Snide Reply

Category: Writing

  • Righting Writing: Stories from Developmental Writing

    Karin Evans, Dr. Evans to her students, is a professor of English and long-time friend. She wrote today’s post, about teaching writing at the college level to students who don’t pass the placement exam for the college’s freshman-level English class. She’s doing such difficult and important work. Need persuading? Try to teach someone to write. Enjoy!

    I teach writing at a two-year college with open enrollment, where many students are placed in “developmental” classes to help them catch up to college level in reading, writing, and and/or math. When I tell people what I teach, they often ask me why students who have graduated high school need to take these extra classes. Here are four stories about why.

    Matt, who writes like he talks. Matt sits in the back, in the corner, a skinny young guy in a baseball cap. Matt is having a hard time reconciling his own style with how I want him to write his essay. Matt writes extremely casual prose. He writes “alot,” a lot. He never bothers to capitalize the pronoun I. In his concluding paragraph, he uses the phrase “i mean yeah” to create emphasis in the middle of an important run-on sentence. The niceties of Standard English are completely absent from his work. However, he clearly understands the assignment, and the ideas in his draft are completely relevant – it’s a diamond in the rough.

    At the end of the semester, Matt does not pass the exit exam. I am not surprised. I meet with him and we discuss some options, decide that he will take a one-credit class to keep working on his writing style before he tries the placement exam again. I pray that he will meet a creative and flexible instructor for that one-credit class, and that he will have courses in other subjects with manageable writing assignments. Matt’s understanding of what college will ask of him is growing – I hope he can catch on fast enough, that his good attitude and intelligence will be enough to carry him through.

    Jonie, who doesn’t have 100% to give. Jonie is pretty, nicely dressed, and quiet. She is often absent, and often does not submit homework. When she attends, she does well in class – but she does not progress as well as she should be able to. She is elusive; she does not seek help or respond to my comments on her work. After failing the exit exam, she comes to her scheduled conference.

    Sitting in my private office, Jonie confides that she was in a serious car accident the previous year and experiences back pain and neurological problems, including uncontrollable facial and body tics. She has frequent medical appointments. These conditions cause her a great deal of stress, and some days she is simply unable to make herself come to school. Compounding these more unusual problems, she does not have good study habits, struggles to manage her school assignments and deadlines. Jonie tells me candidly that she does not feel she has earned her way into English 1101; she believes she would benefit from repeating the developmental class. I am both impressed and relieved that she has drawn this conclusion for herself. But will she persist, and enroll in the class again? Then will she find the support and motivation she needs to do better the second time?

    Jeremy, a little older and wiser. Jeremy has been a forklift driver, a security guard, a warehouse shift supervisor. Now about 30, he is a husband and a father. His wife has more education – I have a hunch that she latched onto him because she could see how smart he is, how engaged and determined. Jeremy is opinionated and verbose in class discussion. Somehow I am able to help him channel and structure all his ideas and energy in his writing. In one semester, his writing transforms from halting and underdeveloped paragraphs to fairly articulate and detailed essays.

    Jeremy passes the exit exam, as he deserves. The following semester, he stops by to let me know how his English 1101 class is going and to show me a picture of his new daughter. Last week, he emailed me to ask about the required textbook for my online English 1102 class – he’s enrolled.

    Austen, who is really ready to learn. Like many developmental students, Austen attempts the placement test more than once before giving in and enrolling in the course. She writes in an early assignment that she has never done well in English and figures that she’ll be better off if she takes the class. Austen is a teacher’s dream come true – she follows instructions, works really hard on her assignments, takes feedback well, and sets an excellent example for other students.

    Nervous about the placement test, Austen asks me what will happen if she fails. I say we’ll drive off that bridge when we come to it – but I know I am already committed to walking her through an appeal process if it comes to that. Sometimes really good students freeze under pressure. I tell her that as long as she remembers to take her confidence with her, she’ll do fine – and she does.

    You might be asking, did Austen really need that extra class? Maybe, maybe not – but according to her own self-report, she was glad to have the chance to build her confidence before taking English 1101. I’m not worried about whether she will pass English 1101 now, and I hope she’s not either.

    Why do we offer developmental education for students like these in the college setting – why don’t the high schools finish the job? High school is for children, who are subject to their parents and the state. Developmental education belongs in the college setting because the students are adults, and college is where we educate adults. Adults choose and prioritize their own goals, and they figure out how to reach them, or they figure out how to change them. Frequently, people who did not sense any real purpose for their high school education, or whose experience was compromised by abuse, poverty, mental illness, or any number of frightening factors, find themselves ready, in some ways, to approach college. They may be socially and emotionally mature enough, and they may be perfectly intelligent, but their academic skills may be lacking.

