christmas Eve buying his mother a pair of shoes. He explains very eloquently to the cashier that his mother is sick -- no, worse than that! -- she's on the verge of death and he wants to buy these shoes so she'll look pretty if she meets Jesus tonight. He counts out his pennies, but -- horrors! -- he doesn't have enough to pay for the shoes. So he turns to the person in line behind him and explains his story. The person behind him pays the rest of the money for the shoes.

Why I think this song deserves the Title of Cheesiest, Hokiest, Schmooziest Christmas song ever:

(1) The songwriter definitely laid it on thick. S/he could have left it at a poor little boy's kind gesture to his hard-working mother, or even just left it at a sick mother. But no, the mother has to be DYING. And not just dying. Probably dying TONIGHT. ON CHRISTMAS EVE. The writer had one object in mind: to make everybody bawl their eyes out. Problem is, when you lay it on too thick, you get your share of Scrooges (me!) being critical.

(2) The songwriter probably does not have much experience with kids. I know this because of my seven-year-old son's reaction to this song. It was playing on the radio in the car the other day and we had the following conversation:

Me: Gabe, if I were dying, would you go out and buy me shoes?

Gabe: No. (Stops to think) I'd buy you medicine.

Anna: Me too! I'd buy you medicine, Mom.

Gabe: Besides, if his Mom is about to see Jesus she doesn't need new shoes. Jesus wouldn't even see her shoes because she'd go to heaven and you can't take shoes with you to heaven.

Me: Hmm. Very good point, Gabe.

Gabe: So that boy just wasted his money.

Me: Yep. I guess so.

See, children are better philosophers than we give them credit for. (And now you have evidence of how I drag my own children into my own Scrooginess.)

On a side note: what little boy would ever think of buying his mother shoes? I mean, if he wants her to look nice, I think a little boy would think of a new dress. Not shoes. Do men ever think of shoes?

Of course, you don't need to go into this much detail when you nominate your choice for cheesiest, hokiest, schmooziest Christmas song ever. I just did it for the mean-spiritedness fun of it.

Now have fun in the comments being Scrooge for a few minutes. Go ahead, be critical of Christmas cheer and mushy feelings.

And Bah Humbug to you, too!

Pregnancy Brain

I haven't blogged too much about being pregnant. Mostly, I don't want to bore everyone. But today I'm going to make an exception. Just this once.

While I'm pregnant I do my best to have a well-balanced thought life. In other words, I try very hard not to get so focused on being pregnant that I can't think about or talk about anything else. Still, when all this weird stuff is happening to your body, sometimes it's hard not to have a one-track mind.

This week has been especially bad. I realized I've started NESTING.

Which means: I have these wild spurts of energy where I attempt to clean the entire house.

If anyone has been following this blog for awhile, you know that's not normal.

And I've been making lists. Lists, lists, and more lists.

More concerning, perhaps, is that I've had spells of DINNER FAIL.

Which means: I've been messing up dinners. Big time. One night the turkey soup never cooked.  And then tonight I destroyed a perfectly good lasagna that I'd slaved over.

Thankfully, we had bread.

This is also not normal. I can usually put at least edible food on the table for my family. But lately I've been scatter-brained beyond my normal scatter-brainedness.

Besides that, I've also experienced STORY FAIL. Today I tried to work on another Story-a-Week while my two-year-old was napping, and for the first time in 33 stories, I looked at the thing and thought, "This is totally and completely a waste of space."

Usually I can salvage something from my first draft of a Story-a-Week. But this? Makes me afraid to ever touch my WiP again.

Thankfully, physically, I'm feeling great. Sure, I'm tired. But I really have nothing to complain about. Besides the first four months of nausea, this pregnancy has been smooth sailing. And if the kicks and punches I'm getting from this baby all day are any indication, I'm about to give birth to the next Olympic champion kick boxer. Which my doctor tells me is a good sign.

As of tomorrow (the 15th) I'm one month away from D-day. And with Christmas festivities, time is picking up speed. So, if I abruptly disappear off the blog-radar, you'll know why. I'll hopefully be back to post baby pictures.

(But hey, baby pictures could be a month-plus away. In the meantime, please be patient with me and all my failures. I'm sure all this insanity -- and wild cleaning and organizing -- is going to leak into the blog somehow. *sigh*)

#

And ... if you're interested, here's my not-so-favorable review of Vampire Academy.

