I was just finishing up work last night when the little angel breezed in. She is very firm with me -- when I say "three more emails," she stands over my shoulder and holds me to it. I was trying to fudge a little last night, so finally she flopped on the chair in my office in frustration.
"My feet need to feel the fresh air, Mommy," she huffed. "Hurry up and let's go for a walk."
And that? Was the best thing I'd heard all day. We abandoned the laptop mid-email.
I don't watch Project Runway. Anyone who has ever met me knows I get all my fashionable clothes as hand-me-downs from my best friend and all my unfashionable clothes from TJ Maxx and the local Goodwill.
It seems nearly every blogger in my pledge class has gone style on me. Their blogs are hip, they have sections for fashion or home decor or what have you, and even though I know I would never want a section on Surrender, Dorothy for such things, there are days when I look at my blog and understand exactly why I am not financing my vacation home with ad revenue.
AWKWARD SEGUE TO HEIDI
Since I don't watch Project Runway, I didn't realize that Heidi Klum kicked off this season by getting all nekkid for her ad campaign.
This is what is accompanying my Blues Travelor on Pandora this morning. I looked up before my second cup of coffee and was all WHOA NAKED PEOPLE TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING.
And then my next thought was WHAT IN THE HELL DOES NAKED HAVE TO DO WITH SCISSORS?
WHY DID SHE WRITE ON HER ARM? IS SHE DOING A TRIATHLON WITH SCISSORS? IS SHE GOING TO RUN WITH SCISSORS? HAS SHE LEARNED NOTHING?
HER HAIR IS THE SAME IN EVERY PICTURE IN THIS AD CAMPAIGN. AND HER FACE. ONLY SOMETIMES SHE HAS CLOTHES ON AND SOMETIMES SHE DOESN'T.
WHY ARE THE SCISSORS LONGER THAN HER ARM?
WHY AM I SO IMMUNE TO NAKED HEIDI? SHE IS NAKED. RIGHT THERE. NAKED. THIS IS GROSS. I'M NO PRUDE, BUT SERIOUSLY CAN WE KEEP THE NAKED PEOPLE BEHIND SUBSCRIPTION-BASED PAYWALLS WHERE THEY BELONG SO MY DAUGHTER DOESN'T HAVE TO SEE HEIDI WITH HER BIG SCISSORS BEFORE 8 AM?
My thoughts this morning are in all caps. I am soo ready for vacation.
I picked the little angel up from school early yesterday because I thought there would be extreme weather, and I was paranoid after the decimation of Joplin.
The sun shone and the birdies sang.
Then there was today.
I was totally joking. And note to Rita: It's Wednesday.
I grabbed Petunia, my work laptop, my cell phone and my work notebook and shut myself in the only room with a door in the basement. And then my mind starting doing its anxiety thing.
I heard thunder and rain and sirens going on, shutting off, going on. I live in the eastern suburbs of Kansas City.
I pictured the little angel hunched in the basement at school, crying. I pictured not being able to get to her. I pictured every nightmare a mother can have. I felt so lonely.
And then they started pouring in: the tweets.
Finally the storm passed. Unfortunately, it took its toll on nearby Sedalia.
Even though I picked up the little angel early yesterday, even though we were two hours late this morning because of a dentist appointment, I asked.
And they made me feel better, normal even.
The sky was a mixture of puffy white, angry gray and brilliant blue as I drove to the school. Kind of like my mood.
"Were you scared?" I asked, as we walked to the car.
"A little."
"Did you cry?"
"No, I tried to be brave about it."
The teachers did skits for the kids during the hour and a half they were in the basement. And apparently gave them Pop-Tarts because they were stuck down there during lunch. I am so impressed by their ingenuity and grace under pressure keeping all those kids entertained for so long.
I came back and realized I'd left people hanging, these people I'd relied on so heavily over the past two hours. So I tweeted I was home with my girl.
All told, I probably talked to at least 25 different people today, some of whom I barely know. They distracted me and filled my heart with their good mojo. I didn't feel alone anymore.
Thank you, my friends. It's an amazing thing when you can have community alone in the dark.
