Folding and How Writing is Like Parenting: A Top Ten

Well hello. I’ve missed you.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind and I had to shut down a bit, become detail-oriented…

Sometimes the noise gets too loud and I rush along ramping up until there is nothing left. I took the other route this time.

I like to bake. I like the quiet of it. The precision. I like folding in the banana and chocolate chips into the batter. That cake there? Chocolate chip banana cake with a peanut butter buttercream frosting. Yummo. I finished it at midnight the day before the family birthday party for two of my kids.

I’ve been plugging away at my rewrites, word by word, sentence by sentence. When you bake a cake it makes a difference if you stir in the chips or fold them in. For some reason, stirring makes the chips fall to the bottom. Folding keeps them nice and plump throughout. Folding takes more time. Folding makes a better cake.

I’m folding my words at present. I had been stirring, seeing a sentence mashing it up and around and then moving on. But since I write in the morning, the rest of the day at work it would bother me. I felt as if I had left the oven on. So I stopped.

I know. Me. I stopped. I began to really look at the words and instead of switching around words, I disemboweled those letters until they were completely new. New words, new sentences. Ugly and painful and time-consuming but hopefully, the book will be better because of it.

And now because lists are fun:

Top Ten Reasons Writing is Like Parenting

1. The first one is always a disaster. You learn as you go. Either stick it in a desk, or screw the college fund and save for therapy instead.
2. The first book is neurotic. The last book is laid-back and going to run the world.
3. Books have a mind of their own. Don’t try to shove a plotline in there that doesn’t belong. It will rebel.
4. If you do shove a plotline in there that doesn’t belong, be prepared to take it apart and put it back together. See number 1.
5. The more you write, the better writer you’ll be. Don’t disengage. Quantity yields quality more times than not. Just keep going.
6. A book is made of black marks, then letters, then words, then sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters. Don’t worry about the chapters.
7. Think small to achieve greatness.
8. Be kind to your book. Sometimes it really is just having a temper tantrum and needs empathy. Avoid the urge to chuck it out the window.
9. There will always be people who do it better. And that will always be irrelevant. You are the only writer this book has. Work hard at it.
10. When all else fails, tuck the book in bed and pour a glass of wine. Maybe have a bit of cake. Better, right?

 

Jump In

Happy Bunny day!

Spur of the moment we decided to drive to Florida last week. The kids above were terrified of the water. They love those shows on National Geographic, the ones about the ocean where they show in detail the life living far below.

Three midwestern kids, terrified to set foot in the ocean. We stayed with my brother-in-law and his family and went to the beach exactly once, the only seventy degree day of our stay. And there the kids stood, all declining to go into the water.

Then they inched out, all thirty toes, only one set of ten turning back, the little guy. Within five minutes, all had changed into their suits. Within ten…

…and the older two looked like this.

I didn’t tell them that I had read earlier in the week that there were numerous beach closings for a shark migration north of Cocoa Beach. I didn’t tell them the undertow could sweep them out to sea in a nanosecond.

They were fearless. And I watched what brave looks like.

Right before I left, I decided things had to change in my life. My body, my back specifically, was rebelling against me. I felt the opposite of brave. My body was weak and my mind was despondent.

Then we drove for twenty-odd hours, the five of us in a van.

Right before we left, I sent one of my oldest friends the first two chapters of my book. I had to know. I sent it to her because she isn’t a writer, but she reads and I knew she’d tell me the truth. Kindly.

I occurred to me that right now, I didn’t want someone to critique my book. It was the wrong time. What I did need was to have someone read it and tell me whether or not she could get through it and if not, where it sagged. I told her to be honest with me. We’ve known each other thirty-seven years. We tell each other the truth, but we know how to tell each other things others are too scared to say.

She’s a Scorpio and I’m a Sagittarius. For those of you who go in for such things, this should make it clear why people may be fearful to tell us the truth sometimes.

The closest I can get to describing the feeling of sending unasked-for chapters to a dear friend is the first photo, those scared midwestern kids looking out to sea.

So I didn’t get as much revising as I wanted done in the car. Technicalities of motion sickness and my wonky back prevented it. But I got back her response and am so relieved and thankful to all of you who said I should get some feedback.

Because there is nothing so scary as staring out at the water fearful of possibility.