    There is no format in the high school setting where adult students can be served. However, colleges – especially community colleges – are well suited to meet the transitional needs of adult students. Our developmental classes are tied into the college curriculum; most faculty also teach college-level courses. Our classrooms are college classrooms. For many students, we offer an essential bridge to the path that leads to a significant goal – a nursing degree, a program in video game development, a certificate in construction management, transferring to a four-year university to study computer science. When we invest in these students, we invest in ourselves. We educate citizens and professionals who will make a difference in the lives of many. In the long run, these are the best investments we can make.

  • Check it out! I guest blogged!

    Ordinarily, I eschew exclamation points in my writing but, golly gee, someone asked me to write for his blog and I did it! You can check out a bit of my experience parenting my son through one of the darkest times of both of our lives here:  http://blackboxwarnings.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/a-tale-of-two-meds-and-one-teen/

    Read the other posts, too. The man who started the blog is also dealing with a son with ADHD and the meds that come along with it. And there are others who posted as well. It’s a valuable, developing resource for those of us taking drugs with black box warnings (means they can lead to all kinds of nasty side effects, like suicidal ideation and other fun things) and parenting kids taking those drugs.

  • Now, THIS is crazy!

    Image from Zazzle.com

    It’s Father’s Day. I’m sitting with my Dad on the patio.

    “How are you, Dad?” I ask.

    “Not very good,” he says, looking down at his hands. I’ve never seen him this sad.

    “Your mother rejected me,” he says and tells me, through tears, that my mother left him.

    I start to cry, not knowing which is worse, telling my father that my mother died nearly four years ago or letting him believe she’s still alive and left him.

    “Dad,” I say, as gently as I can, “Mom’s dead. She died almost four years ago. She would never leave you.” He looks up, confused. He’s confused nearly all the time now.

    “You took such good care of her, do you remember that?” He’s trying. “She had emphysema and you took such good care of her. She was just too sick. We had to let her go, Dad.” I wonder if he remembers making the decision ending life support. He believes me. He believes and he’s sad, but he’s calmer.

    I visit my dad every week these days, but I never know where it’ll be. Last week, it was Denver. He was waiting at his hotel, while my mother and grandmother shopped for houses. They’d come to Denver for a convention, something they did a lot. Traveling to conventions, that is, not traveling to Denver. He seemed anxious about buying yet another house, but he’d never really been able to say “No” to my mother. I told him I knew the feeling.

    Another visit saw us in Hong Kong, having dinner with a group of executives my dad clearly didn’t like because they’d kidnapped me. Yet another visit saw us in Rochester at a bicycle factory. There was our visit in an undisclosed location in Romania, where my dad told me he was forced to sit on a minaret to escape the men trying to capture him in Saudi Arabia. Recently, my sister married the Shah of Iraq, so we have an Arabian theme going lately.

    My dad’s delusions are nothing compared to the other residents. There’s the woman who gathers all of the baby dolls and stuffed animals and arrays them on a table. She dresses them all and sets them down to sleep then complains about how she has so many babies to care for. There’s the 105-year old woman who was once a singer. She still tries to sing but it comes out as screeching wails. There’s the woman who sits quietly and, when she catches your eye doesn’t say “Hello,” but “I’m afraid.” “Afraid of what?” I asked. “Of dying,” she replied.

    It’s hard not to make the leap to The Snake Pit or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or whatever look-inside-the-loony-bin movie was popular in your particular generation. This, after all, is what crazy people are and do.

    But I know better. My father and his housemates aren’t nuts. They have a terrible disease that literally eats at their brains, destroying the web that connects a lifetime of accumulated memory and leaving them with a stew of thought they continually try to make sense of.

    No. They are not crazy; I am. At least, that’s what my society says. I have bipolar disorder; I am bipolar. I never know which description to use, so I use both. But no matter how I reveal my condition, I get a universal reaction, spoken or no. “That chick is crazy.” Someone even told me, “Wow. You’d never know to look at you!”

    I suppose that’s a compliment; the self-harming, judgmental thoughts, over-spending and insomnia don’t show on my face. Of course, the medication helps. More likely, it’s an indication of how crazy Americans are about mental illness.

    I happen to come from a family of crazies. Alcoholism, schizophrenia, drug abuse were things I learned about early. None of the crazies looked crazy. Well, ok, the schizophrenic lived in another state, so I didn’t see him very often and can’t really say he never looked crazy. Still, “you’d never know to look” at any of them that they lived with demons.

    So, I don’t usually tell people I’m bipolar, though I’ve been doing it more often lately. Maybe it was the “you don’t look” it comment; maybe it’s my own growing acceptance. I’ve been more active in the blogosphere lately and the anonymity it affords makes it easier for crazies to hang out and connect with each other.

