In my 20's, I used to yearn - actively - for perspective. I'd be in the middle of some crisis - personal, employment-related, as a mother, a wife, a girlfriend (the latter two never overlapped, I hasten to add) - and in agony I would recall one particular incident when I was maybe 6, staying overnight with my grandma and grandpa (my dad's folks) when I got sick. Vomiting, diarrhea, the whole bit. And my grandma was so placid and competent and gave me such a golden feeling of being cared for with love - and just knowing what to do and what to expect - that even at that young age, I remember thinking: She's been through this raising four kids and it's no big deal and I will be OK. Perspective was the word didn't know when I was six.

I'm fifty-six now, and I finally do have more perspective. I raised a son - as best I knew how - and he's turned out to be a fine man, for which I give him most of the credit. I've been through a divorce, and now I'm learning about widowhood. All those years and joys and mistakes and learning and striving and agonizing have an accumulated weight that seems to stabilize this little boat bobbing on the waves.

I've learned that divorce brings lots else in addition to freedom - including never-vanishing regrets. What I know now is that there are armies of counselors who would have loved to help us, if only we'd know there were out there, and if only we hadn't been so afraid of self-examination. We may have been able to weather the problems, and even have emerged stronger and better people, if we'd known. Our son paid the price. Regrets.

In losing my second husband and in the months of his suffering before he died, I learned that all those things I'd agonized over for so long - all those points of stress and subjects of discord, all the resentments and power struggles - they were nothing - nothing, compared to the depth and strength of our love. They burned away and disappeared like toilet paper in the blast of concern, then fear, then horror when at last it became clear that he wouldn't be coming home. I consider myself so lucky to have been able to let him know in those months, by my actions and words, how much I loved him. I have no regrets on that count. He knew.

In addition to the many things I've learned through this experience, about my husband, myself, and us - I've learned that we have - I have - the best family and friends on Earth. They supported and loved us every step of that cruel path, and continue to do so. I lost my dear husband, but because of family and friends, I count myself among the luckiest of human beings.

Gratitude is the great antidote to so many habits of thinking and feeling that could twist and stain and cripple my life. Resentment, envy, feelings of inadequacy, fear - all of these are parts of my personality and - [checking...] - yes, daily I grapple with every one of them. But thanks to my husband and years of honest effort on my part, I have the tools that help me work through them. I cannot ever take it for granted that I'll succeed. Every rearing of one of those ugly heads requires my serious and honest confrontation. I don't imagine that I am always - or ever - 100% successful. But this blessed perspective helps me keep both my successes and failures to a human - not an overwhelming -scale. I have learned to judge when it's appropriate to forgive myself, and when I need to work harder.

It's funny - I had no idea what I was doing, in my 20's, in the thrashings of emotion and usually self-inflicted crisis - but in yearning for perspective, I was wishing for exactly the right thing.

I am so, so lucky.

I didn't realize it'd been so long since I posted. Some "daily" blog, eh? Oh, well.

I haven't kept up with the 1667 words/day required to finish NaNoWriMo at 50,000 words at the stroke of midnight, November 30th, but I've kept my hand in; I can still do it if I write 2,000 a day until then. Will I? I hope so. I could if I really set my mind to it. But even if I don't, it will have been well worth doing. It's reminded me what fun, and what solace, writing daily can be. Fiction, I mean. I keep at least one, currently two, daily journals going always, but fiction is different. I have to make up the incidents and characters in fiction; not so my journals. Fiction writing challenges me to dig deeper into my imagination, throw myself curves and fling myself aloft to catch them. Working at NaNo this year has also reminded me that I CAN write daily. Why not? What a loaded question, inviting scattershot of excuses. But now I'm reminded not only that I can do it, but also why I'd want to. Time well spent!

Feh. Only wrote 860 NaNo words today. On the other hand, I got quite a bit done at work. You know, where they pay me my salary. I know, I should have better priorities, but truth be told, I've been gone a LOT lately, unavoidably, and I feel like I owe them big-time. So, I just have to hammer out 2500 words tomorrow and I'm back on track.

(i'm okay, i'm on track, gone too far and i can't go back...)

Got today's quota of NaNo words in and it's just now noon. Yippee! Maybe I'll get some more done tonight, but in the meantime I have groceries to buy, a comic book to buy, and some art to do.

I sat down and wrote & wrote and got to a stopping point and quit, did the word count, and realized I was only about 350 words short of the whole day's quota, so I went back and wrote some more. It is SO NICE to be able to do that! I've had this suffocating writer's block (yah, yah, don't tell me there is no such thing - if you're thinking that it's because you've been lucky enough not to suffer it yet) for years now, and by gosh, they're right about NaNo - it does make writing fun again!

I did even less than I'd thought yesterday; I only got about 470 words written. However, I have made up for it today! Up to 6,704 words now! And it's humming along pretty well. It's got more of a YA adventure, maybe YA horror feel to it, or it could be a mystery (I'm looking from the reader's point of view here), than I intended. I'm going for something a bit dark, but with a little comic relief and lots of supsense and then pathos. lol - ambition is a lovely thing, God wot.

I figure I can make it darker and creepier in the rewrite. mwahahahaha!

I only got some 560 NaNo-words or so written this morning because I got to a spot where I have to draw a house plan. Quite a lot of the action will take place in this house and it needs certain attributes, so I have to draw floor plans. Then I can get the other 1200 or so words done tonight. Wish me luck.

Day Two of NaNoWriMo and I'm at 2,996 words so far with the whole evening ahead in which to work on it more. I'm pleased with it so far!

Kudos to everyone else in NaNo! Go forth and WRITE!

....Friday Nov. 3rd Addendum for last night: final day's total: 3566.

(That's the whole manuscript total.)

So far, so good. And it's fun again, which is why I signed on for this insanity.

I can truly say this year has been the best of times and the worst of times, with absolutely no exaggeration.

But in a few hours the 2006 National Novel Writing Month commences, and once again, I've signed up! This time I'm really committed and I'm gonna do it. I shall try to blog about it daily and if nothing else maybe I'll post a photo of the chaos of my home office.

I've actually made a study of efficient packing for travel. I've made it a goal to never have to check a bag at the airport. I'm getting pretty good at it, for short (fewer than four days) trips. I'm going to keep practicing. Packing light makes traveling so much simpler and easier.

I toy, from time to time, with the idea of trying my hand at travel writing. It's kind of a silly idea, because compared to many of the travel writers whose web sites I've seen, whose books I've read, whose articles I've read - I haven't traveled.

Oh, my job has taken me all over my home state of Nebraska many times. And it's sent me to conferences in many cities I otherwise would never have been able to visit. Let me count the cities: Chicago, San Antonio, St. Louis, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Madison WI, Annapolis, Atlantic City, Kansas City (many times, and I can always go there anyway), Nashua NH...seems like there were more but I can't summon them up right now.

Oh yeah, that's another thing: my lace-like memory. And my brilliant powers of observation. (sarcasm) Those are both things that will serve me well in travel writing (/sarcasm). What town was I in? *scowls, straining to remember*

Well, it just occurred to me I might try a rapid memory exercise here. How about if I try to list the one thing that stands out most about each of those cities in my memory? Stream of unconsciousness...

Chicago: architecture. Love it!
San Antonio: the Alamo
St. Louis: how gray the downtown is
Flagstaff: those mountains
Albuquerque: the giant Native American-style pots in the highway medians
Madison WI: State Street!!!!
Annapolis: the sailboats in the marina
Atlantic City: the boardwalk, of course
Kansas City: Oh, I've been there too many times to pick one thing. The BBQ, I guess.
Nashua NH: my friend Chriss. Oh all right, and the fall foliage. But mostly Chriss.

It's discouraging, looking at that list, how mundane and cliche my Main Memory Things are. The Alamo??? The Boardwalk??? Yeeesh. I'm going to have to do better than THAT. Well, okay, I'll dig out all my photos and my trip diaries and for the next month I'm going to try to write *real* travel articles, the kind I like to read.

I'll include places I've been that weren't for my job too: Sunnyvale CA, Tucson AZ, Lake Andrusia, MN (obviously a vacation spot), Cheyenne Crossing SD...

This should be fun for *me*. Maybe some readers will enjoy it, too.

About the Battlestar Galactica 9/23/05 episode:

That rape scene from Friday night's Battlestar Galactica kept bugging me. It didn't harrow me, or "disturb" me – it provoked a lot of questions.

"She" is a machine – though capable of emotions, thought, and getting pregnant (this copy of Boomer IS pregnant by a human soldier, Helo). So what if they rape her? Especially since her kind is hell-bent on annihilating the human species? Why is any method of extracting useful information from her, wrong? Isn't it like torturing your car, or your lawn mower?

Ahh…that gets us closer to the answer.

Let's say that all the apparently human responses she showed during the rape (screaming, fighting, crying) really are just pre-programmed computer behaviors.

If you torture your lawn mower, it's not a crime. There's no law, legal or moral, against torturing your lawn mower. But what kind of person tortures their lawn mower?

And even if that asshole viewed the Boomer/Caprica copy as a machine, when it was giving off all those human-like signals of terror and horror and revulsion and pain, what kind of person wouldn't have an instinctive sympathetic response to that? Either a total sociopath, or a psychotic. Either actually evil, or helplessly sick. Or – if not one of those, then someone who knows perfectly well right from wrong but who has thrown all moral framework away in favor of indulging his fantasies of hatred and revenge.

But, say he's raping a machine. Isn't it a victimless non-crime?

Maybe a non-crime, but not victimless. He's distancing himself from the best parts of himself. He's crossing a line that he may not be able to cross back to regain his own humanity. And when (in the BG universe) there are only a few tens of thousands of human beings left, and they are threatened with extinction by millions of machines – isn't he really, by opting out of humanity, committing a crime against humanity?