My girl lay on the slip-and-slide, letting the water wash over her feat, looking up at the sky. The heat felt oppressive after weeks of cool.
The radio cut off in mid-song. I thought maybe the cord came unplugged, then the shrill emergency signal played. Surely a test, since the sirens weren't going off. I waited for it to end, watching the little angel flop over onto her stomach on her plastic banana peel.
"A tornado is on the ground. Take shelter immediately."
There was information about where, but I didn't hear anything except what I didn't hear, which was "Jackson County." I looked up at the sky, but everything above us was blue, not the green of a pre-tornado sky, not the swirling clouds of the masthead of this blog. Tornadoes were not in my sky.
They were about 30 miles town the road in Higginsville. And then they were 130 miles down the road in Joplin.
Beloved pulled up from the grocery store. "Did you hear the emergency signal?" he asked.
I nodded. "Do you think we should go inside?"
This is what I always ask. We waver, usually, because even if it looks fine, these things can come up quickly, but we also don't want to spend half our summer in the basement because there's a storm down the road heading away from us. But it's always sort of a hard call, especially because I don't want to scare the little angel.
"Will the tornado come here?" she asked, standing up from the slip-and-slide.
And I want to say no. But it's not as easy as telling her there are no scorpions in Missouri and no way a tsunami could get our house. So instead I tell her if we hear the siren or if the air looks funny, we will go inside.
"If a tornado came here, would it get us?"
"Not if we were in the basement."
I hope these are true answers.
My prayers are with Joplin and the other communities in Missouri and across the Midwest that were hit yesterday. The death counts are rising and the footage terrifying. I can't watch it right now, because -- as long as I've lived in the tornado belt, I don't remember ever hearing there is a tornado on the ground take shelter immediately come across the airwaves so bluntly before. It was very, very hard for me to let my daughter get on the school bus this morning.
And I can't really think about much else today.
I hardly ever check Facebook (I admit it -- I'm just not really a Facebook person). So I probably took a few days to respond to my friend Jenny's mail, but when I opened it, I was touched by her heart and her family's goodwill.
Jenny and her family are collecting books and school supplies for Hackleburg, Alabama, which was recently flattened by a tornado. Here's the logo her son drew.
Jenny's currently got a bin sitting on her front porch in the Kansas City metro area, but since I'm not sure I want to just, oh, post her address here, please email Jenny at jennymeade311@gmail.com if you want access to that bin. I'm sure she'll only have you body scanned once.
Jenny writes:
If you live outside the area, I urge you to start your own collection, or go here and donate in other ways. If you want to know more about Hackleburg, Alabama, visit this Facebook page.
I know there are lots of other little towns with massive destruction like this one. I know there are more people who need help. I know there is much to do. I am one woman, we are one family, we are four states away, and this is what we can do. Do something, whatever you can do.
I remember posting my husband's essay about Parkersburg, Iowa, in 2008 after he received this text from his brother: "f4 tornado hits parkersburg. town gone." At this time of year, I always hear people from other areas of the country ruminating on tornados. They are fascinating and terrifying in their randomness, and when they hit, time after time, it's tempting to succomb to tornado and disaster fatigue and stop doing. I know I feel that way. I am sick of the disasters, sick of the sad stuff, sick of digging deep.
That's why I love what Jenny is doing. It's not hard to weed through your kid's bookshelf (which I am doing this weekend, Jenny) and find some great books to donate. You'd do it anyway. Smart projects take the behavior people are going to do anyway and turn it into good.
Like rebuild. Looks like the Parkersurg city-wide garage sale is this Saturday.
It's always worth it.
Last week, I got an envelope from my publisher. The first few times, I ripped them open excitedly, trying to figure out the numbers. Book-selling numbers are very difficult to make sense of, and I know this is not just me because every single author I've talked to has rolled his or her eyes when I asked how the hell to read a royalty statement.
"Just wait for the check," said one and went to get another drink at the bar.
"Start your next book," said another, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.
While I was working on my next book and waiting for that check, I attempted to predict out how likely it was I'd ever get one. Not everyone does. In fact, rumor has it that most authors don't earn out their advances. I don't know if this is true or not, but that's what the Internet told me.