    In America, you can pretty much tell who’s a flag-waving conservative by, well, the flags waving on their houses. I decided, some time ago, to take back the flag. This is my country, too, I thought, and hung the flag on our porch.

    So, I’m taking back crazy. I’m a mom, a writer and a teacher. I have two great kids and the obligatory pets that go along with living in one of America’s most famous suburbs. I’m happily married.

    This is what crazy looks like, people.

  • C? Si! 100 posts and beyond

    I’m not ordinarily interested in anniversaries, commemorative dates and other forced significancies. I barely remember how long I’ve been married and don’t really think it matters much. Frankly, staying married is really just a matter of not getting divorced when things get bad. Things have always gotten better for us, so being married for 20 years is more luck than hard work.

    I don’t understand why we have to celebrate birthdays, either. I get older every year; so do you. Why do I have to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on April 22? Maybe I’d like to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on June 26 or October 13. I’m considering putting tokens in a jar for all of the events we’re supposed to commemorate. Then, if we feel like doing it up one day, we can just take out a token and celebrate whatever we happen to pull out. So, if I want to, I can celebrate my October wedding anniversary in March.

    Publishing 100 posts on Snide Reply, though, is apparently something to crow about. I’ve actually published 101, but I didn’t write one of them. I recently re-blogged a post from sweetmotherlover, a blogger I follow. Because I’m busier than a suburban mom driving her kids all over town to various summer activites, I decided to break my no-commemorations rule. I am celebrating writing 100 posts by re-blogging the first post I wrote, two years ago. Back then, I had about 35 followers. Last time I checked, I had about 144145147. Not the biggest following, but more than I ever thought I’d reach. I happen to think my first is also one of my funniest posts and hope you think so, too. Enjoy.

    Thanks friends, family and followers! I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep following.

  • Tears On My Pillow

    One look at him and I knew he wasn’t done. Brow furrowed, mouth turned down, eyes wide, he was half an inch from starting up again and I had no idea how to stop him. Then the tears started.

    “Why are you crying?” I asked as gently as possible.

    “Because of the lump in my froat,” he said, still too young to get the “th” sound right.

    “The lump is in your throat because you’re crying,” I said. “So, why are you crying?”

    “Because of the lump,” he said. I sighed. The physiology behind tear production apparently isn’t part of the public school kindergarten curriculum.

    “Well, when we are sad, we cry and the lump means that you are thinking about something sad and then you cry because of the sad thing, not because of the lump,” I explained. Then, he cried in earnest.

    “Why are you sad?” I asked.

    He cried.

    “Are you thinking about mommy?” I asked.

    He cried harder. Ah, I thought, something to work with.

    “Well, stop thinking about mommy,” I said.

    The crying paused, as he considered whether it were truly possible to stop thinking about mommy when he was sure that mommy had abandoned him at math enrichment class. He began to cry again.

    “Think about math,” I said. Well, I thought, that was the lamest thing you could have said. Sensing the lameness of my advice, he continued crying.

    “Wait! Wait!” I said. “I have an idea! Let’s try this!” He paused.

    “Take a deep breath and pretend you’re smelling a big bunch of flowers.” He inhaled.

    “Now, blow it out and pretend you’re blowing out the candles on a cake.” He exhaled.

    We inhaled and exhaled for a while ‘til he calmed enough to think about math. We got through the lesson. He never knew I learned “smell the flowers, blow out the candles” while helping care for my own mother, who died of emphysema.

    I didn’t cry for my mother in public other than those dainty little trails so insignificant that they barely need to be wiped away. I remember holding my daughter’s hand as we walked down the aisle behind my mother’s casket. I spied a friend in a pew toward the front. Tears came to my eyes. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes until the tears passed, not in time to keep one from trickling down my cheek but before my mascara suffered any damage. My mother would have approved.

    I’d like to tell you that my aversion to public crying is based on aesthetics. Runny, ruddy noses and red-rimmed eyes are unattractive at best. But I know that I really do think crying is for sissies and I am no sissy. No, I don’t think this is a particularly healthy stance, but it’s the one I’ve got. And, yes, I do know that big girls, and big men, do cry.

    It’s not that I don’t feel like crying. I feel like crying so often I might be able to cry a river. Between hormone fluctuations and bipolar disorder, my brain chemistry is pretty much primed to turn any amount of pathos into a bawl. Remember that Coke

    (ok, so it was Pepsi) commercial with the little boy being pounced on by a pack of puppies? Had me in tears every time I saw it. Now, I’m not talking little sniffles. I’m talking about tears that lasted way past the commercial break. That Procter and Gamble spot with all the moms dragging their sleepy kids out of bed so they (the kids, that is) can become Olympic athletes? Wrings sobs from me. Is it no wonder I’ve trained my tears to stop on command?