That kid in the second picture? He gets the joke. The fun is in the water swimming with the sharks, hoping things go his way because he realizes that not swimming isn’t an option.

Sometimes you put on your suit and jump in the waves.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

 

A Little Bit Mo’

Apropos nothing, I was driving to the train this morning, running late, and wishing that I had chalkboard paint on my dining room walls. Odd?

Not if you’re Mo Willems. No really. Check this out.

In case you’re unfamiliar, my first introduction to Mo was this book:

And then this book:

What’s not funny about a naked mole rat?

And then possibly my favorite, the Piggie and Elephant series:

I waited in my car for the next train and remembered an interview with Mo about how he painted his dining room and now when he had guests over, randomly people would get up and draw on his walls.

So different from when I get home from work and have the kids crying about how they hate cooked carrots, why aren’t they not cooked, and then I’m yelling at them about how hard their dad works to put food on the table and some kids don’t have food to eat (Yes, yes I said it. I swore I’d never say it and I said it.) and they can sit there all night but a carrot will be eaten so help them…

Not exactly the pop-up-and-do-a-quick-sketch family dinner. The older I get the more determined I am to get it closer to right. Not right for everyone, not right as in that way is right and this way is wrong, but right as in closer to what I’ve imagined I’d be like at forty-odd years old. Closer to right in the way that I’m drawn to silly chick flicks about families (Has anyone other than me seen The Family Stone more than once? Yeah, that’s what I thought.) because I want to raise my kids and at the end have them want to come home whenever they can.

I want to be able to hang out with them when they’re grown and sit around listening to music and drinking wine and draw on the walls. I want their significant others to enjoy being at our house because we’re odd. We aren’t the parents who spent their children’s youth yelling at every dinner to get their elbows off of the table.

And yet. I have a thing about manners in children. I want them to know how to behave around people. I don’t want their elbows on the table and I don’t want them to shovel food into their mouths until no more will fit and then start talking so it sprays everyone in a thirty mile radius.

I expect them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and they will refer to a grown up by Miss Susan or Mister Bob unless the friends are older and the last name is required. Under no circumstances will my small child be allowed to come up to you and say, “Hello, Bill.”

They aren’t allowed to get up from the table until they are excused and they must ask to do so. I know. It’s sounds a bit like a police state, but I suppose that’s what this is.

You see, I’m in an odd situation. I don’t have a peer group. I don’t have friends nearby who are moms and I spend so much time commuting that I don’t make any friends because when I’m home, I want to be with my family. I don’t really see them all week, so the brief bit of time I’m here, I don’t want to share.

But I think much of child-rearing is bouncing ideas off of one another. I would love to see how other moms do it, pick up some ideas, see if I’m ridiculous. But the thing is? I already know I’m ridiculous. I have seen a kid run out in front of a car and the mom rolled her eyes as if there was nothing she could do to change it. The kid was five.

I have seen many, many kids tell their mom to shut up. In those words. I have seen them call their mothers stupid and tell them they hated them. I’m sure I’ll hear the latter eventually, but the rest of it I will not tolerate. Not from a co-worker, or a friend and certainly not from one of my children.

And my kids know that. My youngest and I had a stand-off last night. He was to eat some of his carrots and some of his peas. Then he could go outside and play. He refused. He cried and yelled while the others went outside to play in the snow. I did the dishes repeating that he didn’t have to finish anything but he had to eat some of everything. He screamed. But the whole time he had one eye open watching me.

I walked over to the stereo, put on a CD, turned it up and went into the kitchen and did the dishes. He yelled, I sang. He pitched a fit, I scrubbed the dishes.

Where does he think he gets his stubbornness anyway?

By the time I was done, so was he. He ate the carrots, not the peas and instead of playing he had to go take a shower. Right thing? Wrong thing? Who the hell knows. I’m in a mom-vacuum.

What I do know is that I want to have fun with my kids, but I’m not their friend. I have a job to do if we’re going to be friends down the road.

I just wish we had some walls in the dining room so I could paint them like a chalkboard. Then I’d write “EAT YOUR PEAS” with a picture of a funny elephant dancing next to it. I wonder if he’d draw a stick figure with his middle finger in the air. Thank God he’s four.

Better Living Through Video Games

The last load of laundry is in the dryer. The dryer has stopped and I can’t bear to go down and get it. Today I have done six loads of laundry. What did I do with all of my time before I had a family?

