So, I go away to Seattle for a coupla days and I just get clobbered on the playground. First, I been tagged by the witty women at A Year of Reading.

I have to come up with 8 facts or habits about myself that might be appropriate to share and, at the same time, not boring. Sigh.

Here goes:

1. I can sing all the state names in alphabetical order and with a good dose of pizazz.

2. I’ve been vegetarian since college. As a kid I lived on goose, duck and venison. I remember the feeling of having a round, metal bit of bird shot stuck in my teeth. Unrelated facts? I think not.

3. When I do a seriously vigorous yoga practice, I get an itchy head. Crazy itchy. The same thing happens to my sister. Weird, hunh?

4. I have 16 first cousins, 12 of whom are female. A serious matriarchy. In the dating era, though, it was the guys who lucked out since we all brought our friends around — some of whom the boys married.

5. I can still do backward crossovers on ice skates. Once a year whether I need to or not. Ditto, getting up on a slalom ski behind a waterski boat.

6. My favorite combination of colors for a bouquet of flowers is purple and yellow. But I’ve just found out that tulips can’t be mixed with any other flowers because they put out some toxin that kills the others! Isolationists!

7. I saw the Grateful Dead perform in multiple states. I mean states like Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado. Not altered states. Don’t get funny with me.

8. When we take roadtrips I read novels out loud to my husband until I’m hoarse, especially mystery novels, which I never read otherwise. Oh, I also buy People magazine every time I travel by plane. But don’t tell anyone. 

OK, so that’s that. Oh, and y’know how Franki said she liked Dots as movie candy? I always liked their shy cousin Drops (chewier) and I used a rhyme to remember which one I preferred: Drops are Tops, Dots are Not.

To all the rest of you, consider yourself TAGGED. (I think this one has made the rounds pretty well already).

Now, then. I also got tagged by Vivian at HipWriterMama who says I’m supposed to share four things that were new to me in the past four years, and four things I want to try in the next four years.

New in the past four years:

1. Mothering honest-to-goodness KIDS instead of babies and toddlers. Kids who can hike for miles… write, act in and direct spectacular theatrical productions… create amazing artwork… tell jokes… deliver breakfast in bed… and read! I will always feel nostaligic for my babies, but boy-oh-man do I love these kids.

2. Blogging. Very new. Very inspiring (the reading and the writing). Very immediate-gratificationist. 

3. Goodness. My women’s artist lifeline, without which I’d be limping along and slogging through. I craved this community — didn’t even really know I craved this community — and now I want it for all of you. A writing group or a mama’s club or a spiritual clan or whatever village you need in your own particular life. Create it. I can assure you that the people you ask will say YES. Everybody’s hungry.

4. Writing an historical novel. This is not just new but ongoing, and an adventure at every juncture. Serves as the perfect transition from old new to new new….

New to come in the next four years:

1. Learn to play my exquisite mountain dulcimer. And I mean well enough that if a bunch of music-y folks were over for dinner, I’d be happy to pull it out and play. In public.

2. Travel to another new country. Or a few more countries. With our kids. They are master travellers already. A good number of stamps in the old passports, and that’s not showing where they’ve been in this country. Our eldest’s leaning and inclination is cultural anthropology and comparative religions, never mind that she’s 8. I want to keep on feeding this, in her and in us. I hate to sound naaive or grandiose, but I think it may be the key to peace on earth.

3. Finish mothering “kids” and begin mothering pre-teens. I think my secret cache of weapons will include  travelling (see above), reading and discussing books, cultivating joy, and counting on my loving, steady, creative, patient and reliable husband/co-parent. We are going to relish our kids at each and every stage. Relish.

4. Celebrate the publication of my next books. Plural. 

That’s that. Let’s see. Who’ll I tag?

Shan
Kath
Chris
Cynthia

Sound good?

And finally, I have to say that we learned a new game this week from our cousins. I mean a real game. None of this virtual Tag You’re It business. It’s called Look Up, Look Down and it’s all about eye contact. Is that cool, or what? 

Eye contact. That’s something I plan on cultivating more of these next four years. How’s about you?

In celebration of the fact that SCHOOL’S OUT, I thought I’d pass on this very funny link. 

Remember that old dream, the exam you didn’t study for? The class you never showed up to? The public speaking in your p.j.s?

My particular favorite was one in which the professor handed me back my blue book with an F inked on the front cover and when I looked inside, I realized I had filled the pages with drawings of little woodland animals. Not a word written. That one chilled my blood for a few days.

Well, this link is that — brought to life. I like to think of these students as the “Creatively Unprepared.” 