A Story A Week: Sashawalla Nutcracking

Whose idea was it to make a Mother Ginger costume out of a Simplicity pattern?

Not mine, if you’re asking.

It’s December 10 today and the temperature’s pushing sixty-five. After a cold snap around Thanksgiving, the tulips think winter is over and are pushing their heads through the back yard dirt. I keep yelling at them to go back down and keep napping, but they don’t listen to me any more than my kids do.

Garry, age sixteen going on one-hundred-and-four (or so you’d think from how much time he actually spends moving), is planted in front of the television set as usual. He pushes the sofa right up to it so his reflexes work better, he says. The only muscles in his body that get any use are his thumbs. I keep telling that boy video games are going to rot his brain right out, but he don’t listen. He asked for one of them special video-game chairs for Christmas. I went out and bought him one, for two reasons. One, to make him shut up. Two, so my sofa will stay put and maybe I can sit on it every once in awhile.

Dawn is my angel. Well, in comparison anyway. She’s fourteen and has got herself eyelashes that go all the way up to her forehead. All she has to do is look at me with those big blue eyes and I’ll give her anything. (And she knows it, too.) I don’t remember them eyelashes being like that when she was younger, but she says I just have a bad memory and didn’t take enough pictures of her back then. All she wants for Christmas is gift certificates to these make-up places. I guess she feels like she doesn’t wear enough already.

But this Mother Ginger costume is on account of my youngest, Sebastian, who’s twelve and somehow got pulled into being something in the Nutcracking production they’re putting on down at the local theater. They used to show movies down there when the economy was good. But after it all turned sour the place shut down, and now they just open for special shows. It’s an old spider-webby place with ripped red velvet seats, but we all troop down there to watch our kids perform whatever at whatever time of the year whenever it suits someone to throw something together.

This woman who runs the show is named Miss Ellis Freeborn. Yes, Ellis is her first name, which may be the most ridiculous thing I ever heard a woman called. Anyhow, she is about four-foot-two-inches tall and thirty-five pounds too heavy, but she’s got it into her head that she’s qualified to be a ballet teacher. She struts around in these little healed dancing shoes in a flowy skirt with her hair up in a little knot and everybody just listens to her. She teaches at the middle school, I guess – Social Studies or some such subject – and she was the one who roped Sebastian into this Nutcracking thing. Told him he could get extra-credit. As if Nutcracking has anything to do with Social Studies. My foot!

And then at rehearsal I guess she asked whose parents had a sewing machine. And Sebastian, just to be spiteful like usual, raised his hand and yelled out, “My Mama’s a real good sewer.”

Next thing I know, Miss Ellis Freeborn is prancing up to my front door with her arms full of white fabric and a Simplicity pattern and telling me this and that and giving me all sorts of measurements for Clem Bailey who works at the hardware store. I guess she talked him into putting on makeup and wearing a dress on stage for all Sashawalla to laugh at. And here’s me, making his dress.

I gotta string all this wire through the skirt to make it poke out right so that about twenty little snots can fit underneath.

Sebastian sniggers every time he hears me cursing under my breath about this darn costume. And I swear I’m going to beat the living tar out of her if Miss Ellis Freeborn calls me on the telephone one more time to ask if I’m done with it.

No, I am not done with it. The last time I pulled out this sewing machine was in 1985. Trying to relearn myself to sew takes considerable time, so nobody should be hassling me about it. Just be grateful I was willing to do it at all, that’s my thinking.

Meantime, I haven’t gotten no Christmas shopping done, except for the video game chair. And I haven’t had no time to go down to the beauty salon, so all my white roots are showing. Can’t even go to the grocery store these days I’m so ashamed. We’re on macaroni and cheese for the sixth night in a row.

I’m so mad at Miss Ellis Freeborn, I could spit.

And probably the only thing Sebastian is getting for Christmas is a big white mess of a dress he can put on after the show’s over. That’s all you deserve, Sebastian Reginald Harris. Teach you to go in league against me with Miss Ellis Freeborn. You’re going to be getting a nice, big white dress wrapped up in Santa paper on Christmas morning. And who’s gonna be sniggering then, huh?

But Merry Christmas, anyhow, everyone. I’m sure I’ll find a way to pull through this. I always do. Clem Bailey’ll be wearing something next Friday night up on stage. Just hope none of those twenty snots get their eyes poked out on this darn wire while they’re dancing around under there. That would sure be a pity.