Once upon a time, I lived in a house that was a ten minute walk to the train and a half an hour commute. I left my house at 6:45 a.m. and got home at 5:30. There was a stop before mine in Edison Park where you could stop off and grab a beer or three before hoping back on the train and getting home by six. When I was running, I would get up at 5:30 a.m. and get in a run before work. I might have two loads of laundry a week.

I didn’t have time then because I didn’t know how much busier I was capable of being.

Yesterday we went to the Monster Truck Jam and I can only say you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Smart Car with a jet engine attached to the back. The flame shot out twenty feet, the diameter was ten feet and I could feel the heat on my face within a split second. We were in an arena and in the second tier, nosebleed seats. Less than a second and our eyebrows were scorched. Bizarre.

Then we went to exchange a shirt where the seam was coming out, buy some essential beauty supplies (I may have been remiss in the fact that although my hatred of shopping is well documented, I could shop for hours in Sephora or Ulta. Although I don’t wear much makeup, I buy it as if I do.)

Then we stopped off to get something to eat. Day over. Home in time for the kids bedtime, and my husband and I watched the latest Portlandia (love) and Amelie because I needed a beautiful movie. If you haven’t seen Amelie, do. It’s quirky and funny and the cinematography is absolutely stunning. Her apartment is what I would do to my house if money was no object.

So everything got pushed off until today. The kids watched John Carter while I did laundry. In between I pushed onward on the book, just past 95,000 words.  Not much longer and the typing will be done. I did the typing while being the boss of a spy syndicate, “What’s our mission now, Mommy, I mean, Boss?”

The little guy and I baked a cake. I finished The Mermaid Collector. Lovely.

I wonder what it would have been like if I was the parent I started out to be. When my husband and myself and my step-daughter became a family, she watched a half an hour of television on Saturdays. The rest of the time, we played games, made crafts, you get the idea. We were actively managing her childhood.

Now on a Saturday or Sunday, my kids are likely watching video games or cartoons until I make them shut it off. Today that didn’t happen until lunchtime.

I enjoy the time that they are occupied and I can get things done and by that I mean that I have time to punctuate the end of my thought within my own head. I feel like I should be above it somehow, that someone who appreciates books and literature and all of the beauty of life, should be an integral part of her children’s development.

Yet.

I grew up watching reruns of The Brady Bunch until my brain dripped out of my ear. I spent my post-college years nursing Saturday hangovers with bad B movies on Lifetime. I am a die-hard television watcher.

But I’m also a reading fanatic.

Maybe it’ll all turn out okay. I wonder if in the end, I’m doing my kids a favor by telling them to go play. Perhaps this will allow them to entertain themselves better than kids whose parents were more involved.

Then again, perhaps I’ll see them on a show of the future about how they are hoarders and haven’t left their house in a year because they have all they need with their dungeons and dragons online, their porn magazines and of course, the pizza guy’s cell number.

Maybe you’ll see the gray-haired woman in the background with the maniacal look in her eye as she shakes her fist at the cameraman telling him to leave her be she’s almost done writing. She better be wearing a beer helmet.

Unstoppable

At seven, who did you want to be?

I forget sometimes how hard it can be to be a kid. I get self-centered, worried about the job, worried about the house (Why is there a water stain above the light in my closet?), the car (That’s the second time the brakes felt weird. Or maybe it’s the clutch. Please not the transmission. Ah, well, at least I outlasted the engine light. Maybe the bulb blew.), the kids’ homework (Do other parents just forget to check it?), the fundraisers (Do other people get sick of buying wrapping paper and just not?), among a multitude of other petty (Please let the roof leak and car repair be petty.) complaints.

I looked through my photos and came across this one of my son. He didn’t know I was taking it. I was playing with my camera and he was just looking at me. He’s that kid. I think every parent has one, the kid that makes it hardest on himself and brings out your worst and occasionally your best. He makes me laugh until I cry. He makes me yell until I, well, yell some more. He never appears to be listening and yet does.

When he was a baby and I just started back to work, he wouldn’t look at me for half an hour after I got home. He was six months old. Now, lest you think I exaggerate, not only would he not look at me, but he would refuse to turn his head. He would sit in his high chair while we had dinner and keep his eyes in the opposite direction from me. The boy held a grudge. Then when he decided I’d had enough, he’d snap out of it and laugh while I talked to him, not taking his eyes off me.