What if Joy and Resignation and Creativity and Competition were people? What would they be like? Would we recognize them as friends or foes? Would we see in them ourselves? Would we like them? Want to be them? Invite them to dinner?

Well, check it out: The Book of Qualities, by J. Ruth Gendler. It’s written in prose, but since it’s all metaphor it qualifies as poetry, absolutely. 

My friend Lynn and her husband read from the book in their wedding ceremony, which just so happened to be the exact same day my husband and I were married — though we two couples didn’t know each other then — and the day a sacred white buffalo named Miracle was born, so I’m inclined to think that nearly everything that happened that day was auspicious.

Below, my own little dabbling with some portions that speak to me. But get the book yourselves. You won’t be sorry…

Me on a bad day:

Panic

Panic has thick curly hair and large frightened eyes. She has worked on too
many projects meeting other people’s deadlines… She wakes up in the middle
of the night pulling her hair out… Panic drives recklessly… Panic is
sure no one can help her…

Me on a good day:

Pleasure

Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. She loves the sun and
the wind and the night sky…

What’s the deal with Dodgeball?

My girls and I have discovered Dodgeball playing a prevalent role in The Sisters Grimm, The Sea of Monsters, Babymouse, and Pixie Tricks. 

And how about this — Mo Willems is credited as one of the writers of a dodgeball cartoon!

So what gives? 

Is it the movie? (Please tell me it’s not just the movie…)

Is it nostalgia for the days when kids could really let it rip in gym class and on the playground? (Sharp, rickety merry-go-round, anyone? Unanchored slide?)

Is it symbolic for the emotional brutality of childhood?

Or is it the perfect physical epitome of the narrative conflict, such that any kid lit author worth a pound of salt tosses a game in for good measure?

For me it conjures up a gruesome memory of 9th grade — Paul S., diving deep to avoid getting clobbered by the ball, going headfirst into the ceramic drinking fountain (which, oddly, is called a bubbler in Wisconsin). 

When he sat up, birds and stars spinning around his bleeding head, a corner of the bubbler lying jagged on the gym floor, he called out, “Medic!” in a wobbly voice. 

I’d just moved to Wisconsin from a hippy little ski town in Colorado. I didn’t understand the word bubbler, I didn’t understand 9th grade, and I didn’t understand dodgeball.

I guess I still kinda don’t. Medic?

As I said in a previous post, Vivian at HipWriterMama is the queen of butt-kicking inspiration. She can get you to say just about anything and believe it. 

So, in a reckless mood last week or the week before, I declared that, starting today, I’d work at least 30 minutes a day every day on one of my three works-in-progress. 

I’m well aware this may sound something between lame and pathetic since I’m, y’know, a writer. 
But bear in mind that me wee babes will be getting of school for the summer on Thursday. 

Thursday. 

For the summer. 

I’m thinking that 30 minutes a day might just feel like that hill ol’ Sisyphus faced.

And let’s not even nod our knowing heads over the irony that my elder daughter’s home sick with the stomach bug today. Today being the day I intend to launch this grand plan.

Sigh. I sensed a rough start.

But shucks if I didn’t just do it! 

Tired little sick girl and I lay down for naps, and when I woke, I sat at my desk and took one of my new picture book manuscripts from point A to at least point L. Maybe even R! I kid you not. 

I ignored the pile of laundry on the futon behind me. 
I pretended that the pile of to-dos falling against my left wrist was a comfort. 
I didn’t answer the phone. 

And I didn’t write for 30 minutes, I wrote for 49. 

Rough start be damned. 

Tomorrow I’m banking on more of the same, only this time I’m shutting down Outlook when I start.
No more lookie lookie at those tempting little envelopes popping up at the bottom of my screen. 
I’m thinking you know what I mean…

There are so dang many smart, insightful, visionary, funny, creative, witty writers out here in cyberspace that I could pretty much plant myself in front of the ol’ screen and read blogs until my eyes bled. (Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

One of my daily reads is the amazing HipWriterMama, and she is all that, I assure you. She submits weekly lists of strong girl role models in children’s literature, she writes hilarious and touching parenting posts, she shares her efforts and anxieties on the road to becoming the famous author she’s sure to be. 

But my favorite bits are her generous urgings to the rest of us to make goals, get inspired and empower ourselves. Vivian’s a one-woman high priestess, cheerleading squad, teaching team and fire-starter all rolled into one. 

So, suffice it to say that when she calls my blog a thinker, I get all pink and swoony. Sometimes I feel like I’m barely awake, much less thinking. But thanks, HipWriterMama!