And doesn't this resonate interestingly with the real USA right now?

I'm one with the notion that we immortalize loved "ones" in our memories of them, whether they're people, animals, places or events.

Reading the poem "The Rain Poured Down" by Dan Gerber (http://articles.poetryx.com/89/), a new thought struck me. In my memory there lives, will always live, a single tear: the first one I ever saw my father cry.

I can see him now, crouching forward on a living room hassock, elbows on knees, eyeglasses dangling from one hand. I don't remember for sure, but I think he'd just learned that his dad's cancer was inoperable.

He turned his face toward the open front screendoor so I wouldn't see, but it only threw that narrow quarter-face view of him into silvery light relief against the shadowed interior wall. And with a thrill of shock and dismay, I saw that tear run down the very border between his silvered cheek and the darkness beyond. That moment is frozen in my mind.

I knew as much how to comfort him then, when I was 12, as I do now, when he himself has been dead 11 years.

A single tear sinking like acid down through the softness of my broken heart.

"What'd you do over the weekend?"

"Oh, I got the snow tires swapped off my car."

I had to empty the trunk to hold the regular tires. I took out the pair of drapes with hardware that are supposed to get dumped at a Goodwill somewhere, the cardboard box holding my snowmobile boots, my hip waders and my irrigation boots, the three-legged stool that's broken, the "reacher-grabber" I take to the grocery store so I can get at things on the top shelves, the soft old Indian-print blanket, the half-jug of windshield wiper fluid and the dirty rag I use to check the oil, and put them in the garage. My emergency overnight duffel bag I brought into the house suspecting it needed refreshing and updating.

I went through the back porch and got the key to the padlock on the toolshed. I went out to the toolshed and got out the wheelbarrow, loaded the regular tires onto it, and hauled them out to the driveway and shoved them into the trunk. I left the wheelbarrow in the garage, and went back and locked up the toolshed. We took the car to the tires place and ordered an oil change and a tire swap.

Back home, I went down to the basement to start the laundry. The cat box needed cleaning, so I did that, and took the bag of dirty litter out to the garbage cans. I loaded and started the washer. I went back upstairs and brought the duffel bag up to the bedroom. I wanted to lay out its contents on the bed, but the linens are overdue for a change. So, I stripped the bed, tossed the linens down the chute, and put clean sheets & pillowcases on the bed.

I opened up the bag. A couple of books; a dirty toothbrush, a dried-up miniature tube of toothpaste; a hotel shampoo bottle whose contents looked like old amber; old contact lens solutions and cases, a box of granola bars and a sealed packet of beef jerky; a pair of underpants; a sweater so small for me now that I couldn't get it on if my life depended on it - ditto for a tee shirt; the two halves of a little plastic case I gleaned from the research lab I worked in years ago, and one of two cheap faux-pearl earrings I'd kept in it. I searched and searched for its mate, but it wasn't in the bag. I turned to the big jewelry box my father-in-law made me years ago. It broke recently; the lid's back rim stayed with the box's hinge and the top, with its mirror inside now loose, had come off. I laid all that lid stuff on the bed and started looking for the faux-pearl earring.

My jewelry box was a disaster. It looked like I'd thrown everything into the air and plopped random wads of earrings, buttons, belts, dead watches and God knows what else, back into its nine little velvet-lined compartments. It had been bugging me for months. No time like the present.

I pulled out all the buttons and put them in a pile. I emptied one compartment's contents into another, and put all the watches into the empty one. I went through every compartment and put all the "singleton" earrings into the center compartment, and all the earrings that were broken - with their mates, if they had them - into another one. All the loose earring-backs have their own "room." At the same time I matched up all the pairs and put them into the other four rooms.

Then I went through the mated pairs and put the cheap tacky ones into one compartment, and sorted the really good ones - which make up most of my collection, actually, my hubby has great taste - into the remaining four compartments. Voila! A long-needed task complete. I put the box lid, mirror and hardware in a place where hubby will be reminded he needs to fix it.

But no faux-pearl earring. I picked out a couple of cheap pairs I don't use much, and put them in the little plastic box. I tossed all the old toiletries and replenished them from my (recently-organized!) Travel Supplies box. The contact lens stuff I tossed; I only wear them at rock concerts any more. I re-packed the duffle with a new tee shirt that fits and a pair of socks. It's ready to go back into my trunk.

It's 1 p.m. So I went down and made three sandwiches and two glasses of Crystal Lite lemonade, and we're each eating lunch at our computers. When we're done, we'll go get my car.

And I can cross one To Do item off today's list.

As usual, nothing turns out the way you plan it. At least, it doesn't for me. I did okay with the writing for the first couple of days, then came down with a horrendous head cold and crapped out the rest of the week...it's better today, good Lord, it should be, with the zinc lozenges and cold medicines and orange juice I've been guzzling, and all the naps! What a way to spend a vacation. Oh well, it's just a cold. And it should be gone by the time I have to go back to work Tuesday. Hubby called, said they'll be getting back to town that day, too, so I have something to look forward to when I get home from work! He says Manitoba is gorgeous, so maybe we'll go back up there sometime for a getaway.

The writing went well when it was going, and I've gotten my plan logged so now I'll just chip away at it a little each day - more when inspiration hits. I will be SO glad when this monster is finished! I don't even care if it sells (though of course I'd rather it did than not)! I just want it off my back!

I feel just good enough to not want to nap any more, but not good enough to really desire to do anything, specific. Usually when I'm in this gray fog I go do housekeeping chores and that makes me feel at least somewhat productive. When I get tired out, I take a break with a book -- I'm re-reading Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road right now. He's a joy.

So it's down to the kitchen for some busy work. Maybe I'll get more writing in this afternoon.

So now I have EIGHT DAYS all to myself. I've launched a final desparate grab at finishing this demmed novel that's been sitting for like, five years, bugging me from afar. I love the first two-thirds, so now it's Step Up to the Plate Day. And I have been; all morning I worked on edits and re-acquainting myself with the "voice," and all that. I'm not giving myself time to get scared (what the effing BLOCK has been all about, though beyond that I haven't figured it out), I'm just TYPING. I'm always better at the re-writes, though I don't do what you'd call a *re-write* so much as multiple comb-throughs.

Anyway, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to immerse myself in this story, this world, and see how well I can do justice to it. The story's been in my head since about 1970. That's NOT kidding. 35 years. Wow. It deserves finishing, and publishing, and going out into the world to make its way. Been under Mommy's thumb for far, far too long.

Love ya, hubby. Have a great time! :)

Another old screed that I'd forgotten I'd written until a friend put it into his email Signature rotation (minor changes made for updating):

First it was Collin. Then John McCain lets us down. Rudy. One by one the ones who have shown us that greatness lies within them, succumb to the siren song of power.

Maybe the definition of a politician is a person who, at some later point in their life, discover that why, yes, they can use those heroic younger selves to gain more power for themselves today. That courage and integrity that saw them through those awful tests then, well, they're not really that useful today. They're now just coinage.

Whereas to an ordinary person who opts not to so use their own earlier days of triumph over adversity, who instead just live their lives peacefully and honorably, those days were all that justifies the rest of the time we take up space on the planet.

I just came across this old screed that I wrote on...November 23, 2002. Unfortunately, it's still topical.
==================================================================
We don’t need no steenking Homeland Security Department.

There, someone finally said it.

They could assign one or two key people from each of the agencies to serve on a coordinating governing board, to implement the meshing of computer and intelligence systems. It would save us taxpayers millions, maybe billions, of dollars. Just think of the letterhead printing changes alone! Give that governing body a clear agenda, a realistic timeline, and the power to carry it out. Give the agency heads the message that these people get cooperation at every level, or high-level heads will be rolling down the hallowed halls. Give them money to do the job, and a reasonable framework of rules to operate under. Then turn them loose with it.

Have *any* of our “leaders” *ever* worked INSIDE a government agency? I don’t think they could have, because I don’t hear or see any evidence that Bush or Ridge or any of them have any clue that what they’re demanding is ludicrous. Expensive, and frightening on several counts. But first, ludicrous because right now is NOT the time we need a gigantic percentage of our intelligence and law enforcement people coping with restructuring and moving furniture and people around.

Has it occurred to *anyone* that these people *already* have full workloads? And Bush thinks this Frankenstein monster is going to be up and running when? In a month? A year? Five years? Fine–we’ll tell Al Quaeda to come back later, when we’re presentable.

I can’t wait to see the organizational chart (the unrevealed Lines of Power chart would be too scary for a lay person, I’m quite sure). If they ever publish it, you should study it carefully. I know I will. Because if for any reason I ever get caught up in its coils, it’s liable to be an excruciatingly Byzantine trip back out to freedom. And that’s assuming that your capture was a benign mistake.

With Ashcroft looking more and more like Goering, there’s not much hope that everyone one who *is* masticated by the Homeland Security Department is guilty of something. At least, having to do with security. Perhaps guilty of criticizing Ashcroft on TV, or writing an anti-Iraq-war screed to the local paper’s Letters to the Editor. Or participating in a public rally to support Arab-Americans. Or having the misfortune to brush against a “Persian-looking” man on your way through the airport...or buying girlie magazines from your neighborhood’s Korean-American convenience store. I can, as you can see, imagine about a million ways that Bush’s minions might cast their suspicious eyes upon any given innocent citizen. Who can predict which one they’ll label “enemy combatants” – which means, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, because you don’t get a lawyer, you don’t get to know what you’re charged with, you don’t get to see or talk to or correspond with your family, and you don’t have any way of knowing when you’re getting the hell out of their prison, and you have no rights and no recourse whatsoever.