    My kids, particularly my daughter, have picked up on my propensity for becoming maudlin over recorded fare ranging from the sentimental to the insipid. We’ll be watching a movie, say We Bought A Zoo, and everything will be going along swimmingly until the dad-figure and the son-figure have a touching moment that begins to heal the rift they’ve felt between them since the mom-figure died. Only seconds after my eyes begin to fill up, my daughter says, “You’re crying, aren’t you?” Doesn’t even have to look, she just knows it. My sister suffers the same schmaltz-induced weeping. Her kids are far less kind. “Look!” they say, “Mom’s crying! You’re crying, aren’t you?” I believe I’ve seen my sister stick her tongue out at them.

    My daughter may have taken a page from my niece and nephews. Recently, she and a friend were cleaning up the family room. By that I mean they were listening to music, dancing and performing gymnastics amidst a myriad of books, stuffed animals and craft supplies. A particular Selena Gomez song came on; I’ve written about this song before. My daughter knows it makes me cry. So, in consideration of my tender feelings, she said, “Watch this! This song always makes my mom cry. See! There she goes!”

    There, indeed, I did go. My daughter’s friend’s mother apparently does not cry at sappy Selena Gomez songs. Friend looked at me as if I were some exotic creature. “Why does this song make you cry?” she asked, cocking her head to one side like a scientist. I resisted the urge to hand her a clipboard and pencil.

    “Well,” I said, “lots of women have a nasty voice inside their heads that tells them they are ugly or fat or stupid. It makes me sad that I have that voice in my head and I hope my daughter never does.”

    She nodded her head and went back to turning cartwheels. Yes, in fact, I did cry writing that last paragraph—in the peace and privacy of my office.

  • It’s All Good

    Brown Sugar Bacon ala katieleehome.comWhen I started blogging, I didn’t read other people’s blogs. I was new; what did I know? Frankly, it never really occurred to me that anyone beyond my immediate family would care what came out of my fingertips, unless it was Dr. Pepper. Quite a few people in my family would be impressed if I could shoot Dr. Pepper out of my fingertips. Or lasers. It’d be pretty cool to shoot lasers out of my fingertips.

    While my list of followers is not that large—I know people who’ve had more guests at their weddings than I have on Snide Reply—it’s far more than my gene pool alone could supply. I learned pretty quickly that you gotta spread the blog love. If you’re writing blogs, then you should be reading them, too. Blogosphere tit-for-tat.

    I discovered that there are certain blog posts that are de rigueur. As I write, I have a headache otherwise I would remember all the different kinds of posts I’m supposed to write. There’s the Search Terms post; that’s the one in which you write about all the crazy search terms people used that brought them to your blog. When I wrote my search terms post, “penis” was in all of the top five terms. Today, I am pleased to report there is not a single “penis” in the top five. Ok, there’s a “dick,” but I’m not counting it. Could be someone is looking for their Uncle Dick, not their uncle’s dick.

    The other kind of post that I can remember is the Goodness Gratefulness Post. I did do a gratitude post some time back; it got Freshly Pressed. But it pretty much thumbed its nose at the idea of being grateful ‘cause, really, must we be grateful all the time? I think not. Still, I’ve been kinda down and thought maybe focusing on what’s good might help. So, here are the things that strike me as good today.

    My son earned a D in American Studies.

    Asian parents abound in our neighborhood; for many of them, the only achievements worth celebrating are As. Then there is my family, whooping it up over our son’s D. We are celebrating the fact that a D is not an F. We are celebrating the fact that our son seems to finally understand that it doesn’t matter if you think your teacher is a douche bag bad teacher nor does it matter if you can get an A on the final without doing the homework.  My husband and I now understand that grounding is far more effective when there is something at stake, like driving around aimlessly with one’s friends.

    There is no wolverine in my garage.

    Garages and basements are the same thing in my mind, except that the garage has immediate access to nature. Creepy, cluttered, spider-ridden, dark and dusty, basements are the stuff of horror shows. Mine would be a blockbuster. But as scary as basements are, they have the advantage of being rather more difficult to infiltrate than, say, a garage. While my garage is no Taj, it would make a commodious abode for any wandering wildlife. So, I always step gingerly into the garage, particularly at night, despite six years of venturing there without incident. I shall remain vigilant. Hell, there’s an opossum living under our deck; why wouldn’t there be a wolverine in the garage?

    Coyote pups are really cute.

    Early in the spring, a coyote crossed my path as I ran through the prairie preserve near my house. Feigning disinterest in devouring me, he stared me down then slunk silently into the reeds ringing the marsh to the north. Feigning nonchalance, I reversed my running course and fled—I mean, jogged calmly away—resisting the urge to run forward while looking back.

