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Pom Pom's most recent post was about things that made her glad. It has inspired me to make my own list of gladnesses, in no particular order.

1. I am glad, oh so very, very glad, to be home. Home! Dirty, messy, scrungy, scrubby, germ-laden, sticky-floored, dust-covered home!

2. I am glad to have my dog's company again. When I was in New Orleans, I saw a commercial with a dog in it. I wept like a baby. Once you are used to getting your daily dose of unrequited love, it's very hard to go without it.

3. I am glad that I'm not going anywhere for a good long while. I want to stay put--except for my trip to IKEA, which is going to happen, and soon, and how.

4. I am glad that the tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters. For one thing, it makes up for the rabbits eating my beautiful greenbeans and all the radishes and some of my pinto beans as well. (I am researching organic ways of keeping rabbits away. The Man is researching how much damage a BB gun can do to bunny.) We do have squirrels eating tomatoes, but we have so many tomatoes, it doesn't much matter.

5. I am glad that blueberry season is here (local friends, let's go blueberry picking!) and that I've found a recipe for spiced blueberry jam. Let the canning begin!

6. I'm glad I've become a zen Buddhist for the summer so that I don't have to worry about whether or not my children are happy. Jack is in drama camp this week, and I found myself overly-concerned earlier in the week about whether or not he's having a good time. Then I remembered that I am a Buddhist now. I have no control over Jack's happiness. Maybe being happy is not what this week is about for Jack. Interestingly enough, as soon as I stopped worrying about whether or not Jack was having a ripping good time at camp, he started talking about how much he was enjoying it (before, all he said was that camp was "fine").

7. Did I mention that I'm glad to be home?

All my travels were pleasant and pleasurable. There were points during our stay at the beach when I wondered how hard it would be for a 47-year-old woman to disappear into thin air and never be found again (and yet still retain use of her credit cards). Which is to say, all that family togetherness can get to a girl after awhile. But overall it was a good vacation.

New Orleans was fun and beautiful and quite exhausting. I got to attend the Newbery and Caldecott book awards banquet, met some very famous children's book authors (who were nice, because just about everyone in children's publishing is very nice), and best of all, ordered room service for breakfast. I believe one of the loveliest things about visiting New Orleans is drinking the coffee. Oh, and the natives are so hospitable they ought to be named honorary Texans.

So I'm glad to have gone, and I'm glad to have come back. It's lucky when things work out that way, isn't it?

P.S. I was in New Orleans for the American Library Association. If you follow this link, you will find a picture of me (scroll way down) with a bunch of other Simon & Schuster authors. I'm right under the picture of Molly Shannon, the latest Celebrity-turned-Picture-Book-Author; imagine that.

Summer Report No. 2

Greetings from the Outer Banks of North Carolina! That's where I've been hiding away since last Friday, trying to get this summer kick-started.

It has been a strange summer so far. I spent the first few weeks of it revising a novel, a process I enjoy, but one that takes up a lot of space in my head. It's hard to get your summer mojo going when your brain is focused on other things, especially imaginary things that only exist in your own little mind.

(The pink house across the street from where we're staying.)

We're here on Ocracoke Island until Saturday, when we'll head back to Durham. On Sunday, I leave for the American Library Association's summer convention in New Orleans. I'll return home Tuesday evening, and then Phase II of the summer begins. I sort of hope it's the boring phase of summer, the part where I don't do much at all except learn how to preserve figs and make mozzerella cheese and eat a million tomatoes from our garden.



To recap the summer so far, for those of you keeping score at home, here is what I've done since the boys finished school:

1. Gone to a fiddler's convention in Mt. Airy, NC, where I learned that Bluegrass fiddlers and Old Time fiddlers are the Hatfields and McCoys of the contemporary age. It was a scene worthy of a master's degree thesis in sociology, group psychology or anthropology.

2. Taken a canning class over at the local County Extension Agency, where I learned more about botulism than I ever cared to know.

3. Finished revising a novel, which you'll be happy to hear my editor has accepted with open arms and says there are only three or four (or five or six or seven) tiny things that still need working on.