Read that last sentence over carefully: "you have no rights and no recourse whatsoever."

Does that sound like America to you?

Some Democrats fought the Homeland Security Act’s measures that would strip all those government employees’ workers’ rights. While many citizens think any punishment for a guvvmint employee is too light, there is an aspect to this that bodes even greater evil for the people’s interests than whether a guvvmint employee gets to sue his supervisor for interrupting his coffee break (which seems to be what most citizens think is about the level of seriousness of guvmint employees’ complaints).

Any agency of public servants has its unwritten laws: mores of the culture of that particular agency. There may be an unwritten rule, for example, that no one gets overtime paid as *time*, no matter what the collective bargaining agreements might say about having to offer the employee a choice. Ask for your O-T in hours once, and you’ll get them. But you’ll never be granted O-T again (and most agencies now require employes to put in for O-T permission in advance).

There will be dozens of those kinds of rules thrown into chaos with the smashing together of all those existing federal agencies–that’s not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. But other unwritten rules may concern how privacy issues are handled for informants; how much latitude a staffer has to stretch the Chief Executive’s policies in the name of common sense and compassion. Or how to balance one’s knowlege of the deep-down bedrock patriotism of a co-worker who, in a caffeine rush, utters a disparagement of W Bush with other co-workers as witnesses. You may know the person is joking (albeit unwisely), but you also know that the other witnesses will be reporting the comments to *their* superiors.

Oh heck, go read Solzhenitsyn and LeCarre to see what the ramifications of government workers without rights can result in, and what happens to the general citizenry and truth and justice. This worries me more than the “well-being” of those employees now facing such a life–and I *am* concerned with their well-being. After all, they’re Americans, too. And if one of them learns of clandestine but profound violations of the Constitution by their agency or the White House? What does she do then, with no right to complain if her job is suddenly terminated, or she’s shifted over to the basement paper clip-counting gulag? Or, and I hope this isn’t likely, if her life or family is threatened if she blows the whistle?

Excuse me, but I don’t think this is how democracy works, I don’t give a DAMN about Al Quaeda. If we end up with the same nightmare that Bin Ladn or Saddam would impose upon us, given half a chance, imposed instead by our own “leaders,” how have we gained? I believe we’re in as much danger from those now running the show around the White House as we are from Saddam Hussein. Their methods won’t be mushroom clouds or insidious microbes. They’ll use stepwise dismantling of our Bill of Rights, methodical replacement of centrist judges with those more amenable to the far-right plans, and relentlessly equating dissent with anti-Americanism. And they’ll count on our love of ease and cheapness of gasoline to keep us quiet while the transformation takes place.

One more peeve: Who the hell thought up the title, Homeland Security? It sounds more like some mindless Maoist or Ruskie slogan than anything I ever heard of here. It sounds like “The Fatherland.” Are we going to be required to call W “Father” someday soon?
===================================================================

I'm sickened to realize that the situation has only gotten worse over the past two and one-half years, not better.

I did something cowardly yesterday. I am full of rationalizations but it was still cowardly and against everything I say I stand for.

I spoke about wetlands before about 60 6th graders yesterday afternoon. After I gave my basic Wetlands Intro talk, we had Q & A. They were asking good questions, several wanting to know what different kinds of wetlands there are and what each kind is "good for." I myself opened up the subject of vernal pools and started to talk about how one of their chief benefits in nature is protecting tiny populations of small amphibians and invertebrates from larger predators - and I started to say "provide habitat for isolated populations that through thousands of generations will evolve into even more different species" - when the words stuck in my throat. I wonder if I looked panicky for a second. I remember my gaze zooming around the room, taking in the childrens' faces, the teacher's and the principal's and the other guest speaker's - "What if one of the kids objects to the mention of evolution?" raced through my mind. "No-win: argue with a 6th grader? Parents! Irate principal? Professional reprimand?" All in an instant,- and I choked. I went on to another topic.

I have a bagful of rationalizations: I was only there for 1/2 hour, why introduce controversy and a complex subject way over the kids' heads? It's not my job to teach evolution, I was there to talk about wetlands (yeah, that sounds lame even to me). What right do I have to stir up trouble and leave the school staff to deal with it? (another lame one)

This forces me to re-evaluate my self-image as well as what my role is when I go to these guest shots. It is also a wake-up call; now I realize what kind of temptation towards self-censorship teachers must experience on a daily basis. I'm sure the support level of the principal is absolutely critical on a school-by-school basis, and of course that's determined largely by how much support the principal gets from the school board. And the population from which school boards are drawn seems to be racing for the Dark Ages as fast as it can go.

My own cowardice shakes me deeply. We're in worse trouble than I thought. What can I do? I can think hard about what I did yesterday and make concrete plans to prevent it from happening again. I can post it on my blog for all the world to see, to ventilate the struggle.

I've been wringing my hands over what's happening to this country for so long - since the Nov. 2000 "election," really - and it's time I quit wringing and started doing something. Not being sure where I'd put a barricade but being quite sure it'd look pretty silly for one short, chubby, middle-aged woman to be "manning" it, I look around for what else I could do...well, the internet makes it easy to send outraged emails to Congress and the White House and the State capitol. So I've increased my rate of doing that.

I've spent all these years since the Occupation of the White House reading and listening (radio), trying to understand how things work, what's happening. I surprised myself by beginning to perceive people's motivations behind their actions. I could be wrong, probably am sometimes, but if it's true that "by their deeds you shall know them," I think Bush & Co. have painted a pretty clear picture by now.

What baffles me now is how ANYONE with ANY intelligence whatsoever could believe a word t/he/y say/s. What baffles me is how so many professional news people - who are *supposed* to be the world's most cynical human beings - continue to take Bush Administration utterances at face value, with no follow-up questions - and there are dozens of follow-up questions BEGGING to be asked whenever one of those sociopathic liars speaks in public - and how true political investigative journalism seems to be completely missing from television news these days. They're all "personalities" (hairdos) or celebrities.

Even people with decades of experience don't seem to realize who they're dealing with. They ask questions AS IF there must be some benevolent reason for the outrageous acts of this Administration. AS IF Bush & Co.'s systematic destruction of The Bill of Rights could maybe be a reasonable approach to anything, if only the interviewee would share the reasons with us.

I'm really really sick of the media acting as if the current Administration is anything other than a fascist regime in power due to a coup achieved through the rigging of national elections. I'm sick of the "President" and his cronies marching us lockstep off the short dock to turning the USA into another Third World dictatorship suited only to serve the wealthiest with underpaid manpower and stolen natural resources. I'm sick of their pandering to fundamentalist lunacy, beating our science and social support systems down, back to the Dark Ages.

At the same time, like everyone else, I have a mortgage and look ahead to the likelihood of increasing medical costs as I get older. I can't quit my job and take to the streets - well, I could, but what would that accomplish? Living in a box under a bridge isn't a very effective political statement.

Well, I'll start with what I can do now. I've got this blog, that some people read (not many, but I have Statcounter, I know people visit here), so instead of using it only as the not-very-interesting personal diary it's been, I'm going to sound off here when I need to. Will it help? I don't know; not much, probably. But it's a record that one more person is not buying the bullshit.

Road Through Kurdistan: Travels in Northern Iraq - Another book I'll have to find, Powell's review linked below. In reading The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, I'm finding out that NOTHING we've been trained to think about that part of the world (which is, essentially, nothing, except maybe that they're "primitive tribespeople" and it's very mountainous, which is half true) has any relationship to reality.

It's discouraging because it's such a complicated mess and has been for so long, and there are so many powers vying for ascendancy over there, and have been for over a hundred years, that I don't think there's ANY honorable alternative to what we're doing (which I don't believe is honorable for one nanosecond). It's fascinating reading, but then glimpsing the truth always is.

But it's disgusting that we are so ignorant of what keeps our precious "free market democracy" running. As usual, the people at whose expense we thrive have no such illusions about us. We're in Afghanistan and Iraq, we're dealing with the butchers in Khazakstan and Uzbekistan etc, we're ignoring what Russia's doing to the Chechyans, for the oil. Period. Full stop. They know it. *I* knew it by September 18, 2001 - the minute I heard the word Afghanistan, I thought, uh oh, primo excuse here we come. Why didn't everybody else know it?

Why do I ask? It's deliberate, cultivated ignorance. Everybody just keeps on being good little patriotic consumers.

==============================

Today's Review From
Times Literary Supplement

Road Through Kurdistan: Travels in Northern Iraq
by Archibald Milne Hamilton

<<>
Read today's review in HTML at:
http://www.powells.com/tls/review/2005_03_27

Woo hoo, now I've done my 15 @ 15 twice this week. This is a major improvement from having done NONE for MONTHS. I even did some stomach crunches the way my Doctor advised me. They sound weenie but they HURT. Man, I'm out of shape. But it amazes me every time how much better I feel right after exercizing! (Is that spelled right? It doesn't look right.) Anyhow, here I go, trying to get back in the habit of working out again. I had that danged flu two weeks ago, for like 8 days, and it's just so nice to feel alive again!

I took a book down there to read on the bike, but I also had M. Ward's next-to-last CD playing in the headphones, and I quickly dumped the book to pedal (and sing, if singing is what you call what I do) along with M. I want his new CD!!!

Not a very exciting blog, but one, at least.

I subscribe to Heroic Stories (http://www.heroicstories.com/). These true stories of people reaching out to help one another with no regard to their own benefit, are really little doses of antidote to the horrors and outrages that seem to overwhelm us these days. The most recent one was from a man who as a small child was afraid of the water, and how he overcame his fear to save another little boy, and then realized he had to learn to swim. Both kids had their lives given back to them that day.