    Approximately two months later, a pair of coyote pups crossed my path while running through the same preserve. Looking more like teddy bears than predators, they scurried into the grass at the side of the trail, barely hid their fluffy little faces and watched me jog calmly by. They were gone by the time I had doubled back, headed toward home. Hunting, I supposed. With their dad. Far from me.

    There are lots of baby bunnies this time of year.

    I spied a baby bunny in my yard this morning. He looked so much like the fiend that devoured my roses when we first moved here that I gave an involuntary cringe. I shooed him away, toward the prairie preserve and the darling coyote pups. Hey! Circle of life, people. It’s a bitch.

    There’s bacon in the fridge.

    I have a friend who doesn’t get bacon, as in “Bacon? What’s so special about bacon?” I try to understand her point of view by remembering that she loves beer. Now, I like beer. Lately, I’ve been drinking beer on a semi-regular basis. I even have some in the fridge right now. But I won’t drink just any beer. My dad would drink any beer, especially any cheap beer. My friend and I are far more discriminating. And that’s where the beer and bacon comparison falls apart. There are bad beers. There are spectacularly bad beers. But there is no such thing as bad bacon. There is bacon that is a little too salty, or too fatty or not cooked exactly the way you like it. But it’s all bacon and it’s all good.

  • Does Motherhood Suck? Depends!

    When I had younger kids, I read a lot of parenting books. I stopped reading them when I realized the only helpful advice I’d gleaned was that children meltdown when they are with you because they feel safe. Knowing my excellent parenting skills led to behavior my kids wouldn’t inflict on strangers was cold comfort. So I started reading vampire books. Somehow, it just felt right to read about being literally sucked dry at a time when my children were figuratively sucking me dry.

    It wasn’t until recently that I started reading parenting books again. Ok, it was yesterday. I’ve been noodling with the idea of writing a parenting book so decided to check out the competition. I wasn’t able to check out all of the most recent tomes; I had to put Bringing Up Bébé on hold. But I grabbed I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

    I thought I’d start with I Was A Really Good Mom. Brief synopsis: Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, two new moms, discovered that mothering is really hard. They decided that no one was talking about how hard mothering is so they took it upon themselves to “talk to more than 100 mothers” about how hard mothering is.

    And what did those moms say? That they were shocked to learn how hard mothering is. One said, “I thought having a baby would be like having a pet—oh, this will be cute. We’ll be this happy little family.” I’ll wait while you say, “Oh, my god! You’re freaking kidding me.”

    Done? Ok, now it’s pretty obvious to me that that mom never had a pet because anyone who has ever had a pet knows they can be as challenging as children. Of course, you don’t have to send your dog to college, but your child will eventually learn to stop peeing in the wrong places.

    “Babies are just human pets” was not the most unbelievable thing I read in I Was A Really Good Mom. The most unbelievable thing I read was the mom who allowed herself to be quoted saying, “…there are some days I don’t even have time to pee . . .so I wear Depends.” The woman wears Depends so she doesn’t have to stop running around like a maniac. Now, I don’t know about you, but the minute I started thinking that Depends would make my life easier, my ass would be in therapy not a diaper.

    As astoundingly unbelievable as Depends Mom is, is the fact that Trisha and Amy thought no one was talking about how hard mothering is. Really? Not one person saw their pregnant bodies and said, “Just wait ‘til that little one pops out!” No one rubbed Amy’s tummy uninvited and said “Well, little mommy, life’s about to change for you!” I’m betting Trisha and Amy were so surprised that motherhood is hard not because no one talks about it, but because they weren’t listening.

    Motherhood is freaking hard. Sometimes it’s grindingly boring, sometimes it’s physically grueling, sometimes it’s emotionally draining. Any one with half an ounce of hubris would look at the mothers around them and conclude motherhood is not for the faint. But somehow, Amy and Trish and their interviewees came to the conclusion that their MBAs, former executive positions and generally take-charge personalities would make mincemeat of an undertaking that has laid low many a woman before them.

    I think Amy and Trisha should re-title their book I Was A Really Good Mom When I Was Childless And Self-Absorbed. Then the utter amazement with which they discuss the challenges of modern motherhood—should I hire a soccer tutor? Should we potty-train at two or three—might make sense. And while I agree wholeheartedly with their prescription for a more manageable motherhood, I don’t for a minute believe that someone who wears Depends so she can get more done in a day is really going to chill out and lower her expectations.

    Maybe I’m forgetting my own anxieties over motherhood, but I don’t really think so. Sure, I feel like a failure a lot of the time. My son gets hugely horrible grades in subjects he doesn’t like. My daughter, who weighs 53 pounds at age nine, thinks her legs are fat. My house looks like the Blue Angels did a low fly-by through the living room. My yard has more weeds than, well, than any other lawn on the block. I got involved in the PTA and I’d rather swallow Drano than do it again.

