Or, Best Panic Attack Ever! I was going to call it that, but it seems overly melodramatic.

And I don’t do melodramatic. I just do dramatic.

So, anyway, what did you want for Christmas? Did you get it?

The toddler didn’t. He decided two days before Christmas that he definitely wanted Santa to bring him a bike. Sadly for the toddler, this revelation occurred three days after he punched two girls in his class in the face (and left a mark on one!) and then shoved paper towels down the daycare sink until it backed up. (Hubby’s response? “What got into him? I mean, besides the paper towels. That I can see.”) Santa, I have explained repeatedly, only brings bikes to boys who do not punch girls, or classmates in general. Besides, there’s a layer of ice on my sidewalks about an inch thick. He’ll get one when he turns four in May.

But I did.

I got my big surprise present two days early – an email from an agent (who shall, for the moment, remain nameless) who said she would “love” to read the full manuscript of the Noseless Cowboy book, officially known as A Part of Her. You can read an excerpt at my website here. It’s the fourth book in the Emerson series.

I know we’re all still waiting on the editor to get back to me on Marrying the Emersons, which is the first book in the Emerson series. But I couldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. And my dear friend Pauline Friday has all these agents sniffing around her How To Be A Spinster in 29 Years, mostly because the book is awesome, and also because she sends out query letters in batches of 20 or so.

But I stalled, hoping the editor would get to the bottom of whatever pile I was in. Plus, I had no idea how to sell the whole series – as a family saga, or one book at at time? If I did one book at a time, what about the two books for Lily and Bobby? Together or separate?

So I took the path of least resistance. I queried A Part of Her. It’s the same family, but it’s much more a stand-alone book. Plus, that whole Noseless Cowboy thing (read that blog here) is highly visual – and easier to condense than 35 years plus the Vietnam War. (I tried to condense it. Trust me, it didn’t work. That’s why it’s two books.)

I sent out six. I got two rejections within three days. I figured, well, that’s that, at least until after the New Year.

And then, this afternoon, as I’m sitting here in a funky mood because I had to chase a three year old down in the sleet (nutty kid!) and I get an email.

She wanted the full manuscript. Two weeks after I sent the query.

BEST PANIC ATTACK EVER! My chest is still tightening up like a boa constrictor’s giving me a big ol’ friendly hug.

Even more so because, long ago (February) when I first started querying Marrying the Emersons, I set a moderately unrealistic goal of having a contract by Christmas. And after a few bruising rounds of rejection, I scaled that back to having an agent by Christmas. And after a few more bruising rounds, I reminded myself that most editors are already planning their 2010 releases, and that there just might not be much happening right now – and that was before the economy tanked.

And now? I still have no editor. I have no contract. I have no agent.

But I have a foot in the door. Which is more than I had before.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy New Year!

Before we get going today, I’d like to invite you to stop back by my website at www.sarahmanderson.com to see what all I’ve been up to with that Authorial thing. My Web Honcho (aka Craig) has updated the synopses and excerpts for all four books in the Emerson series, and there is also a sneak peak at what’s coming up next.

Okay. Back to this regularly scheduled Blog: The Moment.

Do you remember the moment? The moment you stopped being a child and started being an adult?

Maybe it was when you stumbled downstairs for a glass of water and caught your mother stuffing stockings, nary a Santa in sight. (Yes, that happened. I had to promise not to tell my sisters, but I think Leah already suspected.)

Maybe it was when you didn’t get the pony you’d asked for under the Christmas Tree, despite being an extra good girl all danged year long. (Sadly, that pony never did materialize.)

Maybe it was the winter the river flooded the town, and your father, being a big, jolly kind of guy, took charge of the toy collection for those who had no home in which to have a Christmas, rented a Santa suit, and packed all those totally awesome toys into the Charger and drove away to give them to other children, not you. (Yes, he did this. It was my first real lesson in helping those in need. Sucked for the first-grader I was, though.)

Or maybe it was the first time the meteorologist predicted five inches of the fluffy stuff and instead of jumping up and down on the bed because you weren’t going to school for the next day or three, you threw a hissy fit because you weren’t going to get to see your current flame – or worse, you’d have to take the bus and leave your heap of a car at home. (Not that I ever threw hissy fits. Never. Honest!)(And seriously, did that meteorologist say up to 1 inch of ICE today? JEEZ!)