It got me thinking about three skills that I believe are essential life skills: learning to drive a stick shift automobile, swimming, and reading.

Well, just learning to drive is essential, in my opinion. Even if you never own a car, you never know when you'll need to be able to get around in one. And for that reason I also emphasize driving a stick shift. Anybody who can drive, can drive an automatic shift car. But you might find yourself in a life or death situation and the only vehicle available is a stick shift. Think how awful that would be, with the vehicle right there but useless to you because you couldn't get the damned thing to go!

It's my impression that women are most often dismissive of stick shifts, but as more and more women are working in jobs where that's what's likely to be around - I'm thinking of engineers and building contractors on job sites, but there are plenty of others, I'm sure - it's just crazy for a woman not to know how to drive a stick shift vehicle. It may not be easy to learn (my first attempts in Driver's Ed were a failure, but my first husband had a stick shift Rambler and he taught me), but really, if you're determined, you can get it. Once you figure out that catch-point of the clutch, every stick shift vehicle, whether "on the floor" or "on the column" (do they make those any more? Doesn't matter - the old ones are still around) will be your servant when you need it.

And swimming! It's insane not to teach your kids to swim! Or if you've reached adulthood without it, not to go learn how. There cannot be many places in the USA where there's not someone, and somewhere, to go to learn this vital skill. Even if you never intend to go to the beach, or swim recreationally, you never EVER know when you'll need this ability. Imagine how horrible to have to watch someone drown in a flood or a motel swimming pool because you can't get to them. Not to mention drowning, yourself. Most swimming teachers these days know now to teach someone who's afraid of the water, and no mature adult is going to have anything but respect for a person who wants to learn.

So if you can't swim today, and/or can't drive a manual transmission car - do what it takes to learn. You can do it! And the life you save might someday be your own, or someone you love.

Reading is too big a subject - I'll get to that another day. Besides, if you're reading this, it doesn't apply to you!

I've got this nifty program called Musings that I've set to open when I turn on the computer. It gives a daily quote from some writer down through the ages, about writing, and then it gives a little writing exercise you can do. I don't often do them, because usually I'm pressed for time and just want to check my email or get to my WP to start writing. But I liked this morning's, which said to make up a definition for each of these four non-words, tell what part of speech it belongs to, and use it in a sentence:

malstudious: adjective. designating a student of black magic. If that boy Malfoy isn't malstudious, I'm a purple spider.

shombex: adjective. a gem having one or more facets located in a different dimension than the observer's. The way it teases the eye, I think this Rigellian crystal is shombex.

infergus: noun. A leap taken to a conclusion. It's a bit of an infergus to think that just because James is black means he doesn't like country & western music.

hestie: noun. A flat-chested Irish woman with a grudge. Don't get on the wrong side of that hestie; she'll lay a curse on your butter.

Fun! Musings is Freeware from Grim Software in Nova Scotia: http://www.grimsoft.com. You can try it free for like a month (I think) and then if you want to buy it, it's just a nominal price.

So here we are in the new year. Considering that my mother died on January 1, 2004, this year is already way ahead of last year in the betterness department...unless you're in Sumatra. Somehow the enormity of that tragedy makes anything I might write in here seem despicably self-centered and tiny.

There was one odd thing; the day after the tsunami, my web site got a hit from the northern tip of Sumatra - someone had googled the term "usage of the ellipsis" and gotten my web page that discusses that very thing. But I'm having a very hard time figuring out why anyone there would need that information on that particular day. Is someone's English teacher a really truly frightening hard-ass? Somehow I doubt it.

The world is a very weird place.

I've sadly neglected this blog. Thought I should stick my head in here since it's the last day of 2004 (and I can't tell you how glad I am this year is almost gone).

To mop up: I dropped my efforts at 15@15. I'll resume tomorrow, with my intent to ride my Tunturi bike for 15 minutes a day at setting 15 (that's all I have to do to satisfy my pledge; if I do more it's okay, if I don't it's okay. But I'm sick and tired of hating myself for failing all my goals about dieting and exercising. So I ain't gonna do that any more.)

I haven't been writing daily, but I did participate in National Novel Writing Month, and while I didn't finish the novel I was working on, it did get me much farther along in it, and rekindled some of my enthusiasm for it. And this week while I've been on vacation, I've been doing a lot of editing on a novella I sold to Eggplant Publications, hoping to finish it in time to re-send it to the editor tonight. Didn't quite make that, but I shall tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday; if I finish the work tomorrow I'll re-read it Sunday before sending it to her. Then, I'll go back to the novel. I'd like to have that finished, polished, and have query packages going around to agents and publishers starting April 1. It surely would be nice to sell a novel this year!

I hope anyone who's reading this has a great 2005. Remember: Attitude is everything.

Terry

Whoa, this place is getting dusty!

Well, happy to say, I've been doing a lot better with the 15 @ 15 effort, largely because I committed myself to the National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), or, as I like to call it, 30DoM = 30 Days of Madness). The concept of completing 50,000 words in 30 days was so frightening that I prepped myself mentally by committing to 15 @ 15 every night, NO TV during the weeknights, and 1667 words per day for the month.

Am I perfect?

Bwahahahahahah!

But I've done 15 @ 15 five out of the last 9 nights (a LOT better than before) and the writing is at 8,000+ words. I've got the next two days off so I figure I'll catch up and pass my daily average. So that's not worrying me.

NaNo frees me up to write crap! And crap I'm writing, but even as it comes pouring out I'm thinking of ways to make it better - once the whole thing's done and it's time to edit and re-write and polish.

To be honest I'm not working on a *new* novel; this is one that's been about 2/3 done for over four years. That first 2/3 is *great* (IMNSHO) and I think that's always scared me off of finishing it - how to make the last part live up to the first part? Well--I've set those neurotic worries aside for NaNo and I'm just cranking it out now. This is an excellent exercise for shucking that writer's block jive right offa my back.

So it'll probably be awhile before I log anything here again. Not that there's anyone coming back daily and being crushed when there's nothing new...

Just a short note this time, to keep me honest. I haven't been doing well on my 15 @ 15 project, nor on my diet. I'm going to keep after myself, though; I know this is just an excuse but I go on vacation Oct. 1 (FRIDAY!!! YAY!!!!) and I've been working like crazy to get things caught up at work before I go, and when I get home I just collapse in a heap. I know it's an excuse. I'm hoping to get a run at it during my vacation and get back into the whole diet-workout mindset again. Not to mention smaller clothes, heh. Besides I feel so much better, so fast!

Anyway. Had to be honest here. Or what's the point?

I've signed up at StatCounter.com to keep track of hits on some of my web pages. It's fascinating! Addicting, even. So far I've had hits from at least 40 different countries! ("At least," because I'm on the free plan at StatCounter so they only track the last 100 hits at any given moment. That's plenty for my uses.)

What's really entertaining is the surprising popularity rankings of some of my pages. For example--my web site's mostly about writing science fiction & my own publication history, and my favorite music (nine inch nails, and Bright Eyes, to name the two chief bands). What's the most popular page? The one with my husband's delicious potato soup recipe on it! (http:/www.mirror.org/terry.hickman/Recipe.html) It gets hits from all over EVERYWHERE! Seems the whole world is on the lookout for a great potato soup recipe. Go figure.

The soup recipe page is in a Warren Buffett-Bill Gates kinda relationship with my Lightbulb Alley page about alcohol toxicity. That one gets a LOT of hits from predominantly Muslim, near-Eastern countries. Isn't that intriguing? Are youngsters yearning for knowledge about the forbidden? Are teachers assigning homework about the evils of alcohol?

Then, running a close third (sometimes charging up to #1 or #2) is the ever-popular ellipsis. I have a Lightbulb Alley page with a Rumor Mill (www.speculations.com/rumormill/) discussion about the proper usage of ellipsis (the ". . ." in prose) in English writing. This page, too, has fans from the world over.

The Lightbulb Alley page on Archery is a big hit, lots of UK and British Isles hits at that site.

Another fun thing is to follow the "connecting link" from a particular hit back, oftentimes to google or another search engine. It brings up the very list that your visitor got when he or she did their search. It's fun, and sometimes baffling, to see what kind of company your own listing is keeping.
--------
On the 15 @ 15 front, I'm doing well! The weight loss part is going to be slow (I've marked a small loss so far) but the next-day benefits are continuing, enough to keep me going back downstairs. I've been at it a little over a week now, and this afternoon I have to go troop around in a wetland, when the temps will be around 90 degrees. I'll be paying attention to how I weather that; I've been extremely susceptible to heat sickness the past couple of years (and couple of tens of pounds' increase) so I'm hoping the increased physical fitness level, even this small amount, will show an improvement there. Tomorrow I've got even more time outdoors but the temps will be about 15 degrees cooler (the weatherman says) so it won't be quite as good a test.

I don't know if anyone reads this, but there's my status report anyway.

I'm going to tell you how to lose weight for free. You have everything you need, right this minute, to do it. It requires no drugs, no special clothes, no expensive foods, no restrictive menus, no guru. I know this works because I did it myself: I lost 55 pounds in 4 months. (I've since gained it back, and more, so I'm now re-acquainting myself with this process, sadder and wiser. It wasn't the method that failed, it was me falling back into old habits.) This does require an ability to do simple multiplication and addition, so grab a pencil and some scratch paper.


FIRST: If you decide to give this your best effort, the VERY FIRST THING you need to do is to print this off, the whole article, and go to your physician and have her check it out and you out and give you the go-ahead. Consulting your doctor may sound spooky but it's just common sense. Everything that comes after this paragraph assumes you are in basically good health, and you've consulted your physician before going on, and she has said "Go for it!" I will NOT be responsible if you don't do that!!! I'm NOT a doctor, I'm not a dietician.