 
Thanks to Dawn Shultz who gave me the three inspirational words for this story: ginger, tulip and simplicity. I was experimenting with voice for this one. And you can tell I have Nutcracker on the brain. My girls performed in the ballet this week, so the word GINGER popped out at me big time. Thanks, Dawn, for your words! I hope you liked the story, despite its quirkiness.

FitG Update: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I jumped straight out of Octavian Nothing into Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which was on my Fill in the Gaps Project (FitG) book list. Talk about a contrast!

But Wimpy Kid is awesome in its own right. Click here to read my full review on the FitG blog, if you're interested.

I have a few other FitG books on deck to read, thanks to my local public library. I love you, library!

Here they are:


Vampire Academy isn't my usual reading fare, but with FitG, I'm trying to read out of the box. For me, "the box" doesn't include a lot of popular series like this one (or vampire novels, for that matter). I'm already more than halfway through and I have to say, I am enjoying it so far. It's entertaining and I'm learning a lot about plotting and heightening tension.  



I don't know much about The Brother Torres, but I think I found it on an American Library Association list and most of those books are amazing. So, I'm excited.



I've heard great things about Jellicoe Road, so I'm super excited to read it.

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

What's on your reading list this week?

Octavian Nothing

I just finished The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Volume I: The Pox Party), which I won through a contest on Dawn's blog. Thanks Dawn!

Confession: I won it quite a long time ago. Started it. Stopped reading. Started again. Stopped reading. Started again recently because I hadn't been to the library in ages and was desperate for something to read while lying in bed at night....

This should not be taken as a reflection on the book. M.T. Anderson is clearly a genius. The book is written mostly in Octavian's eighteenth-century voice, which is no small feat. I enjoyed his writing, but it was paced more like a classic.

Don't get me wrong. I love classics. But I don't think I was prepared for the classic-feel (and the commitment it takes to finish a classic) when I started reading this particular book. Does that make any sense at all? 

I didn't read any synopses of this book before I started, so, although the beginning was interesting (because his circumstances were so unusual), I didn't understand what the main conflict was until Octavian himself figures it out (well past page 50!). Just goes to show you that geniuses can break plotting "rules" and still get starred reviews. *Go, Mr. Anderson!* (That was honestly meant to be a compliment. And, on a side note, I heard Mr. Anderson speak -- and sing -- at the SCBWI LA conference and he was brilliant.)

Click here to read the School Library Journal and Booklist reviews via Amazon.  

Have you ever read a book like this? You knew it was good, but you just had a hard time getting into it?

Give a Book, Give the World

Have you noticed the amazing project Jackee Alston has started over on her blog, Winded Words, to celebrate her 200th post?

If not, you have to check it out. She's calling it Project Give a Book, Give the World.

Whenever we buy books to give kids, we let Jackee know how many books we purchased and she'll match the donation number with humanitarian school kits for children who usually can't afford the luxury of a whole pencil. (My kids will not be receiving one of these kits, even though I swear there's a pencil-eating monster living in my junk drawer because I can never find one when I need it. The fact that I even have a junk drawer, however, disqualifies us from receiving humanitarian aid.)

Not only that, but Jackee is giving away books at the same time. Wonderful books! All in the spirit of the holidays.

So drop by her blog, buy lots of books for your kids (and all the neighbor kids and all the kids in your kids' classes and all the kids you see on the street), and make Jackee work really hard sending out those humanitarian school kits. (She wants to!) And who knows, you might win a really great book in the process.

'Tis the season to give because of what God gave to us.

Thanks Jackee for giving so much of yourself to make other people's lives better.

Life Happens

Isn't it true that life doesn't slow down for very long before something new pops up?

Sometimes it's a good pop up (like a Pop Tart - warm and sweet). Sometimes it's more like a pop out (like poop). But pop-ups are always complicated. And when we think we're catching up (though whatever that illusive "catching up" really means, I'm not sure), we're not.

Over the weekend I had an extremely crabby two-year-old.

I was pretty sure she was getting her molars and this was normal molar behavior.

But when she screamed and thrashed all through Saturday night and held her mouth and screamed "Owie!" and when every question I asked her resulted in, "NO! Nu-uh! NO!" ... well, I started to wonder if it was something more.

Yesterday morning I noticed a new sore on her lip. She'd had one on the side of her mouth, but I thought it was just a pimple. I asked her to stick out her tongue ("No! Nu-uh! No! -- but then she did it anyway) and saw more sores speckling her tongue.