Whenever your moment was, this season is ripe with low-hanging fruit that screams “Grow Up.” Which is somewhat ironic, given that most of us embrace a child’s simplistic joy and excitement. With such high expectations, there are bound to be crashes that leave some children’s concept of what they thought they knew in the world in smoldering ruins.

But there are other moments. Moments that pull you back into childhood and hold you there in a mama bear hug.

Maybe it was the first year you really weren’t sure if Santa was real or not, and came down Christmas morning to find sooty footprints all over the place. (That stroke of genius bought my parents another year of Christmas grace.)

Maybe it was the time that Santa left a baseball bat in your stocking, because he knew you weren’t a typical girl. (Understatement of the year.)

Or maybe it was the moment when one of the kids in your class, who was living in a hotel room on Christmas Day because her house still had eight inches of mud in it, came back to school and breathlessly told everyone that Santa had personally delivered the Sit n’ Spin she’d always wanted, and threatened to punch anyone who tried to convince her that Santa wasn’t real. (Oh, how I had coveted the Sit n’ Spin. But it got a good home.)

Or maybe it was the moment when your son lined up all his trains just so and then informed you that they were reindeer, and named them. In order. (Kid can’t even count to twenty without looping past 14 a few times, but reindeer? No problem.)

Those are the moments that we strive to cherish and protect. Those are the reasons we take children to see Santa, even if that just leads to a screaming fit of mild terror (the toddler actually sat on his lap this year, without crying! He didn’t talk, but he did sit!)

Perhaps as adults who have harvested that low-hanging fruit, we realize what has gone before us, and are desperate for things to be that simple again.

The moment comes for us all. But as a parent, I hope that it comes later. For now, I just want to have meaningful debates about which chimney Santa comes down. My moment is very much his childhood.

Merry Christmas!

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours went pretty much like expected, although the rolls were only minimally over-browned this year. WOO! Ah, the turkey – the apple juice secret turkey – was amazing.

But there was one thing that happened off schedule. It snowed on November 30th where we were – at my in-laws’ house. The old wives’ tale, as my hubby repeated it four thousand times, is that since the first measurable snow occurred on the 30th, we will have 30 measurable snows this winter.

The toddler was ecstatic. I, of course, had not packed for an inch and a half, so my wonderful mother-in-law and I scrambled to find stuff that would keep me, my hubby, and my kid from getting pneumonia. So we crammed my 3 1/2 year old, who’s wearing 5T footie sleepers, into a size 7 pair of snow pants. With the suspenders cinched all the way down, it actually worked. The mittens were more like socks on his hands, so we just disregarded the thumbs. At least I was a good-enough mother that he did have a winter coat, but we had to resort to – this is so bad – baggies rubber-banded around his feet.

Yup. I’m that kind of mom.

Of course, I’d packed only a light jacket, suitable for shopping in enclosed malls. So I wound up wearing my mother-in-law’s boots and my father-in-law’s coat and gloves. Same for my hubby (he wore his father’s boots, though) but at least he looked normal. And out we went.

It wasn’t really sledding snow, but that didn’t stop my men. And of course, we did a snowman. It was snowman snow.

The kid did the ears. He was real proud of the ears.

Now, this was all well and good, but my kid is three. Three and a half. He took one look out the window Sunday morning at the snow falling and said, “Santa’s HERE!” Never mind that I haven’t even gotten him to the mall to see the Big Guy yet. Snow, in his mind, Equals Santa.

It snowed here yesterday. It was snowing when I picked him up from daycare, and he was just convinced that Santa was coming as soon as he went to sleep. He’s all ready for stockings – he’s even hung two different ones for his pooh bear.

Yes.

I bought honey sticks for a stuffed animal’s Christmas stocking. But he has been a very good bear this year. I’m that kind of mom.

What makes this even funnier is that the kid is not having what you might call a smooth month. He’s getting into trouble at daycare, talking back to me and the hubby, and trying to body-slam my wiener dog. He’s made a snow=Santa connection, but he’s got no concept of the Nice List or the Naughty List. It’s just not sinking in. Not even a little.

I told him IF he was good today, we’d go to the Mall tonight and see Santa. But it’s a big IF. So we’ll see. We already have him more presents than he needs, so if he doesn’t shape up, they go back into the gift closet for his birthday. Trains keep.