    Just as the times I kick myself are many, the times I pat myself on the back are too few. I’m working, writing, helping take care of my dying father and still managing to keep my children safe and healthy and my husband (mostly) happy. Despite all that, I calmly and successfully handled a teen crisis. I even get out to run at least twice a week.

    Yes, mothering is a fabulous experience and nothing compares to holding a warm, sleepy child in your arms. But a lot of mothering just plain sucks and when it does, a wise mother just sucks it up.

  • Tomorrow Is Another Day

    Profound, I know, but some days just really suck. I should have known that today would be one of them.

    The day started like this:

    “Mom,” my son said, “the dog pooped all over his crate.”

    Wonderful, I thought. “But Dad cleaned it up,” he added. I breathed a mental sigh of relief. I hugged and kissed my son goodbye and went back to bed.

    A little while later, my daughter and I got up, got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast.

    “Mom,” my daughter said, “the dog pooped in his crate.”

    “I know, honey,” I said. “Daddy cleaned it up.”

    “No, Mom,” she said, “he pooped again. Looks like he barfed, too.”

    I screamed a mental scream of anguish then I did what a mother has to do at 8 a.m. I cleaned the poopbarf, made a pot of tea, toasted bread for my daughter’s breakfast, toasted buckwheat pancakes for myself, made lunch for my daughter, turned the toasted bread into cinnamon toast then ate my pancakes standing up while drinking the tea. I did, of course, wash my hands between the poopbarf and the tea making.

    Following dropping daughter off at school, I drove to Chicago to visit my psychiatrist. It is a measure of the suckitude of my day that this visit was the highlight. The week prior, I had driven down to his office and found him not in it. The door was, in fact, locked. After thinking him dead in the office, it occurred to me that it might be me that was in error. Indeed, I had the wrong day. So, it was with great relief that I saw him today, alive, in his office. We had quite the little laugh over my misadventure. We also discussed why I had put my empty coffee travel mug in my coat pocket and brought it to the session. I had no answer. I paid him $200 for a half hour for him to tell me that people do that kind of thing.

    After my session with Dr. Funnypants, I drove to Aurora where I taught reading skills to a handful of kids who really don’t want to be there with the exception of the one who stalks me. Let’s call him Stalker Boy. He meets me at the front door of his school every day. None of the other kids in the class do, but he is there every day that I am there. If I’m late, he has the school secretary give me a tardy slip. He determines when I am late, not me. I still have not figured out what time it is that constitutes lateness in his mind. Of course, today he gave me a tardy slip.

    The unmotivated kids and I ground through the day’s lesson. Stalker Boy interjected comments about his day, my hair, the sharpness of his pencil, the quality of snack the school had supplied, my children, and the weather. Finally, the hour was up and the unmotivated skipped merrily from the room. Stalker Boy walked me out the door as he does every day that I am there. He made sure I turned my tardy slip back in at the front desk.

    I drove home, found my children glued to screens, stuffing their faces with relatively healthy snacks. The dog had stuffed his crate with further poopbarf. My children, perhaps wisely, did not tell me that the crate was full again.

    I cleaned the poopbarf and made dinner. I did, of course, wash my hands between those activities. The kids and I downed the entire batch of linguine and clam sauce, leaving nothing for my husband. He can add a little suckishness to his day, I thought, as I slurped up the last linguine noodle.

    We can fast forward through the rest: attempt to write newspaper column; testy phone call with sister regarding assistance in caring for tremendously ill father; mad dash to gymnastics class; discover last-class show is planned; decide that it is better to be a marginally attentive parent at the gym show than to miss column deadline; write column on heroin use with nosy dad hanging over shoulder; peek up from writing every other line to catch daughter doing cute things on dangerous equipment.

    When I got home, I left a message for my sister apologizing for my testiness, emailed my column to my husband to proof, then ran upstairs to fulfill my mother-son bonding responsibility of watching “Top Chef” together. The suckiness continued as my favorite contestant, the Zen-like Beverly was eliminated in favor of the paranoid Sarah.  At the first commercial break, I checked with my husband to see if he had gotten the column. He hadn’t. I checked my email and found that it was doing the thing that I have taken it to the Apple Genius to repair only to find that it won’t do that thing for the Genius. Mail works fine when the boyishly handsome young Genius is in the vicinity. Mail is a bitch to the harried middle-aged woman just trying to get her column done on time.

    Eventually, I got the column to my husband and edited it, ignoring his suggestions. He could deal with a little more suck in his day, I reasoned. I got an email from my sister which I should have ignored until I was having a day that didn’t suck as much as this one did. So, my response to my sister probably sucked.

