bleak. I can't really think of any other time in my lifetime when the economy looked so bad and the future looked so scary. I don't know if it's because I used to live in a wealthy area and didn't drive far to work, and just didn't notice things... or it really is that bad. When I was visiting VA a few weeks ago, I was going on and on about conspiracy theories and how the middle class will be wiped out and my sister said to me "what do you care? you live a good life. enjoy it." All the news coverage lately just ... I don't know... it makes me think of a Hollywood movie of a futuristic world well it all effing sucks! I don't anticipate not being able to afford food. I have a decent paying job and with carpooling, etc. we'll get by, even with the price of gas these days...but this is the first time that economic factors like that really have changed my life. My driving habits have changed (65 mph baby!), I'm carpooling, I asked my boss about telecommuting. Our expendable income has gone down...I dunno.

something new tonight. I've been thinking that instead of just rambling, I should have one of those...whachamacallit... a topic! I dont' have one yet, but I hope to have one by the time I finish.

Well, I was looking at my list and realized that to get them all done, I'd have to do 1 every 10 days. Sooo...since my car's inspection sticker expired a week ago, I thought maybe I'd the "take my car to a new place" one (which is a scary one for me...creature of habit that I am), but I thought better of it and just went to whole foods for lunch and bought the same sandwich I always get (grilled veggies with arugula and goat cheese). Then thought I could try a new food (also on the list)...uh...maybe tomorrow. Then, I thought..it's grocery night, I'll do the one about striking up a conversation with a cashier. A little background:

Driving home, I noticed that wonderful thing... that glorious sign of summer...that harbinger of all things sweet and juicy was out... the "Strawberries U-Pick" sign!! Painted in red on a white background in stenciled letters and an arrow pointing toward the river. Yay! Seems a little early and I was hoping they woudl be picking while my sister is here, but whatever. We'll probably get out there this Saturday adn sometime next week because I WON'T BE WORKING... bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha. Anyhoo, I also picked the first lettuce from the garden tonight to have on a delicious black bean burger wrap with avocado and cheese. yum.

Most of Carol Shields work that I've read can be described as "women's fiction", meaning that the protagonists are women. Larry's Party is a not unpleasant change from the norm.

I've finally crashed through a barrier. I finished reading the endings of several books I've had on the go for what seems like months, and it's a fantastic feeling to have finally done it. It was almost a psychological block. For some reason, I just wasn't able to finish them. But in the last few days without even thinking about it I found myself opening them at the bookmark, curling up somewhere and, one after the other, reading on until the last page. Pure joy.

*Important news bulletin*
Hillary wears pant suits! And sometimes they are yellow! Don't you know that yellow pant suits can seriously impede the successful running of a country! Oh, and she's a bitch too, with a shrill voice. (and she doesnt' have a penis). Oh, and she's not super model attractive either. And kind of old and wrinkly. Just thought you should know.

Anyhoo, so I got a few things crossed off my garden list. 5 things to be precise. Here are some pictures.

There we go... basically I got all the clover out of this area, which was intermingled with all the periwinkle and then I mulched the hell out of it. I have no doubt the clover will come back, but what can I do? mulch, mulch, and mulch some more. There's my non-flowering flowering dogwood. Had it 3 years... 4 years? and the damn thing has never bloomed. Oh well. Would like to buy a buckeye.

For a while now, I get up early, that is around 4:30 am or so. When dawn breaks, I go for my daily walk. Sometimes I jog too. I am a morning person and it kind of refreshes me. Today, I took along my mom and as soon as we started to walk, it started to rain! All of a sudden. Summer rains ARE like that! I liked getting wet and surprisingly so did my mom. After we got back, we had a cup of tea each and sat in the terrace to watch the rains. Pleasantly chatting. I love sharing such moments with my mom.

Title: The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself
Author: Joan Anderson

Just for the record, let me say that I was wrong...writing books is not as easy as I thought. Obvioulsy I didn't think it would be a walk in the park, but after all that time in the car, living how I was living — on the outside of everything, depressed, isolated, without focus or purpose, no job or project to throw myself into — I thought everything would be easy after that, that nothing could phase me and nothing could beat me — which hopefully is true, now I have fought my way back - and I thought that since I love writing, that that would be a joy to do for the next six months.

And occassionally it was. The times when I forgot that I was writing about me and just sank into it, but writing your own story is hard. And writing books generally takes everything you've got. Not nice...Feel wrecked. But at least it's over now. Now I can start rebuilding...

During Ethan's sleep breaks (lol..enjoy them now right?), I take the opportunity to catch up on some reading if I'm not sleeping myself! I have read a few books and here are the reviews.....