So we’ll see what kind of Christmas we have around here. Will the pooh bear get better gifts than the kid? Will I get anything but coal for being the world’s meanest mom? (Okay – I know the answer to that one. After all, I have a car and a credit card). Will my poor hubby survive until then?

Stay Tuned!

Here’s how our holiday breaks down.

Wednesday Afternoon: we swing by and pick up my gram and head down to my folk’s house. The house is already a Thanksgiving disaster – it’s the one day of the year my sister bakes pies, and she cuts loose and gets in touch with her inner Martha Stewart. My dad puts the toddler in charge of something fun, like the apple peeler/corer/slicer. We all try not to trip over the myriad of animals dancing around the kitchen. Then, completely whipped from making food, we go out to eat and then collapse in front of the t.v. Gram and Dad will fall asleep sitting up while the rest of us do the preliminary Black Friday battle plan.

Thanksgiving morning: Dad has been up since four. I usually get up between five and six – not quite early enough to figure out the secrets of gizzards, but more than early enough to have the apple juice secret down pat. There may or may not be a toddler helping, and again, assorted dogs just praying to their little doggie God that Dad will drop that bird at any time. (It’s never happened, but a dog can dream, right?) Once the bird is in the cooker, I do clean-up/damage control while Dad makes cinnamon rolls. Various family members begin to trickle in and kind of flop around, like sleeping until 8 was just soooo challenging for them. (I kid, but they are pretty useless until they’ve had their coffee.)

Cooking continues apace. My hubby, God bless him, has stepped in to help out with some of the cooking – he does homemade mashed potatoes (adding both sour cream and cream cheese . . . oh, so good) and keeps an eye on the portobella mushrooms and mac and cheese. I fry apples and try to keep an eye on the rolls, but they will over-brown, every single year. They always do. Finally, as everyone else has gotten cleaned up and is getting hungry, Dad hefts that bird out of the oven and nicks off a piece for Mom to nibble. Mom always gets the first nibble, and promptly pronounces it Dad’s best turkey ever. I make gravy while Dad carves, and then it’s dinner, buffet style, usually by 2.

Gorging occurs.

A food-induced coma occurs.

By 6, people are beginning to perk back up. The Black Friday battle plan is nailed down, the brave try all five kinds of pies and my homemade maple nut cheesecake, and Dad snores from his recliner.

Friday Morning: we live out in the country, so to be anywhere by 7 a.m. we all have to leave the house by 6. One year we tried to be at an opening at 6, and we just couldn’t do it. We’re dedicated, but not completely insane. We abandon the toddler to the Gram and Dad and head out. Black Friday is like a date for me and my hubby – we eat meals out, we walk around holding hands, we talk – all without a kid. It is a bit of a damper than my sisters, brother-in-law, and mother are there, but it is close enough to a date for us. We do all our Christmas shopping. (My sisters and I buy each other clothes. We try stuff on, and if one of the sisters likes how that looks on me, she says, “I’ll get that for you,” and I do the same. It’s a little like What Not To Wear, Christmas Edition.)

We all straggle back home at some point between 2 and 5 to find the house a fun-house disaster of toy explosions from Pawpaw/Grandkid fun. We decide we don’t care, eat more turkey, and all go to sleep by 8. We get up the next morning, drive to my in-laws’ house, and repeat.

Every year, I am thankful for these rituals. I’m thankful that my in-laws let my family have this holiday (they get Easter). I’m thankful that I know the apple juice secret. I’m thankful that my toddler gets to cook with his Pawpaw, and then spend the next day just hanging out with him. I’m thankful Gram makes it to another holiday. I’m thankful that my hubby good-naturedly laughs at all my Dad’s jokes, even the ones he’s already heard dozens of times. I’m thankful for getting to hang out with my sisters, and I’m thankful that the brothers-in-laws are cool about all our family’s quirks. I’m thankful that the day is filled with laughter, food, and love (with the occasional cursing at over-browned rolls).

Even in these difficult times, there is something to be thankful for. I’m so grateful I’m here, and that you, Dear Reader, are here, too.

Okay, that was a bad joke. Sorry.

But seriously, where did Thanksgiving go? And is there any way to actually teach my toddler about it in the face of overwhelming marketing?