    Tomorrow will be a better day. I’ll grovel a little . . ok, I’ll grovel a lot with my sister. I’ll start taking deep breaths as soon as I see Stalker Boy. And I’ll get my teeth cleaned. Yeah, that will be a much better day.

  • Why I’m A Bad Blogger And How You Can Be, Too!

    I am a bad blogger. Awards and accolades aside, according to those in the know, I am doing this thing all wrong.

    My first error is in my headlines. I use clever headlines. I am, in fact, quite fond of my clever headlines. Indeed, I have written entire posts just so I could use a particular headline. “I Don’t Have ADH…”, for instance. My son has ADHD. So do some of his friends. One of those friends is fond of telling people, “I don’t have ADH . . .” and then staring off as if watching a butterfly flit by. I thought that was hilarious. I had to use that line, so I wrote a post around it.

    If I were a good blogger, I would use titles like, “Top Ten Ways Americans Are Weird About Birthdays,” instead of “And Many More.” I would have written “Why Your Nine-Year-Old Drives You Crazy and What You Can Do About It,” instead of “Number Nine, Number Nine.” A friend and loyal reader suggested “ ‘Tween a Rock and a Hard Place” for that post. I think his idea has more universal appeal; my headline dates me. Still, neither of our choices has much marketing impact.

    Blog marketing experts assure me that “How,” “Why,” and “Top Ten” are all words that should be included in post headlines if one is to capture attention in our blog soaked world. Maybe I’ll re-title the one on adoption. I could call it “Top Ten Idiotic Things People Say About Adoption.” Or, “How Your Comments About Adoption Make You Look Like An Idiot.” Or, “Why I Think You’re An Idiot When You Say Those Things About Adoption.”

    My second error is in my content. I write humorous personal essays. There is no market for humorous personal essays, apparently. There is a market for mom-to-mom advice and I do give some mom advice on occasion. I like to think of it as parent advice, commie liberal politically correct pinko that I am.

    There is a market for cooking advice, travel advice, craft advice, all kinds of advice. And there’s the rub. I don’t want to write an advice blog. I don’t care if you have a problem. Well, ok, I do care and if you want to email me to ask my advice about something, go ahead. But in my blog, I want to ramble, rant and rave with little-to-no thought at providing anything more useful than a laugh. Humorous personal essays are only marketable if you are a mean-spirited skinny bigot like Chelsea Handler. I’m not skinny, nor a bigot but my kids think I’m mean, so it’s a start.

    Error number three also relates to my content. I write long. The most effective blog posts are 300-500 words. My posts come in at about 1,000 words. Apparently, not a lot of people want to read that many words. With the popularity of twitter, it’s no surprise to me that my 1,000 words are the blogosphere equivalent of War and Peace. I will admit that my writing goal of 1,000 words is completely arbitrary. It seemed like a nice round number when I started blogging. Now, it’s a habit and one that’s given me proof that I can write enough to produce a book. If I were Chelsea Handler, in fact, I’d already be published.

    I commit my fourth error on a weekly basis: I post only once per week. If I were serious about blogging, I would be posting on a daily, even an hourly basis. I would also have no life. I am interested in having a life. At the same time, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to know more about me than I already reveal. I imagine that my readers are interesting people who also want to have lives.

    I could avoid my fifth blogging boo-boo by including more photos in my posts. Adding photos is a lot more complicated than it seems, though. There’s the privacy thing. My kids deserve it. I am not overly worried about privacy for myself but I am overly critical of photos of me.  There’s the practicality thing, too. Pictures of naked Barbies is one thing; pictures of me riding pachyderms is another. Then there’s the copyright thing. I could just use other people’s photos, but then I couldn’t tsk-tsk my son when he pirates music and videos online.

    My sixth error, and a grevious one it is, is my failure to market my blog. When I started blogging, I had no idea I was even supposed to market it. I wrote something that made me laugh, I posted it on WordPress, I told some friends and they read it. Many of them laughed, too. The next week, I did the same thing. And I’ve pretty much done that every week since September 30, 2010.

    If I were a really good blogger, by now I would be running clickable ads in my blog. When I wrote about naked Barbies, for instance, there would be a link to click so that you could purchase your own Barbie. Whether or not you kept her clothed would be up to you, of course. My ADHD post would include a link to drugstore.com, where you could purchase your own supply of Concerta. If I were really savvy about this blog marketing thing, there would be a flashing banner across the top of my posts, hawking the things I’ve blogged about from bacon and dead squirrels to lawn services, elephants and condoms.