When he was three months, I walked him for nine hours a day, straight, while he cried. Occasionally, I’d put him in his swing where he still cried and go out on the back stoop to call one of my best friends fearful I was losing my mind. I could see him through the sliding door but I felt I’d abandoned him and could do nothing but make that five-minute call.  I was out of tools to handle the situation.

Now I look at him, I look at those blue eyes and see the same intensity I’ve always seen in him. For the most part he’s calmed as he’s grown. He still freaks out, but he is his mother’s son. He’s gotten better at trying to put words to the feelings, something I still have trouble doing myself.

I wonder what his dreams are. He isn’t like my daughter who will wax poetic with a different career choice a week. I worry for him because of that. I worry that if he doesn’t start dreaming big now, the small acceptances will happen and when he looks up he’ll be forty and wondering where he went wrong.

Perhaps it’s silly, but for those of us not in our dream life, (and let’s be honest, so few people have followed their dreams) we want to see those we love make different choices. I want for him crazy manic joy that comes from doing something you love.

He deserves crazy manic joy.

Perhaps the way he’s either going to learn to go after something or allow things to fall onto him is by what he sees his parents doing. He will know how to chase his dream because he sees me doing the same thing. If that’s the case, I fear I’m letting him down.

Because I’m letting myself down. That look you see above on his face? That’s my look. We are intense creatures he and I. We love people and we push them too far. But if we were to hone that into something powerful and finely tuned, we’d be unstoppable. He does a damn fine job being unstoppable now, if only he could keep that until he can use it in his adulthood. How many have had it pushed out of them by mediocrity and boredom?

I’m going to suggest that we work harder than we ever have to find those dreams and grab them now. Because why would you want any less for yourself than you’d want for your dearest of dears? If you stop a moment and remember, there was a time you were unstoppable too.

Remember that and be unstoppable again.

 

Lessons Kids Can Teach Writers

1. The only way to know you can do something is to do it.

2. Don’t assume you’ll land on your ass.

3. If you land face first, don’t give up. Switch tacks. Sometimes you’re a skater, sometimes you’re a ninja/samurai/secret agent. Don’t let anyone pigeonhole your brilliance.

4. For that matter, don’t back yourself into a corner. Sometimes you just need to go where the energy is. Sometimes you are just having a Thor day.

5. When all else fails just remember to believe in yourself. It all starts there. The “A” stands for Awesome. Every writer needs one of these. And a cape. Of course.

Hot Chocolate, Running and Group Hysterics

What a difference a week can make.

Look at this skaterboy.

This kid is fearless. He got that skateboard two weeks ago when he turned four. As of Saturday, he has a temporary cast up to his knee and four (?!) broken bones in his foot. The skateboard is retired until before Halloween. (This is the part where you cross fingers and toes because after the doctor told me that the boy who walked in, wouldn’t be carried, told me his foot really didn’t hurt, after the doctor said that there were four clean breaks which was good because maybe he wouldn’t need surgery (did I mention this is my baby who just, just turned four?) but we’d know more when the ortho saw him…deep breaths.)

On the promise of a long weekend and a boy who would have to be carried everywhere he went and sitting with an elevated leg, I went out and bought board games, a new video game (all television/video restrictions gone, screw it) and crafts. Oh yes, Crafty Von Crafterson was in the house. We painted birdhouses (pirate ship and rocket for those who are dying of suspense) and I made little felt birds to stick on the pegs once they were done (Do you remember the blanket stitch I learned from the garlands? Well, yeah, did it on birds which make me want to make a bird garland. I can’t figure why the book isn’t typed up…).

Prior to this falling-off-the-slide-and-hitting-the-foot-just-right fiasco, I decided that the time had come. The time was now. Marvin K. Mooney won’t you please…oh, wait. Wrong story. I had however decided that I need running back in my life. I hadn’t run, really run, since the marathon I finished with what I thought was a bit of a muscle issue that turned out to be discs mashing on my nerves.

I’m not the most motivated during the nine o’clock hour when the kids are finally in bed, so I searched for a small race. If I’m going to sign up to run, there are two factors: the charity and the goodies. Check out this hoodie and read what it says.