The hubby has been working rather long, bordering on insane hours recently, giving me plenty of Mother/Son time. And one of my favorite coping mechanisms is to go to our local mall. A year and a half ago, they took out an underused seating area, padded that bad boy, and stuck in some soft climbing structures. Voila, instant play place. I swear, I’d carpet my house in that stuff – so soft and squishy underfoot, and it absorbs a lot of sound. Sometimes there are other kids there, and my kid runs around at top toddler speeds screaming and throwing his little bod around. So much better that all that energy is not contained in my 1892 house. It’s especially vital in the winter.

Anyway, I have been at the mall a lot recently. I know the play area was designed to increase the amount of money I spend at the mall, because I’m certainly there a lot, but the mall people never counted on frugal German stock. At most, I window shop J.C. Penny.

Two weeks ago, part of the play area was fenced off, with sparkly Christmas trees behind it, and presents stuck in the philodendrons. Three days later, evergreen boughs (Tangent: I love that word. It’s a darned shame it only gets trotted out once a year. Say it out loud about five times. Bough. Great, huh?) were everywhere. They still have the decency not to break out the actual Santa yet, but everything else is a go.

To a three year old, it’s Christmas, plain and simple. The only real vestige of Thanksgiving that exists in his world is the pilgrim name tags at daycare and the promise of a trip to Mimi and Pawpaw’s to pet kittens. Thanksgiving is a brief interlude between candy and presents.

And, to be honest, I’m not helping. We have a big house and a lot of decorations. Two trees. And did I mention the hubby working insane hours? So the toddler and I are doing the decorating piece meal.

He’s hilarious. He’s really into hanging ornaments, but they all have to be families. Three candy canes on a branch – the mommy, the daddy, and the baby candy cane. My hubby’s Dan Marino ornament has to be next to a baby in a crib – I think a snowman is standing in for Mom there. Everything is grouped.

But with the daily barrage of gift catalogs filled with stuff I’m never going to spend the money on, the toddler wants it all. Flip open a toy page, and he jabs that finger onto every single item, “I want that, and that, and that . . .” ad nauseum. We have a house rule – if you can’t tell Mom what it is you want, you can’t have it. He said he wanted the Indiana Jones Action Sounds Whip. I said, “Can you tell me what that is?” and he said, “Um, I want that.” No Action Sounds Whips. No Light Sabers. No wrestling Action Figures.

Beside, (Mary, did I get it right? No ‘s’?) the kid is only getting three presents from Santa, plus a stocking, plus maybe another three to five things from us like books. The hubby said Limits, and I said, Sure. Cheaper that way.

This is all well and good, but even in this blog, where did Thanksgiving go? You’d think with all the GPS technology we have today, we could keep better track of it … but no.

I used to teach English as a Second Language in Chicago. I really liked it, and it was a good outlet for the vast repository of useless knowledge I’ve accumulated between history teachers for parents and graduate degrees. I taught them about Thanksgiving, and about Black Friday. If you were new to this country, you’d want to know why the evening news showed near riots breaking out at Best Buy over Wiis, right? National Shopping Day was how I described it.

Useless trivia fact: Did you know that FDR tried to move Thanksgiving to the second week in November? He was trying to boost the economy by lengthening the holiday shopping season, and it backfired pretty badly on him. People didn’t want him messing with traditions. Back then, in the darkness that was the Great Depression, people were thankful for what they had.

Ironic, then, that today we have so much more to be thankful for. We live longer, have better stuff and far more comfortable lives these days than the huge chunks of the populace that didn’t have running water or electricity until the 1940s. (Yes, I know about that, too. Features heavily in Marrying the Emersons. Live with it.)

But with all this modern convenience and wonder, we are less thankful. More spoiled, my Gram would say – after all, she lived through the Depression. Much as FDR tried, now marketing and consumerism has moved the holiday shopping season up to 12:01 a.m. on November 1st. What legislation couldn’t do, the American People did themselves.

So, until the official Thanksgiving Blog next week, take a moment to stop and think about what you have to be thankful for while you hang your ornaments or buy your Christmas gifts. I’m not saying don’t do those things, but don’t forget the fact that you can do those things is, in and of itself, something to appreciate.

I don’t have much today – heck, I even forgot it was Thursday, so sorry this is late getting out, faithful lunch hour reader. I mean, things are happening. I’m mailing Marrying the Emersons out for the Golden Heart contest this afternoon. I’m in the final tweaking stages of the other three, and I’m confident they’ll all be out before the deadline on Dec. 2nd. I’m drafting a friendly, “Howdy! Remember Me?” letter to the editor, as it has officially passed six months since I initially mailed the partial. I’m already writing the next book in my head.