4. Spent a week getting ready for vacation. Which I am now enjoying, though I am living with the underlying dread of going home and immediately turning around to go somewhere else, where I will be expected to be extroverted and charming, something I'm only occasionally capable of. And then turning around one more time (I'm getting dizzy!) to come back home and deal with the unpacking and cleaning and all that.



The best thing about this vacation so far, other than the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of one of the most beautiful spots on the eastern seaboard, has been watching Jack on his bike. We are staying in the village, which is one of the more bike- and pedestrian-friendly places I've been, and has a wonderful bookstore and plenty of places to stop and get a Dr. Pepper or an ice cream cone. Jack has been out and about on his bike for hours every day, breathing what may be his first real breaths of independence. It has done my heart good to see him thus.

I hope that starting next week I'll be a little more regular in my blogging. With any luck, I'll be back frequently updating you on my efforts at cheesemaking and preserving figs and peaches and posting many, many pictures of my tomatoes. Ah, tomatoes. They do my heart good.

Summer Report

(My wheat crop is in! I think we have enough for a cup of flour. Photo Credit: The Man)

I have survived the first week of summer. Barely.

Much credit goes to my friend Sarah, who keeps whisking Will off to the pool and the river and her backyard. I have to finish up a revision in the next two weeks, and having Will out of the house and fully occupied helps. A lot.

Jack just sleeps until someone drags him out of bed. By the way, he was measured at a doctor's appointment today, and we are now exactly the same height. I imagine he'll be towering over me by the end of the summer. I still outweigh him by thirty pounds--why isn't that a comfort?

Here are some of my hopes/plans/dreams for the summer:

1. We will all get through it physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually unharmed.

2. I will be serious about canning my garden bounty, and my children will share my obsession. We will spend many a happy afternoon in the kitchen, laughing and singing as we make blackberry jam. We might even dance a little, just because we are so, so happy about jam.

3. I will not be in any way or form tempted to sell my children to the lowest bidder.

4. I will continue to get up early (6:30ish; I'm shooting for 6:00) to read on the porch and weed the garden, and enjoy the peace of a quiet house. Moreover, Will, sensing that I'm up, will not decide that he, too, will get up at 6 a.m. so he can play computer games.

5. I will sell the computer--and all gaming systems--to the lowest bidder.

6. I will not give up on my garden in mid-July just because it's too dang hot.

7. I will not give up on my children and sell them to the lowest bidder just because it's too dang hot.

That's my list for now. I'm also pondering making this not just the Summer of Pie, but also the Summer of the Southern Biscuit, and also the Summer of Eudora Welty, whose letters I'm reading right now. It's good to have several set themes for one's summer, so that one does not lose heart.

I will not lose heart. I will eat biscuits and jam instead.

Buddhism 101

I have decided to become a Buddhist this summer. My Buddhist practice will not replace my Christian practice, but merely overlay it, like a nice piece of lace, or a veil, or a double-dose of Valium.

Buddhism, as I understand it, is the practice of letting go of expectations and judgment in an effort to diminish suffering. And since my children have already made it very clear to me that I will suffer this summer if I don't take drastic action, and since I don't have a Valium prescription, Buddhism it is.

As a Buddhist, I will focus on what is in my control and what is out of my control. For instance, today is the first day of June, and it's almost 100 degrees outside. Instead of getting anxious about it--my normal reaction to high temperatures at the beginning of summer--I tell myself I can't control the weather; it is what it is. I make no judgment upon it. I make no judgment on the radio announcers who seem almost sadistic in their excitement as they report the rising temperatures. I let go of all the negative thoughts I have about radio announcers who have never learned to simply report the facts instead of editorializing. I resist the impulse to tell them to shut up; we already know it's hot, you morons.

I am letting go. I am letting go of my children's boredom, their ennui, their stunning slothfulness, their inability to entertain themselves sans electronic devices. I am letting go.

Instead of freaking out over the fact that for the next eleven weeks, I will hardly ever have a minute to myself, I am meditating on jam. My friend Melissa generously spent last Thursday morning showing me how to make strawberry jam and can it, and on my birthday a few days ago I received a Presto Pressure Canner. So this summer, instead of suffering, I will make jam, and I will can it in those cute little jars, and I will think about all the nice folks I will give the jam to at Christmas, and I will do my best not to throw the cute little jars of jam at my children when they drive me crazy.