Turns out my baby contracted the oral-version of the herpies virus, a.k.a. cold sores. The dashingly handsome sidekick also contracted this as a young child (and before you freak out, it's not related to the herpes STD at all) but he hasn't had a sore in ages and ages.

We're not sure how she got it, but I guess at this age when little hands go everywhere, she could've gotten it anywhere.

I've managed to avoid the virus for more than eleven years. (Once you get it, you have it for the rest of your life. Small children have the worst reaction. When she gets older, she'll probably get cold sores from time to time, like the DHS.) But I'd been kissing and holding her so much these last few days, I wonder how much longer I'll have to enjoy a cold-sore-free mouth. Did I mention that oral-herpes is highly contagious?

So, I keep washing my hands. And I've been praying that maybe the other kids and I will be miraculously immune. In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of holding and rocking. The only foods she'll eat are soft things like Jell-O, pudding and yogurt. But at this point I'm just glad she's eating something. We're watching a lot of Little Einsteins because that's the only show Sophie will watch without crying. I'm wearing old clothes, washing a lot of laundry, and doing a lot of praying for presymptomatic healing.

It's Nutcracker week for my older girls, too. So let the fun (and the insanity) begin.

Someday I may get around to writing a more interesting post. Someday....

Thanks for sticking with me through the doldrums, folks.

A Story A Week: Squalor

Donna observed the squalor from the middle of the living room floor. Duplo blocks, two undressed dolls with patchy yarn hair, an upturned red chair, and plastic dishes lay strewn over the brown braided rug that had been a Christmas gift from her mother. She knew the kitchen was worse. Heather had upset her bowl, splattering yogurt and strawberries over the tiled floor and the wallpaper.


She hadn’t cleaned up yet. Sitting with her back straight at this moment took all the strength she could muster.

The doorbell rang an electronic version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” This was her way of being festive this year. Half-way through December and Donna hadn’t the mental resources to consider purchasing a Christmas tree. Not to mention decorating one.

She heaved herself up and padded to the front door. The noise irritated her, especially when Heather was sleeping. She should put tape over the button during naptime with a sign, telling people to knock instead. Put that on the to-do list, she thought. But even the thought of a to-do list made her weary.

Donna cracked open the door. Alison stood outside, her knit hat puffing plump and lumpy from the top of her head and her scarf bunched over her mouth.

“Farry,” she said as she whipped off her gloves. “If fif ifn’t a food fime I fan—”

“What?”

Alison yanked the scarf from her mouth. “Sorry, hon, is this a good time?” She lumbered in without waiting for a reply, large in her Timberland coat and snow-encrusted boots. “Because if it’s not I can come back later. I probably should’ve called.”

“Oh, fine,” Donna said. What else could she say? No, leave me alone? I’m in the middle of a pity party? “Heather’s sleeping. Courtney’s at school.”

“Your moment of quiet.” Alison grinned. “I was just hiking the grade. Thought I’d drop in on my way down, find out if you heard anything.”

Donna went limp, rag doll arms flopping to her sides. “Yeah.” She shuddered out a sigh. “Harvey just called.”

“When? You mean, he just called? From China? Like, just just?” Alison unwound her scarf and stared saucer-eyed into Donna’s face. “Wow, how’s that for timing?”

Donna shut the door.

“Well?” Alison said. “Did he get it?”

Donna didn’t trust her voice. She nodded.

“Oh, hon!” Alison wrapped two well-padded arms around Donna and pulled her close. She smelled of damp earth. Her cheeks radiated the chill. “Oh, don’t take it so hard! It’s not the end of the world, you know.”

Donna nodded into the slick outer shell of Alison’s coat. “I know.”

“I mean, you’ll see a new part of the planet with the man you love. You’ll probably have a great time.”

Donna pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Crying in front of Alison was a stupid thing to do. “I guess.”

“Don’t just guess!” Alison said, unzipping her coat. “Believe it! This is China we’re talking about. Just think about how exciting this is. You’ll learn Chinese.”

Donna sniffed. “I’ve never been good with languages. Not like Harvey.”

“Bah humbug.”

“And I have all this packing to do.” Donna gestured with one floppy arm.

“Oh, I’ll help you. I’ll get my girls to come, too. We’ll all help.” Alison yanked off her hat. “And you’ll send me a postcard, right? How long did Harvey say his contract was for?”

Donna shuddered. “Three years.”