And I’ve got a son whose imagination has caught fire recently. He’s discovered the Toy Story movies. The other night, we heard frantic screaming after he went to bed. So I went flying upstairs only to hear him say, “You okay there, buddy?” in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Buzz Lightyear. And then he answered in the voice he uses when he ‘talks’ for his Pooh Bear, with another frantic sounding scream, followed by another “You okay there, buddy?” And he’s discovered his father’s 15 inch Star Wars Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker dolls (ahem, Action Figures). So he’s running around with “Dark” Vader and “Skyler” creating scenes that sound like Toy Story 2 again – where Buzz finds out Zurg is his father – even though the kid has NEVER seen Star Wars!

So it’s not like there’s not stuff going on. But to pull together a cohesive blog out of that? I got nothing. So we’re just going to go for a blast from the past today.

I’ve mentioned my Gram at various times in this blog. She’s 93 (and a half) now, older every day. She’s an interesting woman, my Gram. Whether it’s remembering the noseless cowboy or over sharing about my grandfather (who died when I was two, God bless him), she’s always got a story ready to tell. This is one of my favorites.

I was 18, Gram was 82. 82 – an age when a vast part of the population has already died, or faded past fun – but at 82, Gram decided it was time to go on vacation. This is something she’s done almost her whole life. She’s been a part of every travel revolution, from Route 66 to Howard Johnson to the incarnation of air travel, and 82 was no good reason to give it up. But she’s not blind to the hard facts of aging. So, whilst she still could, she decided she wanted to go to Europe, just for one last time.

But she didn’t want to go with her friends. They were too old, and wouldn’t be able to keep up with her. Mom was busy, and we won’t get started on my aunt.

That left me. And I had no money.

This did not deter Gram. She offered to pay my way – everything but the souvenirs, basically, on one condition: I had to carry all the luggage.

Now, that might not sound like a bad deal – and really, it wasn’t – but you have to keep in mind that my Gram will pack four good-sized duffles for a two night visit to my mother’s house. She had eight bags for ten days in Europe – with a few empty ones tucked in there. I had one bag, and no purse. I actually threw my back out in Rome hefting it all.

Undeterred, she signed us up for a tour group with her college, Hannibal LaGrange – where she’d graduated with her bachelor’s degree about the time she turned 70ish (I remember the party, but I was pretty young). Did I mention that Gram is an interesting woman?

So we loaded up and headed out with the group. Her old English professor. The president of the college and his family. A rather large gathering of other retirees. One other mother/daughter pairing. We picked up some more tour members in England, where we started.

Oh, I loved England. I’d committed my soul to Victorian literature before the trip, but this just cemented that decision. And I loved the English tour guide we had – tall, blond, his Master’s in History, and spoke six languages – yum. Again, just like with the noseless cowboy three years later, if only I hadn’t been on vacation with my grandmother . . . . but that’s another story for a novel.

We finished the tour in Italy, which was just an art history minor’s dream come true. I actually saw the Pope at an outdoor mass – from half a mile away, but still, I saw him! Gram sat in a cathedral in Florence, reading – I am NOT making this up – a Reader’s Digest so she wouldn’t ‘slow me down’ as I ran around at top speed, going ‘Oh, MY GOD! I studied THIS!” We saw the Nave in Assisi, later severely damaged by an earthquake. And I highly recommend the Isle of Capri for honeymooners.

But in between, we went to Paris. I had just finished four years of remedial French in high school and college, and I was pumped. I have two things that I remember as clear as day from Paris – the reason I’ll always have a fond spot in my heart for the city.

First, we went to a restaurant for dinner, and there were only five water glasses for the six spots. I collared a waiter and said, “Un autra ver, si vous plait,” which is, ‘another glass, please.’ My French teachers would have been so proud, because that waiter snapped to and promptly fetched another glass. The tour group was – and I’m not exaggerating – in awe, and my Gram was so proud she nearly burst. You’d have thought I’d won the presidency or something. But I spoke French, or something close to it.

That evening, we were getting back onto the Metro – the subway – but the train was about 15 minutes off. A grouping of the older ladies decided they would like a restroom break, and Gram decided to go with them. I was good, so I decided to stay and admire our tour guide from a distance some more.