Here's the lynchpin of my method: Dieticians say that on average, for a healthy adult, it takes about 15 calories per pound to maintain your body weight. That's a very rough estimate and a scientist will go into fits trying to qualify it to death, but it's a good rule of thumb. What does that mean? It means you only need one number to know how many calories you need to eat each day to lose weight. You need to know your target weight. That's all. You don't need to know your present weight, just the weight you want to be. Now--be sensible. If you're 38 years old with three kids, chances are you're not going to ever look like Imam unless you come down with some dire disease. Go for a weight where you can feel good in (or out of) your clothes, that you can be as active as you need to be, and where you have plenty of energy, and you sleep well. Back in 1994, when I lost that weight, I got down to my ideal weight: 125. I felt better, at age 44, than I ever had in my life. I was bursting with energy, my writing ideas just poured out so fast I couldn't ever possibly write all those stories, I had stamina, and heat didn't bother me. So I'm going to shoot for 125 again.


Got your pencil? Take your target weight times 15. Mine's 125 x 15 = 1875. I'm going to try to keep my calorie intake down to 1875 per day. Often, doctors will hand their patients a 1200-calorie per day diet plan. There is no way on God's green Earth that I am going to be able to stay on a 1200 calorie a day diet. But I can do 1875.


See, given that you're in basically good health, the only reason a person doesn't lose weight is because their calorie OUTPUT(body maintenance plus physical activity) does not exceed their caloric INPUT (eating). That's it, right there. Totally simple. And there are calorie charts galore all over the Internet, free for the looking, to help you add them up.


So, theoretically, if I just reduced my calorie input to 1875, I would lose this excess weight. I'm older now so that's not quite as much of a given as it used to be. Drat it. Back in 1994, though, I learned: add exercise, and those pounds do come off. One by one by one, there they go. And it feels GOOD.


Trouble is I HATE TO EXERCISE! Well--that's not 100% true; I hate to START exercising. I work out in my basement, where we have a very nice Tunturi exercycle, a "businessman's" weight set, and a stationary weight set. Once I get down there, and start working out, my bod loves it. It's the GETTING DOWN THERE that's murder, and played a big part in my dropping off my good program a few years ago and getting back out of shape and overweight. I HATE going down those stairs. It's not logical, it's irrational, but there it is.


So I have to work around my own stupid mind. This time, I've come up with a winner. I've pledged TO MYSELF (the only one who counts in this game) that ALL I have to do to satisfy my promise to me, is "15 @ 15" -- that's 15 minutes on the bike at Nm level 15 (whatever that is; I gave up long ago trying to calculate the ergonomics of our ergonomic bike). That's a pretty low
setting, but it's enough at my current conditon to make me break out in a sweat, and for my legs to have that familiar "giant redwood log" feeling when the bell rings and I finally crawl off. If I make that 15 @ 15, I can be done and I can feel great about myself and go on about my business. Usually, though, I mess around with the weights a little bit, do some stretches. Eventually, when I've lost a few pounds, I expect I'll resume the sit-ups (when I reached my goal weight 10 years ago, I was doing 100 a day). If you can feel your pulse on your wrist or throat, by all means have your doctor help you figure out how many heartbeats per minute you should try for to get aerobic benefits -- *I* can never find my pulse so I just wing it.


So what you need to do is figure out an activity that's easy for you to get TO--whether it's taking a walk around your own block, swimming two laps up and down your pool, doing 100 skips with a jumprope--pick something that doesn't require you to go very far out of your way. Talk to yourself about this for a few days. Let yourself realize that this is something you can do to take care of yourself in a meaningful way. Think about that real hard, because I know for me it's a lot easier to make myself feel better when I'm blue by chomping a Snickers bar, than by dragging my ass down to the basement to ride the bike. But the former will only end up making me sadder, while the latter will really be good for me, really show myself love and concern that I would show anyone else in a heartbeat.


This activity that you choose should be small enough that it's not daunting or intimidating. The instantaneous reward is that when you're done, you have another 24 hours during which you can feel *very* superior and proud of yourself. But there are a lot more rewards than that, very quickly.


The FIRST NIGHT I started this, recently, I slept all night. Big deal? Yeah--if you haven't slept all night for years. The next day my hips, knees, ankles and feet felt better than they had since I don't remember when! I wasn't stiff! I felt - dare I say it -- *limber*! And I actually felt more energized that day. I was astounded. Never did I expect such physical bennies after just ONE session! I can't guarantee that for you--but I can guarantee that you'll feel more empowered, less dragged down emotionally, because you have taken that first step toward helping yourself feel better.


Set yourself intermediate and long-term goals. Use family reunions, graduations, birthdays, as goalposts. This is not so you can beat yourself over the head if you're still ten pounds heavier than you want to be by Aunt Gladys's birthday--it's just another incentive to help you talk yourself into doing your daily "15 @ 15" (or whatever you end up calling it -- that's another trick: give it a catchy title. I might even get a tee shirt made of mine, to wear on the cycle). If you just can't make yourself do your thang one day, don't agonize over it. Just get up the next day and make sure you get back in the saddle. I mean it--two days off is death. Likewise, if you stumble and devour half a gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream (my favorite), don't hate yourself. You're human! We stumble! Next day, though--back to the 1875, or 2000, or however many calories your goal weight requires.


One more bit of advice, you might not see much weight loss in the first couple of weeks. If not, keep at it anyway. If you know you're eating right and you're doing your exercising, it WILL come off. It's simple biology, it has to. What might be happening is (ready for it?) you're increasing muscle mass, and that's masking fat loss. This is a very important concept, because for one thing, it should make you aware that JUST watching the scales is a sucker's game. Those numbers are just dumb numbers, they don't really know what's going on. The most important thing about being aware that you're gaining muscle mass is that you need to be conscious of your body. When you work out every day, that improves your muscle mass, and let me tell you, that is a VERY good thing, even if it makes the scales seem demonically stubborn. Why? Because well-toned muscles use up more calories, even when you're not working out. Even when you're just sitting there reading a novel, if you have well-toned muscles, they're burning calories. What's not to love about that??? So do NOT be discouraged if the scales seem stubborn. Keep at it every day! If you're reducing your calorie intake, and increasing your calorie output -- you're GOING to be a LOSER!! I mean a WINNER! Heh.


Forget deprivation diets (no carbs/low carbs? Are you KIDDING????), single-food diets, blah blah. Eat smaller portions, eat as many fresh fruits and veggies as you can daily. Eat according to the standard food pyramid (they're trying to change it but until the experts have settled their differences and devised a new one, the old one will work). Balanced meals. Nutritious snacks. Measure your food! DOn't trust your eyeballs! *My* eyeballs tell me that enough to feed three people is ONE SERVING!! Train yourself by measuring your food. Have "good" snacks with you so you're not tempted by candy machines. Portion out your lunches and package them up so you can just grab them and go to work in the morning.


This is all winner's stuff. Think ahead. Treat yourself right. You deserve it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


(This was written because when I lost weight before, several women came to me privately to ask how I'd done it. I was taken aback, and I'm afraid I did a poor job of explaining it. Maybe this will help someone, somewhere. Well--I know it will, because I wrote it to help me, too. I hope others find it useful as well.)

This new look is a completely cosmetic change, I have nothing useful or interesting to say. Just whiling away a few minutes. I liked the summery look of this template. Its creator (and I forgot to mark down his name) has a nice sense of color and style.

The links block seems to have been forced down to the lower right-hand corner of this page, in case you're looking for it. Or maybe that's just on this computer.

That's all. Maybe someday I'll be more interesting.

The most exciting thing that's happened in the past two weeks is that I signed my web site on to StatCounter.com for their free services. I inserted their invisible hit counter code on a bunch of my web pages, especially the ones in Light Bulb Alley, a repository for miscellaneous info that I think might be handy for writers or people who just like to pick up trivia. Most of the Alley pages are from the Speculations Rumor Mill, only the best genre writers' online community on the web, IMO.

I had been wondering if maybe I could delete some of the pages under the Alley umbrella, so I thought getting a hit profile of each page would be instructive.

Also, I have a splash page that's ostensibly about Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst's Saddle Creek Records band, but the page for a long time has just had a handful of links to other pages about the band, and to Saddle Creek's site. I was thinking, it's lame to keep that up there when I don't offer any fresh or original or unique material about Bright Eyes.

StatCounter.com gives you a *bunch* of information about who's visiting your pages. I was astounded to learn that people from all over the world were googling for info and photos of Conor, and finding my site! Norway, England, Australia, Canada...I'd originally thought that my two interests, promoting my science fiction writing and my music favorites (Bright Eyes and nine inch nails) might each augment the other in crossover web page hits--turns out, hey, I was right! That lousy Bright Eyes page is in the top three most popular pages on my site!

So now I'm thinking, I just got this great new digital camera with all kinds of photographic power--I'm hitting me the next Bright Eyes show (probably when they produce their next CD--they've had a tendency to launch supporting tours in Omaha or Lincoln and I can get to such a show easily) for some new and unique photos for my site! As a sort of reward for when people come check it out.

The other two most popular pages (aside from the home page) are one on alcohol toxicity, also in the Light Bulb Alley (hits from the Phillipines, Iran, Thailand, Canada, England...) and a page on which I posted the recipe and a photo of one of my husband's culinary accomplishments, potato soup (from all over the US, Canada, Europe, Southeast Asia...) I can't believe how many people around the world are looking for a good recipe for potato soup! Makes me laugh.