    Perhaps the biggest blogging mistake I make though is this: other than the making more money from my writing bit, I don’t really care if I’m a bad blogger. I write what I feel like writing. I write even if I don’t feel like writing, but I don’t write because I have to. I write because I want to. I write about what amuses me and animates me. In short, I’m blogging because I like it and I like that you like it, too.

  • What’s Funny Got To Do With It?

    My inability to remember details is really starting to annoy me. Lately, I can’t remember lots of things that I really would like to remember. Like my New Year’s resolution. Completely escaped my mind. I may even have written a post about not being able to remember what my resolution was.

    I refuse to call these senior moments. I’m busy; I’m distracted. It could even be my meds. I googled one of them. Apparently, lots of people blame it for their short-term memory loss. One woman wrote: “Yes, this medication causes memory loss with me. (laughing)” What could be funny about memory loss escapes me, but at least she’s got a sense of humor about it. This weekend, I forgot where I put the medication that might be causing my forgetfulness. I begged the pharmacist for enough to keep me sane while I looked for the mother supply. I couldn’t find it. I sent my daughter on the hunt, primarily because I know she will move things in her search, thinking that the lost item might be under something. My son will enter a room, look right, look left and declare, “It’s not in here.” My daughter found the drugs. They were in the medicine cabinet. I did not laugh.

    So, I am not surprised that I can’t remember what event why siblings and I were discussing this weekend with my dad. The event was to occur in July, so maybe we were talking about Independence Day. My dad said, “I might not be around for that.” My sister and I froze for a beat.

    “Dad,” I said. “You’ll be around. You’re going to fight like hell.”

    He looked at me quizzically, clearly thinking I had lost my mind. I knew I was sane as my daughter had found my meds and I hadn’t forgotten to take them.

    “I might be on a cruise,” he said, then gave me a “what were you thinking?” look.

    I was thinking the same thing my sister was thinking. My dad was recently diagnosed with cancer. We weren’t thinking “not around” like in going on a cruise; we were thinking “not around” like, you know, not around.

    I haven’t written about my dad’s diagnosis because it’s not my cancer. Well, and because I haven’t wanted to write about my dad’s cancer. I’ve struggled, too, with how much of my personal life really belongs in my blog. I usually write about funny things and I haven’t found a whole lot that’s funny about cancer. At least not my dad’s. At least not yet.

    There are any number of things that have happened in my life that I haven’t written about. My friends, my family (especially my kids), deserve their privacy. I respect my kids wishes regarding which stories I can tell and which ones are theirs to tell or not. I would love to tell you about one involving my son. It’s a riot. It’s really not even just his story. But, I’m not going to write about it. My daughter, on the other hand, reads every post to make sure she’s been mentioned at least once.

    I don’t write obscenities, either. If you know me, you know that I have a mouth like a sailor. I worked around sailors for a time, but I can’t blame them. I’ve had a foul mouth for years. Still, I won’t use the “F” word, the “S” word (unless necessary, like when I wrote about the four-year-old who said “Oh, shit” when she realized she’d forgotten to bring something to school), and a number of other “single capital letter” words.

    My son would give permission for me to write about the funny things he does and says. Unfortunately, most of them fall under the no obscenities rule. My son is the funniest person I know and he is also the most foul. I’ve read that Bob Sagat (the Full House dad) is a truly dirty comic. He’s credited with telling the dirtiest joke ever written. However filthy that joke is my son has one that’s filthier. It even makes my husband, who generally hides his head in his hands when my son gets his comic mojo on, laugh with glee. Ok, maybe not glee, but he’s laughing, feeling guilty over it, but laughing.

    Right now, we’re in the beginning phases of coping with my dad’s illness. My sibs and I each have our ways of handling the stress. My sister wants to get to work. She’s one of those constantly in motion people. I know she naps, but I’m pretty sure she does it so she can go back to being in motion refreshed or because she stayed up too late being in motion. Even a dynamo needs to rest now and then.

    My brother deals with the pressure by smoking. While I think that’s a really lousy way of coping, I certainly appreciate it. I smoked for years and it was hard as hell to quit. Took me five serious tries. When they invent a cigarette that doesn’t kill you and/or make you smell terrible, I’ll be sorely tempted.

    I cope by running. Unfortunately, I can’t run every day without incurring some injury that keeps me from running at all. My other coping mechanism is laughter. If I can find the humor in something—and I very often do—it isn’t quite as scary.

    But, so far, my dad’s cancer isn’t very funny. I’m still running, taking it easy so I can keep it up. Maybe I’ll plan on running an American Cancer Society-sponsored race. I look pretty funny after a run and my kids assure me that I smell pretty funny, too. I might even find another pressure release outlet. I hear yoga is good for that. I tend to fall over when I do yoga so that can be pretty amusing. I’ll probably forget where I put my yoga mat, though.