13 minutes later, the group came back – sans Gram. “Where’s my grandma?” I asked.

“She’s not here? She decided she didn’t want to pay for the toilet and headed back!”

Instantaneous panic. The Metro was about six layers deep of platforms, escalators, and French people – none of which Gram was all so equipped to handle on her own. As our train pulled in, I hollered for the tour guide, who spoke flawless French. Quickly, the president of the college took the rest of the group on to the hotel while the guide and I split up. After all, we were the only two who spoke French. Or, in my case, almost French. He went down, and I went up.

So, I’m running around the Paris Metro, accosting strange Parisians going, “Pardonne moi, ave vous voir une petite grand-mere?” Which is roughly, “excuse me, have you seen a little grandmother?” No one had. I went up and down about fifteen escalators when I caught sight of a helmet of little-old-lady hair headed down a different escalator – and the wrong direction from where we needed to be.

“Gram!” I hollered, flying down after her. She was fine, of course, but totally, completely, and thoroughly LOST. I have a much better sense of orientation and quickly got us back to our platform, where the tour guide shortly joined us.

It remains one of the few times in my life where I have ever seen my grandmother deeply, personally embarrassed. Even now, 11+ years later, if she’s driving us batty about any number of things (Mulch is a good example. I mulch my flowerbeds with wood chips. She’s convinced I might as well open up a termite bed and breakfast, and reminds me of this constantly.), that’s when I’ll say, “So, Gram, you remember Paris?” and she will blush, which is no mean feat for a woman her age, and start talking about traveling, and the next trip.

There will always be a next trip. That’s the way she raised my mother, that’s the way I was raised, and that’s the way I’m raising my son. It’s a huge world, after all. Sometimes, you just have to go out and get lost in it. But it helps to know French when you do.

Let’s count it down. There will be a quiz, assuming I can figure out how to work the little polling feature on this blog.

What’s the scariest thing right now?

1. The Authorial Mom attempting to utilize ‘new’ technology, in this case, a polling feature. If you hear a loud “BOOM” in the near future, that will be the sound of me exploding my laptop. Or my head. Possibly both.

2. Ghosties. I mentioned recently that the toddler is going as a Construction Ghostie – a tablecloth with eye holes and a construction hat. Well, now we are locked in one of those age-old mother/son battles, namely: Do ghosties have eye holes? He’s insisting that, no, they don’t, and I’m insisting that ghosties without eye holes do not get to walk up and down the sidewalk and get candy. And let me tell you, nothing strikes fear into my heart like a three-year-old temper tantrum from a kid who didn’t go trick-or-treating because he didn’t want eye holes. Can you imagine the years of therapy needed, just for that thing alone? It’s going to be bad enough when we go to a Halloween party tonight and he sees all the other boys in the nice, expensive store bought costumes. You know those spreads the parenting magazines always have on cute Halloween costumes you can make? Total b.s. Loving parents go and drop 20$ to 45$ on any one of 8 different models of Spiderman. (You think I’m kidding? I counted 8 completely different Spidermans last year – three with built in muscles.) My kid is going to get one look at a Spider/Iron/Super/Bat Man tonight and realize that I’m the meanest mom ever. And then I’m going to eat his Reese’s peanut butter cups.

3. Candy. Two years ago, we handed out Flaming Hot Cheetos. Last year, we did Pop Tarts. I figure that, if we give out cool, different candy, our pumpkins won’t be violated. Stands to figure. But I forgot the other, primary reason we started doing that when I let my hubby buy the deluxe chocolate mix – two huge bags worth – at our new local club store. There is CHOCOLATE in my house – worse, it’s in the form of Reese’s peanut butter cups. AND if there is chocolate in the house, I will eat it. And that has lead to the horrible specter of even more jiggly cellulite haunting my nights. It’s terrifying.

4. The Presidential Election. Good Gravy, is this thing over with yet? And I don’t even live in a state in play! I live in Illinois. I’m a white woman with a Master’s degree, in English Literature, no less. We have compost bins by our garage (yes, that was in the plural) and we eat arugula whenever possible. If you haven’t figured out who I’m voting for yet, let me just mention one more thing. I drive a Prius. So no one has much bothered us, but we live on the edge of the state with Missouri, and we are getting a lot of blowback from the Missouri races. I’d vote against some of these people just for irritating me if I could, but then I’d be arrested for voter fraud, and no one wants that. I mean, seriously! Last night, I had to watch a Political INFOMERCIAL, for goodness sake!!! PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!!!!!