“Three years!”

“That’s part of the problem.” Donna’s voice came out in a sob. “What if I don’t like it? I’m stuck there for three years! And here I’ve never been to any place except Canada before!”

“Oh, hon!” Alison discarded her coat, draping it over the railing. “You’ve been to Tijuana, right? Didn’t you tell me that story of the guy with that huge—”

“That was my sister.”

“Oh. Well, look at it this way. China can’t be so different from Canada … or here. We’re all human beings, right? We all have the same needs and desires in life. We’re all—”

“You’re starting to sound like a Hallmark card.”

Alison squeezed Donna’s shoulders with her big hands. “I’m just trying to tell you not to flip out. It’ll be better than you think. Now, when do you leave?”

“Two months,” Donna said. “We have to wait for them to be done with Chinese New Year. I guess it’s a big deal over there. No point getting over there in the middle of it, because the whole country shuts down.”

“Two whole months.” Alison pushed her face close so that their noses almost touched. “Piece of cake. You’ll get used to the idea, hon. See if you don’t. And Harvey wants this, right?”

“More than anything in the world,” Donna said, taking a step back, out of range of Alison’s spearmint breath. “If I say no—” She swallowed. “I’d rip his heart out.”

“No,” Alison said quickly. “No is out of the question. You’ve got to go. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

A lifetime. Three years could feel like a lifetime, Donna thought. And her mother. How would she ever break the news to her mother? Since her sister had moved back east to get married, her mother had lived alone. Donna was the only one close by to take care of her. What if something happened—?

“Three years isn’t that long,” Alison said. “It’ll pass in a blink.”

A blink. The words echoed in Donna’s skull, but she couldn’t quite believe them.

“And then you’ll be home again,” Alison went on, “so much richer for the experience.”

“He’ll get a good salary,” Donna admitted. “And he says we’ll get to travel.”

“See?” Alison clapped Donna’s shoulder. “You’re already looking at the bright side. That’s what you have to do, hon. Keep your chin up.”

Instinctively, Donna lifted her chin. But all that ran through her head was the Monty Python theme: always look on the bright side of life…. Then that unbearable whistling, almost as bad as her Christmas doorbell.

Donna’s chin dropped.

Alison glanced around the living room, her eyes two flames of worry. Her hand stayed clamped to Donna’s shoulder. “Need any help cleaning up, hon? I’m pretty good with a vacuum.”

 
This short story was inspired by my friend Alison Stedman Coslow's three words: squalor, naptime and yogurt. Thank you, Alison! (For the record, Alison is nothing like the "Alison" in this story. She is not pushy and she is very petite.)
 
I'm a pretty rusty short story writer, probably because it's been a month or two since I've written one. Mass edits of the Work In Progress (WiP) got in the way. I decided to depart from the norm this time and write a story with a character from my WiP. This story takes place twelve years before my novel starts, when my protagonist Heather is four. I wanted to explore her mother's character more - find out how she reacted to the news that they were moving to China. 
 
For the writers out there: Have you ever tried this technique (writing down supporting stories that won't actually appear in the novel) when exploring your characters' personalities? Did you find that it helped give your characters dimension?

Snow and Sombreros

The Dashingly Handsome Sidekick had a birthday yesterday.

We celebrated with Mexican food, the entire family, a vanilla raspberry cake, and a very large sombrero.

(Krista V. - please note my son's Kellen Moore jersey. We got it at football camp last summer. And it's signed. Go ahead and drool.)

This week has just been weird. Tuesday and Wednesday we had snow delays and today they cancelled school all together. I'm not complaining. I love having my family home. But after almost a full no-school week for Thanksgiving (thanks to snow and delays and no snow tires) and another off-week this week,  the kids are sliding into vacation mode. They want to sleep in and go to bed late. There's no schedule to speak of. (No writing to speak of, either.) They're wild with cabin fever.

And my posts on this blog have been super lame.

Sorry.

The snow is melting. Maybe some warmer weather will zap some life back into this tired old brain of mine.

I can't promise, though. My two older girls are performing in the Nutcracker ballet next week, so even if the snow melts and school starts up again, I'm sure my brain will be just as tired. (But my girls will be beautiful and graceful; I'm so proud of them.)

In the meantime, however, Happy Birthday DHS!

I'll leave you with a photo of our snow-covered valley and hoarfrost encrusted trees.

And our cute little snowman (created on the first snow day, when snow was still a novelty).