Yes, tonight I discovered the wonders of non-alcoholic beer! Perhaps at one time in my life I scoffed at such things and wondered what the f-ing point was, but that's what getting older and wiser is all about I suppose. We went to a local Mexican restaurant/Irish bar (I know!) and I got tacos and an O'douls, and I have to say - it was lovely. aaah.... it was like having an old friend back. The comfort of a green glass bottle and a glass of amber beauty with a nice head on it. yum! Tasted just like bud or miller light, and with a 0.5% alcohol, I could pretend that I was getting a weeeeeeee bit of a buzz. Good stuff. Of course beer was never my drink of choice, so I've been thinking about looking for some non-alcoholic wine. I guess they would call that grape juice (unrefridgerated). : )

So what does that say about me... I need the illusion of having a drink in front of me more than the drink itself, which is true. At home, when I really feel like I need a drink, I just put ice cubes in my martini glass (the sound of home...clink clink clink in a cocktail glasss) and put some crangrape in their and just pretend there's vodka in it. I mean, I like getting drunk too, but more than anything, it's just a comfort to have something that I think will make me feel better. And it seems to work pretty well.

day than a summer day today. It's cold and dreary, overcast and intermittently rainy. We were out late last night "gallactic bowling" with some friends. It was sort of fun, but I drank too much beer, ate too much bowling alley food, and well, I can't deny it... bowling kicked my ass. I started off strong with a spare, then as I got tireder and tireder (I know that's not a word) I got worse and worse and got many many gutter balls. But oh well, better than sitting home on my birthday. : )

on a Sunday afternoon. umm umm. Aged Cheddar, made in Maine. But I've been working hard so I deserve it. I feel like I'm finally hitting my summer stride.... being outside constantly, getting sun burned, covered in dirt all day, loving every minute of it. ahhh summer.

Yesterday was our kayaking course. I thought it was about advanced strokes but it was mostly about navigation. I learned some things (like, oh, how to use a compass). And got some damn good exercise paddling across casco bay. The instructors were good. One reminded us of our friend F. The other was cute and very earnest. Normally I dont' like really like that quality, but he was making it work for him. They have a rule that when you hear thunder you have to head back or hunker down. We heard thunder around 2;30 or so and headed back. Didn't get to do advanced rescue techniques (aka flipping your boat over and having someone rescue you) darn!! was SO looking forward to that. : ) And we learned some thigns about towing. I was the only woman in the class. The water was rough in some spots and the waves were pretty big. I didn't feel too bad about it though since the instructors were there. If it was just me & J, I would have been crying.

Booking Through Thursday

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

my head hurts from way too much exertion. I've almost memorized the whole Jessica's theme song. It's a tough one and I'm about 3 measures away. I still have to look at the music sometimes to peak, but I'm very very close. It feels good becuase it's been a real challenge and I'm almost there! I'm not even going to worry about the Enya song for now because that's easy by comparison and if I have to I could even drop that one. But I don't think I'll have to. I've got a long weekend and another 2 weeks after that so I think I'm golden.

My sister helped me come up with a great idea for a book. It needs a little fleshing out but it has the potential to be really funny. And hey, if I'm only spending a month on it, I can take the risk. No pressure, right? The plan is to start June 1 and obviously be done by June 30 with the first draft. I see it as something sort of Carl Hiaasen-ish. Funny, irreverent, a bit kitchy, but with a little bit of a message (yet to be determined).

Yes, for the short attention span sufferers like me, there is that ever elusive flow... when you lose track of time doing something that engrosses you. I have plenty of interests and I don't think of myself as a passive participant in life, but flow eludes me most of the time. Even when I'm doing something I really enjoy, I look at my watch and say "good! I've been doing this for an hour (or half an hour) time to stop and relax! Mission accomplished! I just don't like doing anything for too long. Day long excursions freak me out. Folding laundry all at one time freaks me out. Basically, I hate to commit. That's what it comes down to. I don't like to feel obligated and I don't like to commit too much time to anything.

(long time lapse..talking to my friend J who I haven't talked with forever!) Anyhooo... so I have found some flow lately, mostly with kayaking. 35 minutes felt like 5 on Sunday when we were out there. Something about paddling and focusing on each stroke...i suppose it's something like meditation. Gardening does that for me sometimes too, but I have to force it a little more. I do a little and want to give up (because it's hard work!) but I tell myself, just a little longer, and then eventually I really do lose track of time. anyway, it's a good thing. I hope to cultivate more flow in my life.

I haven't written here for a while. I've been trying to let things settle and to think forwards, rather than backwards all the time. Obviously I had to do that while I was writing the book, think backwards — wade through all that past, all that heavy sludge of childhood emotion. I felt like a spring recoiling on itself. But once the book was finished it was time to try to go forward again. It's what we all have to do, but that's exactly what I hadn't been doing for so long. I'd gotten stuck. So these past few weeks I've tried to think forwards, and put all the past behind me. But the paperback is out tomorrow, so for a while I can see that will be difficult to do.