5. When Politics and Halloween Merge. Oh, there is nothing quite as horrifying as when your 93 year old grandmother calls you up because she’s had a flash of inspiration. Frankly, any flash of any kind from Gram is mildly alarming, but the flashes of inspiration can be downright devastating. I knew I was in trouble when she started giggling. “I was watching t.v.,” she began, and I knew I was doomed. “I was hearing about this man who that Palin is always talking about – what’s his name?” Oh, I already knew the answer to this question. “Joe the Plumber?” I asked, knowing that things were already halfway down the hill. “Yes!” she replied, giggling again. Not that my gram isn’t a happy kind of senior citizen, but this impish kind of giggle is not her normal mode, and it’s unsettling. “I think you should go as that Palin woman and Jason should be that Plumber!” Ouch. That one hurt.

And finally, 6. The Evening News. Aside from 9/11, I’ve never been so terrified of the evening news as I am right now. It seems to be the penultimate combination of all of my deep worries into one convenient talking-heads segment. Tainted food and candy. Politics 24/7. That stupid Joe the Plumber. The economy trying to excise a cancerous mortgage/debt growth. Death, pain, and suffering. You’d think, given that I spent my entire morning taking my hero through the painful process of sobering up and taking responsibility for his actions while drunk that pain and suffering wouldn’t get to me, because I live it in my mind with my people over and over and over again. But it does. At least when my people suffer, it’s in my power to fix their problems and give them a happy ending. When it happens in real life, there’s not much I can do. I’m only all powerful in my head, after all. I think that may be the most scary thing of all.

So, what scares you these days?

No, this isn’t a blog about the editor. But nice optimistic thinking!

What is luck? Is it as simple as right/wrong place, right/wrong time? Is it the ability to do something stupid and still walk away? Is it the foresight to avoid doing something stupid entirely? Is it fate, karma, angelic/divine intervention, or superstrings stretching? (No, I don’t understand superstring theory. But extra bonus points if you know what it is!)

Exhibit 1, or The Ability To Do Something Stupid and Walk Away: My boss yesterday related the story of how he nearly chainsawed his knee off about 20 years ago. Complete with visual aid of the 6 inch scar tissue. “I was lucky,” he said as I focused real hard on not throwing up in my mouth. “I could have lost my leg.”

Now, really, the man cut down several inches with a chainsaw into his own leg. My father would say that being lucky would have been not needing six LAYERS of stitches in the first place, but my boss knows he’s lucky he can walk.

Exhibit 2, or Right Place, Right Time: Freshman year of college, I signed up for a general world lit class, and after the first class was informed by the teacher that, as an English major, I couldn’t be in a general lit class, didn’t I know that? I had a bad two days of feeling somewhere between a fool and an idiot not cut out for college before I found a professor who was willing to let me into his junior level Victorian Lit class. Talk about intimidating – I was the only freshman, and the prof, one Dr. Woodcox, had a Ph.D. from Oxford.

I seriously thought my luck couldn’t get any worse. I knew I was going down in flames, in front of upperclassmen no less. Ugh. I began imagining my life as a Wal-Mart cashier. Not pretty.

Except that the total opposite thing happened. Dr. Woodcox was one of the more brilliant teachers I ever had, and he eventually forgave me my chronic dependence on the passive voice. Not only did I take five or six more classes from him in the next three years, I worked as his office assistant, helped him prepare papers and presentations, and edited a collection of essays he was working on. More than any other person, he prepared me for a life of academia and beyond (thank God for the beyond part). He even came to my wedding. Plus, extra bonus, I met one of my long-time guy friends in that class, and he introduced me to his social circle. These are people I still count as my closest friends, 13 years after the fact. Some of the best luck of my life, all because I was dumb enough to sign up for the wrong class.

Exhibit 3, or Wrong Place, Wrong Time: I was having a pretty pissy morning this morning. Had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night due to that darned persistent joint pain. Toddler wandered into our room at 4:30 and 5:15, and then had to be dragged out of bed at 6. Never did go back to sleep after 4:30 because the hamster in the wheel that is my brain woke up, and my body hurt. Toddler was whiny. It was raining.