It drives home what I've always believed in general, and that the internet has magnified beyond understanding: you NEVER know whose life you're touching.
=================================================================
FYI: StatCounter.com

(I wrote this 4/10/04 and tried to upload it to my blog, but couldn't for some reason. I'm trying again now, not because its prose is so deathless but because maybe another procrastinaor will happen upon it and get a chuckle out of it, and not feel so alone. By the way, I finished the story and emailed it in approximately 4 hours before the deadline.)

So I'm going to get to go to BayCon Memorial Day weekend, thanks to the incredible generosity of a lot of my Rumor Mill friends (their gift of the First Ever Middle of Nowhere Fan Fund to *me* of all people, made it affordable. I can never thank them enough!). And there's a Writer's Workshop at BayCon, that's sort of sponsored or shepherded by Kent Brewster, daddy of all Rumor Mill goodness, and it's free--even though pro writers and editors participate and crit us wannabes' work!

So I sez to my self, Self, you cannot pass this up. (This was about a month ago, when I found out about the MiNoFF award). You *must* write a new story to submit to the workshop!!!

The deadline is April 15th.

I am going to write the first draft tomorrow.

I am an idiot.

Weird food.

This is the kind of thing I concoct when I'm hungry but I'm sick (I've got a rotten cold today):

Four corn tortillas

toast them over an open burner or on a griddle.

Mash together 1/4 C. lite cream cheese and 1/4 C. lite red wine vinaigrette until it's well, well-mashed-together.

Assemble:
four or five slices hard salami
a handful of salad mix; today: spinach, arugula and carrots
a Roma tomato (slice it lengthwise several times so you have flat slices)
a handful of black olives, sliced into hollow coins
green onion, 1/4 C (or less), ends snipped into confetti
shredded cheddar cheese

Lay down one tortilla, spread the cream cheese mix over it, lay down the hard salami.
Put the next tortilla on top, spread the cream cheese mix over it, sprinkle the salad mix over it and arrange the tomato slices on top; salt & pepper the tomato to taste. Put the next tortilla on top, spread the cream cheese mix over it, scatter the black olives and shredded cheese over that. Put the last tortilla on top of the whole thing, throw it into the microwave on HIGH for 20 seconds, get out your knife and fork, and chow down.

Healthy but kinda weird, don't you think?

What *we* do for fun.

I wonder how many other middle-aged couples invest in a pair of walkie-talkies for use around the house? Hubby's had some health problems, and sometimes his knees give out and he ends up on the floor and needs help getting up. Sometimes he's on the back porch and I'm up on the second floor; sometimes he's on the second floor and I'm in the basement doing laundry. So we decided to get walkie-talkies to keep handy, just in case. Also, if he's upstairs and wants me to bring him iced tea my next trip upstairs, they work for that, too.

That is, when you can get them to work. Mine doesn't work reliably. That's what *I* say. *He* says I'm not pressing the Talk button right. Come on! I'm 53 years old! I know how to press a button! He says, You certainly do, but we're talking about the radio unit.

When we first got them home we ripped them out of their package and started fiddling with them immediately. I, superior being, started to read the instructions, but I kept getting interrupted by him talking to me through the walkie-talkie. We were 4 feet apart in our front room chairs.

#%*!static#%*! "What are you doing?" #%*!static#%*! he'd ask.

#%*!static#%*! "I'm reading the instructions, as you can plainly see" #%*!static#%*!

#%*!static#%*! "What do they say?" #%*!static#%*!

#%*!static#%*! "Something about faint signals detection," I answered. #%*!static#%*!

#%*!static#%*! "What's that?" #%*!static#%*!

#%*!static#%*! "I don't know." #%*!static#%*!

You get the idea.

He sent me out to the back porch to see if they worked farther than 4 feet apart. I stood out there with the door shut and he said, #%*!static#%*! "Can you hear me now?" #%*!static#%*!

The first couple of days I kept forgetting to bring mine along in my trips up and down stairs, in and out of rooms. I'd hear him yelling from the back porch, "Turn on your walkie-talkie!"

"Why? I can hear you right now!"

"Because it's fun!"

"Oh, all right." And I'd take another fun trip back upstairs so I could find out via the gizmos that what he wanted was a cheese sandwich and a soda. The kitchen, of course, was ten feet from where he sat and fourteen feet from where I originally answered his yell. (Not that I expected him to go get it himself; he's got a certain amount of disability, remember.)

I'm not sure I can remember seeing anything funnier, or sillier, than two middle aged people volleying:

"Roger!"

"Wilco!"

"Over-and-out!"

"Ten-four!"

via walkie-talkies while standing in the same room. I, personally, yearned all during my childhood for walkie-talkies and my yearning was never satisfied. Tin cans connected by butcher's twine just didn't suffice, and my parents weren't about to spend good money on things that would get broken or lost faster than their body heat faded from the coinage they spent on it.

But I'm a grown-up now. I can HAVE walkie-talkies if I want. Grown-ups can do that. And I'm a grown-up. I'll prove it: get on Channel 3...

Do not mistake the collection of stuffed animals by an old lady in a nursing home as a symptom of dementia or childishness. It is a response to loneliness. It is not air that fills the rooms and hallways and stairwells of a nursing home, it is loneliness. There is enough of it in any given nursing home to fill up the galaxy.

My mom had a tiny, light gray, stuffed rabbit with moveable front and hind limbs, and pink linings to its ears, and beady little black eyes that did, somehow, look friendly. She had several other stuffed animals, of various sizes and colors and putative species, but the little rabbit was her favorite. She arranged, and re-arranged them on her bed, so she could see them and touch them any time she wanted. The rabbit she sometimes held and murmured to. She was not senile.

I thought of this as I was going to sleep last night, and was abruptly reminded of an attempt I made thirty years ago to "do good." I went to the nursing home in the small Iowa town we were living in then, and volunteered to "adopt" one of their residents - visit, mostly.

The old lady they chose for me (I can't remember her name) was at least confused, if not suffering Alzheimer's. She thought I was her daughter. She called me by her daughter's name. I spent an hour with her the first meeting, and she never did realize it wasn't her daughter desperately trying to make smalltalk. I went back a second time, with a little bouquet of flowers, and her wrinkled face lit up. She clutched the flowers and said, "It's so good to see you, Eileen! How's that little girl of yours doing?" I'm not Eileen and I only have a son. It broke my heart. I wondered where the hell her *real* daughter was, and why wasn't *she* here, looking after her mother?

This second visit, the old lady fell silent after the first few minutes, and her eyes glazed over and she stared into space unresponsive to anything I said. After awhile, I patted her hand, said "Goodbye," and left, never to return. I was 22 years old and neither I nor most of the world knew much about senile dementia or how to treat its victims. I felt like a total failure; and I felt totally unrewarded. I had envisioned some grateful old person whose dreary and pain-wracked life would be brightened just knowing that such a caring young person was paying attention to them. And for years, I felt guilty for never going back.

Last night this train of thought left me sobbing in grief, for my mom who may have been lonely but whom I did certainly pay plenty of attention to, for that old lady in the tiny Iowa town, for all the people of the world who are lonely, hungry, homeless, terrified, and alone. For a few minutes it felt like all of it was all my fault - if I could just become a better person somehow I would find a way to make all of the pain go away. But after awhile, I came to my senses and reality, and knew again that one person cannot do it, can only hope to do an adequate job of loving and caring for the people in their immediate family, and that's if they're lucky and have tremendous stores of energy.

What baffles me is that so many people don't even make the effort. How can anyone put their mother or dad into a nursing home and then never visit, except maybe at holidays or birthdays? Maybe that's what those old ladies are asking their teddy bears and stuffed rabbits. I hope the cuddlies give them answers, even if I can't hear them.

I'm sick of listening to hate-mongers' arguments against gay marriage. It's all balderdash, not a serious or compelling or rational reason in the bunch. The last straw was commentary on NPR November 21, by one Stanley Kurtz, who claims to have gay friends, but who has rationalized his way out of supporting gay marriage. His argument is a series of giant leaps of logic, the main one being: allowing gay marriage would somehow dissolve the "symbolic link" between marriage and parenthood, thus endangering (somehow; he never says how) our children. He hurries past the fact that over the years heterosexual couples by the millions have been unable to, or in more recent years, have chosen not to, bear children, and that their existence was never considered a threat to the concept or practice of marriage or a breaking of his mythical "symbolic link" between marriage and childbearing.

We need to keep in mind that marriage was created, first and foremost, as an economic institution, even for the lower classes, even when "economics" meant the sharing or withholding of grubs and berries and mastadon tenderloin. Marriage also served to keep women in an inferior status as long as they couldn't work outside the home and earn their own money. Birth control and the feminist "revolution" have changed that so that yes, we are seeing people delaying marriage until much later than earlier generations, more couples who choose not to have children at all, more divorces, and other signs that the institution as it has been practiced is weakening.

Like any other institution, shouldn't marriage have to adapt as human society changes? You can't say marriage is an Absolute. It was created by human beings (spare me Biblical quotations--you don't find any marriage ceremony in Genesis 1, and besides I'm tired of Christians-- and in the U.S. it's always Christians-- claiming that the rest of us have to live by their rules) and by definition, then, cannot be an Absolute.

But to me, the most compelling argument for gay marriages is so that we finally, legally, recognize and empower committed partners in insurance and hospitalization matters. It is an obscenity and a disgrace that someone who has loved and lived with a person for years, and is now having to watch their loved one die, can be abruptly, totally, cut out of any decisions for that person, by vengeful, ignorant, hateful "relatives" of the dying person. It is beyond my understanding how anyone can justify that.