My job now is to tell ya’ll about some other thinkers.  So here goes, with the hopes that these aren’t repeats:

When I was in college, I worked for a couple of years for the University News Service, mostly creating newsletter calendars and other decidedly low-brow journalism, but occasionally getting tossed some plumb little piece of work. I also got to brush up against all sorts of Real (capital R) Writers (capital W), including Jackie Mitchard who later became the author of some very big deal novels. As a person, I remember thinking she struck the perfect balance between smart, funny and warm, and I think her blog does that, too.

I love reading Mad Woman in the Forest from Laurie Halse Anderson. It is intimate and generous and specific and funny and experiential and seriously, I mean seriously thinkin’.

Fussbucket is a newish parenting blog and what I admire most is the brutal honesty here. I like that these mamas aren’t just trying to look good to the rest of us slouches…

And same with Mombo’s From the Mom Zone. 

I’m only allowed to list four, but there’s a bunch of other seriously wise nogginheads out there. You know who you are.

Margaret Atwood says, “ I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover problems.”

What a vexing truth. All that work, and no solution.

It makes me wonder if Atwood’s sense of poetry is universal? 
Are poems full of problems, opened up on the table like clam shells, left uncooked and unsalted?

I’ve been mulling this about, reading.
The stack of books on my bedside table is getting all high and wobbly, and I’m a little unsettled myself. 

Because it’s true, I think.
Poems do the work of uncovering.
And often, the grand reveal doesn’t happen ’til the very last lines. 
So that, in the end, we have no choice but to sit there with the problem — an awkard guest come calling. 
We sit there with it, we serve it tea.

“,,, and why shouldn’t we argue

and sit in the two kitchen chairs, our faces downcast, after I get home,
after what we’ve done, what we have allowed ourselves to long for?” 

“… everything is so quick and uncertain,
       so glancing, so improbable, so real.” 

“…Outside there are sirens.
Someone’s been run over.
The century grinds on.” 

“…No one hears the tiny sobbing
of the velvet in the drawer.” 

“…Then I remember:
     death comes before
         the rolling away
             of the stone.” 

“… nothing I can do will hurry him or promise it. It might be hours or days
before he appears at the door and sits me down and lays his head in my lap.” 

“…What are you supposed to do 
with all this loss?”

If you read these all together, aloud, your heart will break.
The pain of shedding light, the beauty of revelation. 
The questions, the discovery, the uncovering.

The last lines I use here are from poems by:
Marie Howe, The New Life
Mary Oliver, The Pinewoods
Margaret Atwood, In the Secular Night
Naomi Shihab Nye, The Palestinians Have Given Up Parties
Mary Oliver, At Black River
Marie Howe, More
Margaret Atwood, Down

When my hubby and I decide to take on a project, we don’t kid around. 

Move all the furniture out of our bedroom and paint it red (the room, not the furniture), & while we’re at it, paint the girls’ room turquoise. Or dig up the backyard. And the front. Or rearrange the living room. Completely. 

This kind of behaviour makes our elder sweet pea just a tad bit uneasy. Because she doesn’t like… well… change. She likes things how she likes ’em, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and I yam what I yam. You get the picture?

So needless to say I was on guard last weekend when we launched a total overhaul of guess-who’s room.

We’d been mulling this one over for awhile. It was a room in limbo — stuck in the awkward puddles between little girl and big girl, and home to nobody in quite the right way.

To note: a toddler train table serving (very poorly, I might add) as a desk. Board games hidden beneath said train table, and y’know what they say about outta sight, outta mind. A rocking chair that embraced, mostly, laundry. I could go on, but it’s depressing. 

So, last week my smarty-pants spouse was offered not one but TWO new jobs here in Austin, and he accepted one of them. Thus confirming that we are indeed dug in here but good. (I know, you’da thunk we’d have already grasped that since we’ve lived here — not in this house, but in this town — since we met about a thousand years ago. Guess we’re a little slow on the uptake.)

Anyway, the new job provided the motivation to grow-up the girls room, pronto. This entailed hauling everything out, shifting bunkbeds from one wall to another, getting rid of as much as possible, and building a whole new wall of shelves and a desktop. Y’know, for girls who want to write and draw sitting up like homosapiens instead of all hunched over a toddler train table. 

Fortunately, my previously-mentioned spouse is not only clever but handy, so he was up to the task. I, on the other hand, was not so sure. I was to be the emotional frontman. 

We. Are. Going. To. Redo. (pause, gulp) Your. (gulp) Room.

We are?

We are.

What do you mean EXACTLY?