Are you kidding me? How fantastic are these hoodies? And yes, that says HOT CHOCOLATE! Now back in the day, I might have gone for the brewery run. Okay, maybe I still would, who are we kidding? But, BUT, orange and gray? Orange being my very favorite color, the color of the majority of my house and my wedding dress. Oh, yes. It was fate, kismet, karma.

The seal on the run? Hehehe. Check out the post race mug.

I kid you not. Chocolate. Fondue. Seriously. Who’s with me??

And not being one to do something responsible when I can go stupid, I’m giving the 15K a go. Eh, why not? Let’s test out the ol’ back, shall we?

The Chicago Hot Chocolate 15K, my kind of race in my kind of town. And because I’m all about health and fitness (for any of you that have actually met me, well, please play along and shush), if you click the link you’ll see that they have them in other major cities as well. My new motto is Run for the Fondue. (Ronald McDonald houses also benefit if you’re more the sort that, you know, has a conscience and such. But you still get the fondue!)

The reason I mention this (other than a public service which it clearly is), is because I have run the last two days. I have only run short two milers but they felt like twenties and I say this as someone who has run twenty milers. Brutal runs in hot, hot weather. I’ve been carrying my 40 pound son around and today was the first day of a bathing routine. The doctor at the emergency room suggested something along the lines of a washcloth to scrub the yuck but I think she was unfamiliar with the stink that comes with a previously active four-year old boy.

I stuck a small plastic chair in the bathtub, sat said boy on the chair and filled the tub with about six inches of water. I proceeded to water him like a tomato plant, and scrub him down, his arms around my neck, his good leg bearing what weight he could, his cast set upon the rim wrapped in a towel. He thought it great fun, as my quads screamed from the new running, and my back shot knife-like pains down my leg from the angle.

My daughter ran in the bathroom in a panic.

“Uhm, remember those jeans you wanted me to try on.”

(Okay, do not lose your cool that wearing a boy as a necklace, soapy hands trying to get him clean and keep him from toppling as you are both half in/half out of the water, does not even register to a twelve-year old girl) “Ye-ess.” (Panting)

“I have one pair of jeans.”

“One?”

“One that fit.”

And so it goes. My September deadline for finishing typing the book has come and gone. I’m running a race for fondue. One kid has a broken foot and another shall be attending seventh grade in her underpants. The guy in the middle went to bed with an excruciating headache based on the amount of attention he has seen his brother get for the last three days.

Oh, it’s going to be a long four to six weeks…

 

 

 

I Need That

We were walking through a big box store when my seven-year old spotted a large display for “5-hour energy” supplement.

“I need that!” he said, tugging on my shirt to make sure that I heard his plea.

“There is no world in which a boy your age needs more energy.” A man behind us laughed, himself with a young boy in tow.

“No joke,” he said as his boy eyed the cardboard marketing assessing its brilliance.

“No really, Mommy,” my boy whispered, embarrassed that he had been overheard and with the knowledge that the grown-ups were laughing at his earnestness. “Can you imagine all I could get done if I didn’t have to sleep?!”

When do we lose that? Somewhere between seven and forty, no doubt, somewhere between getting your first real kiss, and getting your first real job.

I wonder what would happen if we cleared away everything (within reason, we do have to pay the mortgage after all) and left ourselves with only the things that were worth five extra hours of energy, what kind of world we could create for ourselves? To see a boy so earnest in explaining that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to play superheroes, play with friends, play with cars, ride bikes, draw pictures, watch television, play videogames, I can’t help but wonder when the fun got sucked out for most of us?

Today the boys were in the pool. Yes it is a glorious pool in all of its blow-up glory. You wouldn’t know it to watch them. After many a synchronized dance routine (courtesy of the Olympics) in which my boys did “the worm” underwater, I had to think, too many of us take ourselves way too seriously. So instead of trying to get so much done in so little time, I sat outside in the shade reading a Maeve Binchy novel (my first) while intermittently stopping to clap for the dance routines.

It was slow and the chores still got done despite not being crazy about it. I didn’t try to write (my kids are way too demanding for that), but I got in a few pages of a book and got to sit and think. It’s time to create the life we want out of the life we have. Maybe it just takes small adjustments here and there, saying yes to much, but sometimes saying no.

Books will still get written, but how I enjoyed just sitting and reading a book.

Go forth this week and if you have the chance at a pool, at a lake, (don’t try it in your bathtub unless your smaller than the average three-year old in my house) I suggest you do the worm. Under water. And then ponder why you haven’t been living like that all along.