The more I learned about returns and sell-ins and sell-throughs and discounting and backwards numbers, the less enthusiastically I ripped into those envelopes. I think there was one royalty period when I didn't even get an envelope.
Then ... this envelope. The numbers appear to have started over, and they're from December. And there was a check in there. A royalty check.
And so of course I started jumping up and down and screaming. My parents and sister were here for the weekend and everyone looked at me in confusion, trying to decide if I'd finally snapped or what. I tried to explain the backwards numbers and the confusion and frustration of trying to figure out what was going on with the book, and then I gave up and just kept jumping because that's okay, too. Beloved says all the time it's enough for the book just to have been published, but to me it wasn't enough. I wanted it to earn out.
I don't know if it earning out meant financial success for my publisher, and it certainly doesn't mean I can quit my day job. It was just really important to me. It means it was worth it to sit there at conference signings two years after the book came out, when people came up to me and said essentially, "You're still doing this?"
It gives me more energy to write the bio and marketing plan I was advised to write to go along with my novel query. Because this book business has such high highs and such low lows: I need all the help I can get.
It was a big help.
Really flattered by this interview with My Savvy Sisters!
I just put up a review of chocolate truffles over on my review blog. While the effort was salvaged in the end and tastes lovely, I was thoroughly annoyed by the entire experience. Here's why:
The woman I worked with was thoroughly pleasant and the end result tasted great. But this was an experience that could've been so much better had more forethought gone into the level of kitchen competence of the reviewer -- and really -- the target audience. Especially after I asked about the tempering kit and was told no-go.
I take full responsibility for not thinking through -- based on the picture, despite the fact it was labeled "easy" -- whether it would be something worth my time to do. I didn't get paid for this review, and no, nice chocolate is not worth an entire Sunday in the kitchen.
The little angel had fun, so I'm happy about that, but once again, I need to really think about the value of my tiny shred of free time and how I want to spend it. I haven't reviewed food in almost two years, and I'm just mad at myself right now for taking this on.
If you're just starting out doing product reviews, please learn from my mistake. If everything you need isn't going to be included, think about what that means for you. Ask how long it takes on average to complete the task necessary to review the product. I do book reviews all the time, and I know it takes hours and hours to read a book. It's all a matter of how you want to spend your time. I've reviewed 164 things over the years, so mine was a mistake I should not have made.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the product. The publicist was nice and will most likely be mortified when she reads my review and this post. But in all honesty, this was not pitched or executed correctly, and honest feedback is the most valuable thing a reviewer can provide, to both the audience and the publicist.
And for those of you that are all, tempering chocolate? I do that in my sleep! Please try this product, because you would love it.
This morning I was listening to Beloved's evil conservative radio station, which he only listens to because it's the one in Kansas City that actually has detailed traffic reports about the road he takes to work.
They had some economic blowhard on there talking about Japan.
I've tried to ignore Japan, because I got very depressed after Hurricane Katrina. If I allow myself to ponder the chaos of 10,000 lives lost instantly due to a natural disaster, I will descend back into that dark place. It sounds very selfish to say this; perhaps it is selfish to be self-protective when it comes to world events. My former therapist would tell me to analyze whether or not I could actually do anything about a situation before getting so emotionally engaged in it.
And so, I've tried to acknowledge, to pray, but not to focus.
But then there was this guy who was saying THANK GOD the only costs to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami were human. The good news -- he said -- was that the economy didn't seem to be suffering and so the American economy would not suffer as a result.
I could not believe what I was hearing.
I kept waiting for the DJ to rip the commentator to shreds. It never happened. They went on to talk about the economy.
Then -- just now -- I admit it, I was watching Dr. Phil again -- and they were talking about a guy who identified as female even though he is male and how if he ignored his feelings, that might impact his life in different ways -- and "the workplace" might be affected.
A man thinks he should really be a woman and we are worried about his ability to get a ten percent raise?
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?
There is more to life than money and our ability to earn it. Japan has been devastated. This man wants to be a woman.
And none of it has anything to do with money. At all.