Because I am a Buddhist, and that's how we roll.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

(Coral honeysuckle. Photo Credit: The Man)

My friend Danielle once said May is the new December, and I've been quoting her ever since. I feel like I've been running around like a mad woman for the last two weeks. Teeth cleanings, annual exams, this errand, that errand. And, of course, the second grade poetry festival.

Just when you think it's safe to get out of bed without brushing your hair, they spring the second grade poetry festival on you. We were this close to school being over and done with, this close to saying no more hot lunches, no more classroom theme parties, no more field trips. I thought I was done. But no. Yesterday Will comes home from Our Fine School with an invitation to spend the first thirty minutes of my Wednesday morning enjoying poetry.

Well, I love poetry, and there is little poetry finer that penned by a second grader, but the second grade poetry festival--the idea of having to find somewhere deep inside me that last bit of school rah rah cheerful mommy-ness--Reader, I thought it might kill me.

Fortunately, it didn't. And once I was there, all was delightful and amazing. It was just the idea of having to go, you know? The idea of one more thing. The idea of having to comb my hair before 8 a.m..

It's the little things that undo you.

(The garden, with a view of the porch. Photo credit: The Man)

So summer is a-cumin' in. The Summer of Pie. The summer where Jack cooks dinner once a week, and the boys and I begin our quest to find the best hamburger in town. We're going to go to lunch at a new burger joint each week. We're going to take notes. We're going to compare and contrast.

Really, it's all I can think of. That, and going to the pool.

(Jack's latest pie--Strawberry Lemonade)

Tonight, I made the last school lunches of the year. My last night of feeling guilty for being such a lame mom and packing pretty much the same thing every single time. I have no lunch imagination. I eat the same thing every day for breakfast (scrambled eggs) and lunch (salad with walnuts and avocado). I'm boring that way. And now my children will be boring that way, too.

But I don't have to worry about it for eleven more weeks. And maybe next fall, I'll make the boys make their own lunches.

That'll show 'em.

The Attic Diaries, Day 2

(My friend Sarah gave me a bunch of Swiss Chard today--isn't it gorgeous?)

I am making progress. Teeny tiny progress.

What keeps me going? Your comments help, especially comments in which you share that your children are grown and you still have Lego in your attic.

Does the Lego-less attic even exist? I don't think so.

Today I had three small projects: Put all the party stuff in one box, all the arts and crafts supplies into one bin, and make a neat pile of the Legos boxes. Actually, my plan had been to chuck the Legos boxes into the recycling, but then I realized that they weren't empty.

I thought about pretending they were and sort of kind of accidentally throwing them away.

(By the way, I'm sorry that I had to cut the bat footage from the video. He's a really cute bat.)

Below: a picture of the pie Jack made last week. He hasn't made this week's pie yet, though he has made the crust (his first!), which is chilling in the fridge. This week it's double apple pie. I can't wait until we get to strawberry lemon pie. I love strawberry-anything and lemon-anything.



Tomorrow I may take a break from the attic, but on Friday I'm going to attack the corner with all the comforters that need to be washed and the old curtains that long for windows but are far too old and faded to hang up in public, and a bunch of other stuff that's really hard to fold neatly and I don't have any place to put.

But right now I'm going to plant some mint in a pot. Doesn't that sound nice?

The Attic Diaries

I have made an attic video. It is, as videos go, pitiful, but it should give you an idea of the state my attic was in when I started cleaning last week. You can view it below.

So far I have gone through all the clothes I'd "stored" (i.e. threw onto an ever-growing pile of outgrown and worn-through garments) in the attic and now have two huge bags to take to Good Will. I've donated three boxes of picture books to the library. I've hauled out boxes of my books (i.e. books I've written) and put them in my study, where, for a fee, Jack is going to organize them and shelve them on the bookshelves I bought for $15 today at our local ReStore store.

The attic, I'm sad to report, looks worse than ever.

But that's how it's going to be, isn't it? It's always darkest before the dawn. It's always messiest before the Attic Fairy comes and waves her magic wand over the world's largest collection of Scooby Doo jigsaw puzzles and makes it disappear.

Before I post another video, I promise to learn how to use iMovie so I can properly edit my videos. Until then, this trainwreck will have to do. Enjoy!