Love.

Flower Girl

I got a cape!

A cape!

Not just any old cape, but a ginormous turquoise on one side, silver on the other sheath of satin that velcros around my neck. A giant purple flower is emblazoned on the turquoise side. I am Flower Girl.

You may be wondering if these are my favorite colors. Nope. These are the minions favorite colors. They picked it.

And it came with…wait for it…a mask. A purple, satin cat-eyed mask.

Oh yes.

I’ll leave you with one image from Mother’s Day 2012, otherwise known as The Day Mommy Got Revenge.

Armed with Socker Boppers, I flew out of the back screen door into the yard to take on the minions, they themselves armed with Socker Boppers and Hulk Hands.

My cape flew in the wind as I spied them through my soon-to-be legendary mask. I crushed them. I pummeled them sending first one, then the other from under the shade of the tree out into the sun-laden grass otherwise known as lava.

My new neighbors sat quietly with friends and family in lawn chairs under their own tree trying hard not to look. The jealousy must have been too great. The power I beheld, the sheer awesomeness, yes, they looked away shielding their eyes as my sons screeched in horror as I thrust them one, two, too many times from the safety of the shade into the fiery lava pits then ran in circles around them in my cape of awesome and accessorizing mask.

Flower Girl Rules.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Still 40 Pages

I’ve so far typed 40 pages of my WIP. I had a modest goal this weekend and that was to hit page 70.

I’m still at 40.

My youngest woke up Saturday morning at 3 a.m. with the stomach flu. He threw up once an hour on the hour until 8:30 a.m. I got an hour of sleep before it began and then in the early morning hours changed his clothes and sheets three times, spot cleaned the carpet twice and had drifted off at 6 a.m. when his big brother awoke. I got him set up with cartoons and went back to bed for 15 minutes before the youngest woke up happy as could be. By 7 a.m. the three of us were on the couch cuddled up until he got sick twice more.

The great news? No one else caught it (and yes, I’m knocking on wood as I type this). The bad news, his older brother was to have a friend over to play and we had to cancel. I had to break the news to him when he woke up at six, the first thing he said to me after “Can I go watch cartoons?” was “I can’t believe it’s already Saturday! What time does A. get here?”

When I told him his friend couldn’t come because I didn’t want him to get sick, the tears flowed. He sobbed on the couch, poor guy. With a working mom, he doesn’t get to see his friends as much as most kids. It can only be on weekends when we don’t have anything going on.

We always have something going on.

My master plan was to have his friend come over and while the three boys played, I’d get some writing done. It gave me a three-hour window.

Nuts.

Disinfecting countertops, doorknobs, washing all sheets and towels, watching movies and playing video games filled an entire day. Sunday rolled around and all of the Saturday duties had to be done. More laundry, grocery shopping, Target shopping, all so my husband could take care of the yard, a disaster after the recent heat spurt. I don’t think we’ve ever had to mow in March. Crazy.

All of this time spent doing nothing I wanted to, got me thinking about my life. It gave me some time to see things in a new light, or rather an old light that I forget about until I get it sledgehammered into my head.

I’m a mom first, a wife second, a writer third. When one of my kids is sick, I truly could care less about writing. I don’t resent not doing it. I don’t begrudge them. Their health is everything.

I thought about my luck. I don’t believe in luck with events. You make choices and each one leads or doesn’t lead to the next. It isn’t destiny, it’s a willingness to work hard and keep going.

But when it comes to my kids, my husband, my writing, I am lucky. I know that my kids will get over the flu. They’re healthy. With the way I take care of myself, I should get sick more often than I do. If my husband wasn’t willing to be a primary caregiver, I wouldn’t have that time on the train to write, and I wouldn’t have written a book, no less if I had to cook we’d all be sick from eating McDonald’s every night.

I need to work on remembering all of that. I need to be kinder and gentler when I’m at work, be the me I am in the world and not twelve different people depending on the situation. I need to let the chips land where they may.

The book is not the be all end all. It’s a small part of a great big life. My life. My only one. I need to remember that and be thankful for it.

So tomorrow, I start trying to be me and not a version of me to fit a situation. I’m going to try to be kinder and do what I tell my children. If people are unkind, stay away from them but don’t meet their aggressiveness with your own. That only reflects on you and you are better than that.

I am better than that.