I have never once heard any argument that convinces me that gay marriage threatens either the institution of marriage or my own personal marriage in any way. No matter how kindly Mr. Kurtz packages his argument, at heart it's still just prejudice. All the arguments I've heard boil down to hate and prejudice. Gay-haters may fool themselves and others who fear gays but they aren't fooling gays, and they're not fooling me. I think that with friends like Mr. Kurtz, his gay friends don't need enemies.

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. Life has been...busy. Much travel, some family health business, lots of work business, plus general laziness.

But I was thinking today, it's high time I got back to writing. Blogging, journalizing, fiction, opinion, essays, book reviews...I'm a writer? Then write, dammit!

Another thing that occurred to me today--and it has more to do with the 2nd paragraph above than it might seem--is that when it comes to eating, I really don't have my own best interests in mind.

That was the hardest, longest lesson I had to learn in going through all the changes I went through via the 12-step programs: what's really in my own best interest?

That's often a completely different question than "What makes me feel good?"

Doing the right thing does not always end up making you feel good. That's a statement in the Voice of Experience. For example, putting my mother in a nursing home was the right thing--the only thing--to do. She wasn't fighting it or anything, she knew (I think, deep down, she did) that she could no longer take care of herself. But after a lifetime of hearing everyone you knew say "I'd rather die than end up in one of them nursing homes," when you have to actually check your Mom into one, it ain't gonna feel right no matter how right you know it is.

Emotions are not always the best barometer of rightness.

Eating a mountain of ice cream kicks the feel-good hormones into high gear, so yeah, I feel *great* gobbling down that mountain of ice cream.

But it ain't in my best interests; it ain't *right*. It's *easier* to make myself feel good by doing it, than by settling for a nice red Bosc pear, and going to bed a tiny bit unsatisfied, food-wise. And telling myself that I've been good to myself by substituting the pear for the ice cream does not give me the same endorphin-laden feelgood buzz that the ice cream would.

Here's the secret: Endorphins lie. Sometimes.

Figuring out when is the trick.

I'll get back to you if I ever master that trick.

Some rambling ruminations this morning...

I often feel like writing, just the act itself, when I have absolutely nothing to say. Is this a result of the intermittent reward principle? Many's the time I've got the most exhilerating rush while writing, just the most unique high--many more times than I would have won at a casino, positing comparable writing/gambling events. So it should be no surprise that I'm addicted to the writing act.

I hadn't thought of it like that before, but it makes perfect sense. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study of the writer's brain chemistry--is there a big release of endorphins when you're "in the zone"? If so, will it be labelled a disorder in the DSMV VI? Will Writers Anonymous 12-Step Programs spring up?

It'd be hopeless, all they'd do would be trade stories and start critiquing -- or editing -- or brainstorming ideas -- or one-upping each other with Awful Rejections yarns.

"Hi, I'm Terry, and I'm a compulsive writer--"

"Are you the one who wrote that one story in--"

"No, no, that was some guy--"

"When's the WotF Contest deadline?"

"Doesn't matter, didn't you know? Those go all year round, quarterly contests--"

"Hey, guys, I've got one that might win that--"

"Let's see it!"

"I only brought 5 copies, you might have to share..."

Yeah, I pity the therapist who tries to start Writers Anonymous groups.

Last night I stayed in the town where I work (50 mi. from the town where I *live*), in a co-worker's basement (a really nice *finished* basement, with a hideaway bed and a bathroom and everything) so that I could arise to the alarm I'd set for 11 p.m., get dressed and wait outside for another co-worker to come pick me up so we could go to an observatory at a lake on the southwest side of town, to see Mars on the night of its closest brush with Earth.

It worked, we got there (us and about 900 other people, I hope they counted 1,000 before the night was through) and peered at the planet through numerous telescopes, and also saw a REALLY cool movie that the University's astronomy and video production people made. There were a lot of photos of Mars--many *from* Mars, like a jaw-dropping sunset picture! -- that I'd never seen.

They had a globe model of Mars, and I decided instantly that I want one!!! Then I thought, where would I *put* it??? Then I thought, I could move my home office into the basement, there's more room down there. And then: Yeesh! That's a big step! Why didn't I think of that before? I wonder if I should...and decided to save that decision for later, after gathering more info. For the moment, I was there to enjoy MARS!

There were people of all ages there, from babes in arms to elderly folks with walkers. The astronomy profs and grad students were great, I got a big kick out of them. They'd not gotten much sleep so they were a *little* goofy, which was fun, and they displayed that endearing Geeks-Unused-to-This-Much-Attention kind of showing-off that I love.

After my co-worker and I watched the film, I went back to the "big three" telescopes to get in line for the one I hadn't looked through yet. In front of me was a trio of folks fresh from a bar somewhere (the alcohol sensor array in my nasal chemistry lab was blinking red lights like crazy), one guy with a Mohawk (more of my people! Yay!) and a lady with lots of jewelry and only slighty slurred speech, and an enormous, handsome black dude with bald head and earring. He got his turn at the telescope and immediately put his hand on it and leaned all his weight on it--then couldn't find Mars in the lens. That scope's grad student had disappeared (probably best; he would have had a stroke when the guy leaned on his scope!) so I told the man, "If you lean on the scope, it'll jiggle so much you won't be able to see anything. They've provided these stepladders with rounded tops for us to lean on." Oh. OK, he said, and tried again, but all that was in the viewfinder was black space. So when another grad student had finished his current spiel I got his attention, and he re-located the Red Planet.

We stopped on the way back to the parking lot to watch the laptop film loop of Mars scenery digitally-extrapolated from radar elevation readings. *Those* were cool, too. I liked the ones that showed faint mists (of CO2, I presume) rising amid the towers and channels of huge canyons.

I got back to the digs at around 2; I'm tired but not too much more tired than usual. And--it was MARS! It was WORTH IT!

If you have an astronomy club or university or public observatory near you--don't miss this spectacular space show!

Throughout my life, I've had a tendency to take on more and more "projects" the more stressed-out I was getting. It's a self-feeding escalation, you see. The secret was that to begin with I was running away from whatever was bothering me at the time, often reality in one form or another. It was many years before I learned that it was just faster (and much less exhausting!) to just turn around and face what scared me and deal with it in the first place. Kept life from getting really complicated, too.

Not that I've entirely shed that tendency, oh no. But now, at least, I know to realize that when I'm committing myself to more and more "projects" that I need to stop and take a look, maybe there's an easier way to achieve relief from something that's bugging me. But first I have to recognize what's bugging me. (Current collection of projects: personal/voluntary: my novel, learning Spanish, organizing all of my photographs; involuntary: husband's recuperation from surgery this fall will require a lot of work on my part. Work-related: committing to creating a poster presentation for a conference in the fall-- in itself, no big deal, but added to the others, just another straw on the camel's back.)

Trouble is, I always have to wrestle with my ego in these little sessions. Turns out that I've always enmeshed my self-image with accomplishing *everything* I commit to doing. When my ego's enmeshed then it becomes a pride thang. "Pride goeth before a fall," I think is the hoary quote; well, let me tell you that phraseology doesn't do justice to the sweat blood and tears that have to be wrung out of me before I can get back to reality.

It can be really painful to face my own shortcomings. Maybe -- and I'm veering into the strictly fictional here because I ain't gonna put my *actual* personal life on the internet -- maybe I snapped at hubby a few nights ago and hurt his feelings when it was really uncalled-for, and I need to apologize. Maybe I spent some money I shouldn't have, and haven't fessed up yet. Maybe I spoke ill of someone who wasn't there to defend themselves (and no, it doesn't ameliorate it even if the person is a slimy, conniving lying bastard of an unelected politician; this is about *my* culpability, not his. Hrmm. I think I'd have to work on that one awhile longer...). Anyway, it's no fun facing up to that stuff.

But awhile back (like, uh, jeez, 17 years? Wow!) I undertook to make myself a better person. Someone *I* would respect. It turns out that that's damned hard, and you don't do it just once. You have to climb that hill over and over again, no matter how much you hate it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how scared of it you are.

And then when you've done it again, you can look that image in the mirror in the eyes again. And that reminds you why you do it.

As I stood on a corner waiting for a Walk light on the way in to work this morning, I was roused from my reverie by, "Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!" A lady in a car at the stoplight had one of those dogs I think of as micro-Dobermans: about 10" tall and colored like a black & tan Doberman. He'd spotted me and wanted to alert the world that I! See! Person!

The lady and I grinned at each other. I think she tried to get the dog to get down on the seat and be quiet, but he wasn't having any of it. She obviously didn't understand the seriousness of the situation--there was a Person standing over there! That needed to be yapped at! Yap! If I don't do it, who will? Yap! Yapyapyapyapyapyapyap!

Then the light changed and as the car moved across the intersection, the yaps subsided; the Person had moved out of micro-D's field of vision. Whew! Another danger averted. Good dog. I giggled for another block.

The reverie interrupted was about how this ultra-light sprinkle of rain is your typical mid-summer nostalgia trigger: The air is heavy and warm, and the raindrops splat! individually on the road or sidewalk or patch of bare ground in your yard that's the neighborhood playground, and each drop must kick up a little pouf of dust, because that's what the air smells like. Appropriate sonic accompaniment: Mourning doves calling from two backyards away. Taste: The repulsive-yet-irresistible Grape Popsicle (R). Best if experienced sitting under a huge, old tree with a new Weekly Reader Book Club book on your lap. Ahhh...

This Boomer nostalgia spasm brought to you by: Summer Raindrops.

Here are some of the headlines Netscape's boasting right now:
Seized Ship's Explosive Cargo Equal to 'A-bomb'
10 Secrets Restaurants Don't Want You to Know
How to Find Time to Exercise
U.S.: Recent Attack May Have Hit Saddam, Sons
Woman Delivers Conjoined Twin Girls - and a Boy
Comedian Adam Sandler Ties the Knot [and from the looks of the little dinky photo, she's human!]