So I told her. And she didn’t flinch. And then we got started and still, nothing. Except a little bit of (dare I say it) enthusiasm! I relaxed. We turned up the music and starting looking at funky little deskchairs at IKEA.com and plowing through toys that’d become obsolete.  And I’m just sittin’ pretty, thinking we’ve dodged a bullet. There would be no transition trauma. Rejoice!!!! But I didn’t say this because I’m no dope and I don’t want to plant any ideas in her head. 

Turns out I didn’t have to. Because a couple of hours into it she says, “Has anyone noticed that I don’t mind that we’re rearranging our room?”

We freeze, the rest of us. We nod, very gingerly. We gulp. 

“Yep,” she says.  “I think I might’ve outgrown that feeling.”

And now I’m thinking, if that’s true, my job as a mama might be done. A kid who can embrace change and articulate it? A kid who can recognize her own growth? A kid who’s ready for the next step? Bring it on.

But then she comes and folds all 4 foot 9 inches of arms and legs into my lap for a little congratulations hug and I hold her while her dad screws new shelves up and her sister traces her fingers through the sawdust on the floor and I think, phew. My job isn’t done. Not by a long shot.

All my grades are due today, which means it’s time for… a little procrastination. Right? I mean, at least I’m straight-up about it.

I love writing. I love teaching. I love talking to students about the craft of writing and seeing little lights go on and reading what they’ve written. But the long slog through end-of-the-semester piles with the sole intent of qualifying the work with a letter grade? I do not love.

Thus, the procrastination. But really, this is something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now because I’ve been teaching in the emerging, evolving field of Distance Learning, about which there’s a lot to say.

First off, let me just say that I don’t find teaching online nearly so engaging as teaching in a classroom, but I realize we are reaching students we wouldn’t be otherwise and I’m glad about that. I think we do a pretty swell job of getting important content and concepts to students via email and interactive web sites and such.

And for me, teaching in both venues keeps me on my toes. Or rather, keeps my fingers nimble and my jaw joints loose.

But here’s the thing, I’ve noted a remarkable lack of inhibition and informality in the online environment. Scary remarkable.

“Well, duh,” you say. “Your students spend a good portion of their waking hours on MySpace and FaceBook and in between, they’re texting.”

I know, I know. The walls have come down. But if they’re not learning, at all, how to discern between various forums and audiences, hasn’t somebody dropped the ball?

I mean, think about when we were kids. We knew that you wore one set of clothes to school, another to muck around in the mud, and a third to get on the airplane to visit grandma. I’m the first to admit that dressing up for the airplane was a rotten idea that I’m happy to see has evolved (or devolved, as the case may be), but the point is that we understood pretty early on that context determines behavior.

Now don’t call the shrink on me. We still get to be ourselves – I’m not talking about true chameleon un-tetheredness here – while acknowledging that certain things we wear, do, or say are more appropriate in some situations than in others. Can you give me that?

Somehow, this concept has not crossed technological boundaries. My students, lots of them, are with me as they are in FaceBook.

“Well, good,” you say. “If Distance Learning is going to work, it’s got to encourage community and intimacy.”

I totally agree and I fill my discussion boards with puzzling questions and funny comments and I encourage students to engage each other there, too.

But here’s some of the stuff that is flying under the radar, and oughtn’t to:
 

SCREEN NAMES: O.K., since this generation is so comfortable in the online environment surely they know that you can have more than one screen name. Don’t you think it would be a good idea if their academic screen name wasn’t pardychik or hot_abs or drinkup? How about a first name and a last name? Or initials? Call me crazy…

TMI: Remember the old, “My grandmother is ill so my report is going to be a day late, professor” line? No longer necessary. Since we’re not looking each other in the eye, white lies have gotten tossed out the window in favor of the bloody truth. In the past 6 months, I’ve been told about an affair, a drunk-driving arrest and three break-ups. And then there was the student who said, “I don’t know why I’m not doing my work in here. I think I’m just being lazy.” Actually, that one was refreshing after all the reality TV show fodder. Listen, I really want to be there for my students. As a personal support but also as a resource for the help they need – in any area of their lives. But this off-the-cuff confessionalism isn’t about accessing me for support (or even compassion), it’s about thinking I’m their roommate and we’re hanging out in our bean-bag chairs at 2:30 a.m., eating cold pizza and sharing a flask of Jagermeister. 