I'm probably the only person left alive on Earth who has never seen this movie or read this book! Since the book is usually better than the movie (shhh don't tell Oprah) I decided to start with the book.
The way Alice Walker set up this novel was fantastic. It is written in diary and letter form. So the chapters are short and sweet, which I think makes for a quick read.

with my husband. Marriages just can't sustain things like that. At least mine apparently can't. We both worked from home today to save a bit on gas... the theory being that since we usually carpool, with only one of us working from home, we werent' really saving anything. Makes sense.. So it all started out lovely, and actually it was all lovely until about an hour ago, when we had our daily spat. Do all couples fight this much? There is a lady at work who fights with her husband constantly and they legitimitely just can't seem to stand each other. I want to yell over the cubicle wall "get a divorce, lady! You'll be happier!" We don't have horrible fights, but I do feel like lately we fight a lot. Oh well... the nice thing about life is that it has a way of working itself out. Either it will get better, or it will get worse. Not much point dwelling on it.

I'm officially a Mother.

I'm a Marketer On THE Run.

Which means we now have to consider the Mother Factor.

Since I got back into the corporate side 4 months ago, it's business as usual. Well, almost business as usual.

I came into London today to talk on a local radio show about my book. It was a very strange thing to do. Not only sitting in a dark booth at BBC studios infront of a console with such a bewildering array of buttons and dials that it looked like we were about to take off, but just the talking about the book at all. Writing it was bad enough. It is definitely not a comfortable thing to publicise. I have been psyching myself up for it for weeks, though I was very glad to get it over and done with today, particulary given the cold I have. But the presenter's reaction was so lovely, and in a way unexpected. I assumed like most people his interest would be in the homelessness bit and how I wrote the blog. He did talk about the shame and secrecy of homelessness, and how it had been for me living in the car for those nine months, but he focussed mostly on the earlier part of the book — on some of the childhood stuff.

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

How can one even think of comparing books and movies? Both are entirely different mediums. I am not much of a movie person. I seldom even watch a movie. I prefer reading anyday. When a book is made into movie, no doubt it gets better publicity, lot more people watch it then reading the book. However, I find most of the movies that have been adapted from a book, leave me wanting more. In a book, everything is happening inside your mind. You form certain opinions about certain characters. I would rather escape the world reading a book than watching a movie. Most of the times, I get distracted from a movie but not while reading a book.

Darling Stephanie at Confessions of a Bookaholic bestowed this award to me. I think she's the bees knees too. Thanks, Steph! Here's the explanation:

I woke up this morning with the cold howling around inside my bones. But looking out of the window everything was all white and beautiful and brilliant, the sun like pearl behind white sky, and everything glittered with frost. It looked quite magical. I love mornings like this. Give me this over rain any day. I went to a pantomine the night before last, and the fairy godmother in it was fantastic, really throwing herself into the part, tip-toeing around the cast waving her wand and whispering good into everyones ears. That's what it felt like this morning, waking up to all this whiteness, as if someone had tiptoed through the night - over rooftops and hills, through the trees, up and down streets and alleyways and parks, waving a magic wand, turning the land this clean, silvery-white. I felt happy just laying there thinking it. I turned up the on the music on the CD alarm — the Late String Quartets again!

Stars: *****

This book was read for the Reading the Author challenge.

I had major Deja Vu when reading this book. I think I may have read it before but I couldn't remember what happened before it happened so if I did, it was many years ago. This is the first Richard Peck I've ever read and I loved it.

the not so elusive blee smile
Originally uploaded by m.Lee My baby is a happy little caterpillar today. She's a bit of a stinky caterpillar to be honest because I am afraid to give her a proper bath by myself. But I cleaned her up as much as I could getting into her chins with a wet cloth and then lotioning her up good.

Got tagged by DM Osbon for this blog meme all the cool kids are into. Now that I am doing it, that almost certainly means it has ceased to be cool but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Four Jobs I have had in my life (not including current job):

1. Shopping Cart Pusher - I collected shopping carts in the lot part time one summer at a grocery store. I actually witnessed more rampant drug use at this particular job than any other place I worked, including waiting tables. Once I also saw a couple guys throwing boxes of cereal up into the ceiling fans in back. That was absolutely spectacular. Me, I just pushed carts for four hours straight with a fifteen minute break somewhere in the middle. Time has never, ever moved more slowly than it did that summer.

Being as big as I am now, this is kind of how I feel. In th cramped busy hallways of my work, I am always in the way. It takes a lot of motor planning to work my way passed busy staff members trying to get from one end of the building to the next.

I have always thought it was funny when people say they think I am tough. I have even been called a ball buster by more than one person. I guess it is all those years I spent growing up in Detroit. Anyways, I love this song line, it always makes me laugh.

I am sitting here trying to catch up with emails. Lots of them in the last few days are from readers in Asia.. I had no idea my story would end up in an article over there and be read by a 16-year old student in Singapore or a man in Pakistan...how bizarre is that! But over the last few days emails have been coming in, not just from people here but from people who have read the article or read my book all those thousands of miles away telling me how, although they might have very different lives, they have been able to relate to my story in some way.

I have spent the last hour dipping in and out of some of their blogs, reading about their lives and cultures, being reminded that people are essentially the same wherever they come from, the same fears the same dreams.