I found myself turning to their idiotic daily Poll with outright *relief*: Which artist wears the most outrageous hairstyles? Their poll always irritates me. They *never* include the answer: None of these, you moron. But today, anyway, I was relieved to contemplate the tresses of Kelly Osbourne, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Cyndi Lauper, and Bjork. You know I don't really care, but at least while I'm thinking about that, I don't have to think about...those other creeps.

Last Friday while I was waiting for Josh to pick me up after work, three women passed by on the sidewalk. They're regulars. I often see them at that time and place.

They're all what you would call "huge" women, no doubt clinically obese. Their attire is modest and middle-class, casual, not "office." slacks and blouses, jeans and tee shirts. One is blonde, another has short hair about my color before I started coloring it -- mouse-brown. I don't recall the third's coloring. I'll observe more carfeully next time I see them.

I'm a product of my society (as though that were an excuse) -- until Friday their chief -- their only attribute in my mind was their size.

But Friday one of them had a little jar of soap and a bubble ring, and was blowing bubbles as they walked along chatting and laughing. The light breeze was at their backs, so the bubbles streamed forward a little with the force of her breath, then swung to the street side as they matched the wind. I couldn't help but smile -- that's what bubbles are for, they make you smile.

And then, a full 30 seconds after the women had passed out of my view, the air between the buildings on either side of the street was filled with bubbles! The ones she'd gifted on the previous block were just going by my point of view from inside my building's foyer.

They glimmered in the sun, danced and curlicued in the micro-breeze eddies, and then they, too, were out of my range of sight.

I sat transfixed by the little magic, and then I recalled that these ladies are always smiling when I see them, always engaged in lively conversation.

How our prejudices blind us to the vibrant truth.

In grad school I was a Teaching Assistant, which meant that I supervised the Biology 102 lab a couple hours a week, and that I led a Discussion Group (DG) 3 days a week. The PhD profs would give the students their lectures 2 or 3 days a week, the students then had a lab and a DG on the topic.

I worked very hard preparing my DG materials. I'd go over the topic's more difficult concepts, then we'd do Q & A. I tested them at regular intervals and kept a grade book on their scores.

Most of the students then were the "normal" 19-to-21-year-olds. The course was for non-majors. So I'd look out on this roomful of bored or sleeping students and know that this was all the biology they'd probably ever get. I felt a great obligation to teach them as much as I could. Most of them seemed to feel a great obligation to resist learning.

One semester I had a 50-something "displaced homemaker" in one of my groups. I felt immediate empathy for her. The first day of class she arrived in a bright-colored double-knit pantsuit, nylons and low pumps, and her gray hair was coifed and sprayed into spun-sugar rigidity. She was nervous and timid, and she blanched at some of the students' language--but she was my best student.

I had been where she was, a brand-new college student older than "the norm." I knew intimately her fear of appearing stupid, her doubts about her ability to succeed in college, and the middle-aged semi-fear of "these young people," even though I'd only been 25 when I started college.

I'd also taken the friend of a friend, literally by her shaking hand, and walked her into the Admission Officer's office (he happened to be a neighbor of mine, but by then, my junior year, I wasn't afraid of Admin anyway), and sat with her while she asked him how to apply, whether there were grants, loans, or scholarships she could try for, and whether he thought she could make it through college. (Does an Admissions officer ever say No to that question?) She was a home-salon hairdresser, a single mom, and she wanted more, for herself and for her kids. Her voice vibrated with fear, and though it steadied during the conversation, she never lost her fear, and she still hadn't applied for college when I graduated and left that town.

Years later I saw the movie "Educating Rita." The single shot that still sears my memory is when Rita went to that ivy-covered Administration Building to apply for admission. She stood at the bottom of those stone steps, took a deep breath, patted her lacquered spun-sugar hair (she was a hairdresser too, a lower-class Briton with a savagely chauvinistic husband, and parents who simply couldn't understand her yearning for education), and started up the steps. The lines of her body were tense and crooked with the weight of her entire life pressing down on her--everyone she knew telling her in words, action and attitude that "her sort" didn't go to college.

They shot the climb, brilliantly, from behind Rita, and it was Julie Walters' genius that her whole body, her whole being, told you what a heart-breaking act of courage she was performing. I cried at that scene, for joy and pride in Rita's bravery.

Anyway, my 50-something student's semester resembled Rita's remarkable journey. The first sign was when she started actually discussing biology in our discussion group. Sometimes she even disagreed out loud with the other students.

Then she showed up one morning with a new 'do: short, combed, and left to riffle freely in the air.

By the end of the semester, she was wearing jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers to class.

The strain had relaxed out of her face, and she laughed and teased along with the other students. Of course she got an A, that was never a question. And this former "displaced homemaker" had stepped whole-heartedly into the stream of life.

I felt honored to have witnessed the metamorphosis.

Terry B. deMille

I had a lot of little cowboy and Indian and horse toys when I was a pre-teen. Each one was different. There were some cowboys and Indians that were permanently bow-legged so you could snap them onto a horse. They'd stand on their own but they stood with their legs spraddled in a wide inverted U. I didn't care, I played with them as though they were normal.

I also ignored scale. I had a plastic Palomino about 10" tall at the ears. He was at least 25 times the size of the other toys, but he was part of the cast anyway. He stood stolidly on all four hooves, legs straight, looking straight ahead. To make him trot, I'd pogo him up and down in short hops. For a gallop I'd rock him, back hooves to front, back to front, along the floor or sofa or coffee table.

The furniture -- mostly in the living room -- was my cliffs and mountains surrounding the canyon of the floor. Little Indians hid behind the tops of the sofa cushions, lying in wait for the unsuspecting settlers (or bandits, or cattlemen) to come trundling into the canyon.

The good guy was a spraddle-legged cowboy with his right arm extended forward holding a six-shooter, and he always rode the white trotting pony. There was another identical pony, except he was brown, and the Indian chief always rode him. I don't think I did a lot of battle scenes -- often the cowboys and Indians were all mixed up together in the good guys' and bad guys' camps. I spent many hours Saturday mornings playing with this assortment.

When I got a small package of Army green G.I.'s, they were just folded into the mix. Sometimes I played G.I.'s and Japs (I was born 5 years after the end of WWII), and then the Western figures got assigned new roles.

Then I got a Barbie doll (TM) and she fit pretty well on the Palomino -- I ignored that her legs stuck straight out in front of her as she perched on the saddle.

Many hours. I wish I could remember some of my scenarios, but they just "passed through" me, as Goldberg says, just flowed through my child's imagination and were forgotten, like water in a stream.

I wonder where all those toys are now. Probably in a landfill. Or maybe -- and I hope this -- they got sent to Goodwill and other children got to play with them. I like that idea. By now they might be in some 1960's buff's collection. That'd be great -- they'd be ready for retirement by now.

But I bet they'd like to be on display together, maybe in a basement rec room, watching their owner's busy life. Maybe someday a grandchild will come along and say, "Grandpa, can I play with those?"

I hope he says Yes.

As a writing exercise, I want to write about some time in my life when I felt most out of place. When I started writing that sentence I thought I'd not be able to think of one, but before the sentence was done a memory popped up.

It was a birthday party given by the parents of one of my junior high classmates, I'll label her D.F. She was beautiful in a Sophia Loren-ish way (if you like that sort of thing), and her parents were rich. They hosted all of us in D's homeroom class, plus some of her friends not in our homeroom. Maybe fifty 13-year-old kids.

I don't remember exactly where it was. It may have been in the Peony Park ballroom (I don't think so), or the Blackstone Hotel (maybe), or the downtown Brandeis if it had a banquet room. Wherever it was, it was lush.

The tables bore china, crystal, and more silverware than I'd ever seen in my life. I had no idea what to do with all that silverware. I don't remember who sat on either side of me but I don't think they were friends of mine (that would have been K.R., who was doing fine on the other side of the room).

So I felt very graceless and crude from Minute One. My hair stuck out funny, my clothes didn't feel right. Most of the other girls were stylish and expensive dressers. They all knew how to put on makeup--many of them already wore bras! They never emitting raucous barks of laughter, or bit their nails. They knew what to do with that extra silverware.

We were served sandwiches cut into four triangles and held together with toothpicks topped by colorful cellophane curlicues: red, blue, green, yellow. The bread was stuffed with about 20 layers of meats, cheeses, lettuce and condiments, so the triangles stood up about 5 inches high. I had a terrible time eating those adroitly -- in fact, I didn't. I managed one triangle, and the second deconstructed itself all over my plate and the surrounding (snow-white, of course) linen tablecloth. I left the rest untouched and yearned for dessert.

I vaguely remember sparklers, and a fabulous cake, so we must have had cake. I also remember a uniformed waitress bringing around a silver tray with a collection of chocolates, each one its own little marvel of sculpture. I wanted to take several, some to eat at home, but I at least knew better than that. I took ONE.

The afternoon dragged on, with everyone but me seeming to have a good time (there were, God help us, games). I was so miserable and self-conscious that I wanted to die. Probably others felt similarly, but I was too self-absorbed to notice. That was probably a good thing. I'm sure all I would have been able to do for small talk was make snide comments about the fanciness and how much this all was costing.

At long last, it was over. The Daddies rolled their cars up to the door and mine appeared and I threw myself into the passenger seat and he drove his little social butterfly home, hallelujah. I changed immediately into play clothes and shot outdoors looking for my fort-building, apple-grenade-throwing best buddy. It had rained that morning. There were gutter dams to build, mud to grind into our jeans.

I've learned a lot since then, most importantly what to do with all that extra silverware.

You bundle it up and jam it head-down into that extra crystal water glass.