PAY IT FORWARD: Y’know all those forwards (jokes, political manifestos, spiritual uplifts)? Don’t we all get enough (read: too many) from our colleagues and granddads and in-laws already? I’m thinking a little discretion regarding who gets sent what is wise and thoughtful. Yes? There are, no doubt, notable exceptions — I love it when a student, especially one I haven’t seen in a semester or two, sends me a link to an article on Judy Blume or a piece on how writing prompts are being used in therapeutic situations or, best yet, notice of the student’s own successes or publications. But the please-forward-this-on-to-your-ten-favorite-people-and-your-wish-will-come-true emails? No thanks…

TIME SPACE DISCONTINUUM: Something happens to clocks, calendars and due dates in the virtual world. I mean, really happens. Maybe it’s just that guilt doesn’t work very well digitally. Coming to class over and over again with nothing to hand in (or not coming to class at all) is just too shame- and guiltifying for most of us. But not showing up online? Big whoop. Think about the old reminder, “Call Your Mother.” Doesn’t have quite the punch, does it, when you’re not hearing it in a Brooklyn accent with the scent of garlic in the air?

So now that I’ve firmly established myself as a grouchy curmudgeon, I should note that I’ve read some stunning poetry this semester, and have seen some courageous students come out of their shells in a way they might not’ve in a classroom. So there is a flip side. (Isn’t there always?)

Speaking of which, I gotta get back to my students’ work right NOW before the day gets away from me. It’s that time-space discontinuum thing.

When you live in Austin, Texas, it’s manditory to go swimming every single day all summer long. And when we say summer, we mean May-ish through October-ish. 

It’s not a bad rule. Whoever cooked it up was onto something. It’s really flippin’ hot in Texas and full, watery submersion can help with skin tone, swollen ankles and marriage. I’m serious. 

And the weatherman must’ve gotten with the mayor and the mayor must’ve been a mother, because you can hardly turn a corner in this town without falling into a pool or swimmin’ hole. They make it really easy on you.

Still, as you might imagine, all this swimming becomes quite a commitment. Time, a bathing suit budget, and the porch railing forever hung with wet towels. So I like to wait, each spring, until I just can’t stand it anymore. 

Yesterday was that day. The predicted ‘high 80s’ were really the low 90s, and we took the plunge in our neighborhood ‘pool’ which just so happens to be a 3-acred, spring-fed nirvana called Barton Springs. First, we hemmed and hawed and dipped our toes like the wimpy procrastinators we are (it’s 68 degrees). Then we swam. I swear, you pop up in a different mood than the one you dunked under with. It’s that instantaneous. 

There’s a rocky shallow end that the kids love especially, for the au naturel sense of adventure. It’s where Huck Finn’d hang if he were a city boy. 

So there we were yesterday, delighted by the particularly abundant crops of minnows and tadpoles. Really, the water was all flush and squirmy. And our girls tried to catch them in their hands, just like every kid in the history of kid-hood has tried to do. Many giggles, a few tumbles on the slippery stones, quite a few ‘fish that got away.’

One slightly older boy, though, had caught himself a big ole’ bag of minnows and was carrying it around, happily, in his hands. His father followed him, suggesting over and over again that the boy release the fish. All the reasons — they’re going to run out of oxygen, they’re crowded in there, they don’t like plastic, they want to grow into big fish — all the reasons fell on deaf ears because the boy wanted to keep the fish. And he said so. 

The dad massaged his forehead and looked a little desperately at the baggie full of fish — pretty worried, I think, that he’d have blood on his hands. And then he said, to all of us, “When we were kids we didn’t always want to keep everything. Did we? I think we all just caught ’em and let ’em go.”

I don’t know if that’s true. In fact, I can think of a couple of specific exceptions including a small snake that somehow escaped the cooler we had him in and was never to be seen again, much to my mother’s displeasure. 

But the discussion that evolved yesterday, as the fish were wilting in the bag, revolved around today’s immediate gratification, consumer culture. If our kids get what they want when they want it (now, if not before) is it really that surprising that they want to keep nature’s booty, too? Nevermind the plastic bag and lack of oxygen, our kids have been trained in acquisitions.

So how do we talk to them about wanting the most out of their lives and working toward that and, at the same time, teach them that there is much in this world that isn’t ours and oughtn’t be? 

One of the catch-phrases has always been,  “Leave those (flowers, frogs, shells) here, so there will be more for the next folks to enjoy.” But that implies that nature is here primarily for our amusement and pleasure. 

I think this has to be a question of stewardship, of a responsible and ethical use of power. I think if we empower kids to tend to the natural world (which sometimes means, of course, simply getting out of the way), that caring for nature rather than keeping it will become habit. 

Even the water, still cold, pools at our feet and we leave it behind, where it belongs.