As I said, pretty pissy morning. But stay with me here.

So I was struggling to get the toddler out of the vest he’d spent 5 minutes trying to zip up himself and into the raincoat when there was a huge crunch. Made me jump, and stunned the toddler out of the whine he was in. I looked outside, but didn’t see anything, so I figured it was the city using the bulldozer to scoop up leaves from the gutter (yes, they do this at 6:30 a.m.). So, raincoat mission accomplished, we head out to the garage. And that’s when I notice that in the front of our house, there are headlights pointed at a tree across the street. Even if there was a car parked in front of our house, the lights wouldn’t be pointed at this tree.

“What?” the hubby asks as he straps in the toddler.

“I think there’s a car in our front yard,” I reply. So we hurry into the car and drive up front.

Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right. There’s a truck in our front yard, with a not-nearly-as-hysterical-as-I-would-be woman sitting in the cab, calling 911.

“Are you okay!?!” the hubby and I ask in unison.

“Did you see who hit me?” she replied, looking slightly dazed. “He didn’t yield – didn’t even stop to see if I’d been hurt. Didn’t even stop!”

My neighbor Joe – a registered nurse – came out and began asking nursy questions, but the woman really didn’t seem hurt. A cop showed up, and began to take stock. The back end of her truck was a sight to behold. The axle was more pretzel than car part, and even though the hubby and I helped the cop look for her wheel, we didn’t find it (it was dark and raining). There were bits of bumpers and wheel fragments all over the intersection, and the fire hydrant was a good 10 feet away from its base.

But talk about luck – the cop did find a license plate. The non-yielding, non-stopping, non-caring car’s license plate.

So, having my point of view successfully realigned, I got the heck out of my pissy mood, because this is just one of those times when I feel lucky.

1. The woman was not seriously hurt. She’s going to be sore, but she narrowly missed being t-boned, narrowly missed our sizable ash tree, and probably narrowly missed being rolled over and trapped in that truck. Sure, her truck is not going anywhere anytime soon, and this was a really crap-tacular way to start a Thursday, but it could have been so much worse.

2. We live next to a nurse, who’s a great guy. There’s something about having a competent, trained medical professional within earshot that makes me just a little bit more relaxed.

3. The sucker who hit and ran – less than three blocks from a jr. high where about a third of the students walk home past my house, on a corner where five kids and two dogs live within 15 feet of the intersection – is going to be caught and charged with felony leaving the scene of the crime.

I don’t want to think of luck as a zero-sum game, and not in the least because I’m not too sure what that concept entails, but in this case, the woman’s bad luck turned out to be not as bad as it could have been, and the sucker’s luck is just about to get a whole lot worse.

That’s the kind of luck I can live with.

So, what’s the point?

I’ve had a few new readers (I LOVE new readers, even if they email me constantly) reading the blogs and the short stories on the website. And more than one person has read the short stories and asked me, What’s the point? People generally seem to like the stories (DO NOT READ THEM AT WORK. THEY ARE “SAUCY,” to quote a friend), and want to know why the stories are there, and what happens to the people in them, and why they aren’t books in development.

In other words, what’s the point?

The point is, I got this idea that wouldn’t let me go, and it spiraled out of control. Here’s what happened. I packed up my posse for a road trip to the Lake of the Ozarks. My posse was, at the time, my 92 year old grandmother and my 2 year old son. That’s how I roll. I bring the party with me where EVER I go. So we drove down, stayed with some family friends, had a great weekend, and headed back just before a toddler’s nap time. Now, Gram doesn’t hear as well as she did when she was 80 or anything, so the radio playing really kind of bugs her (unless it’s a Cardinals game. She likes Mike Shannon.), so I had a long 3 1/2 hour ride before me that I hoped was going to be silent. (Gram never naps. She just rests her eyes.) With the toddler and the Gram hopefully recovering from their crazy weekend of fun and no radio to hum along with, I knew I’d need major help.

Yup. Mountain Dew.

I drink a Dew maybe once every 3 years, because I personally feel it tastes like malted battery acid. But desperate times call for desperate beverages, so I drank one and packed another for the road.

I daydream. A lot. I take situations and spin them out, and then get distracted and my mind races off somewhere else. Always have. So I was daydreaming while hopped up on Dew in a silent car speeding through the back hills of Missouri, trying to stay awake.

And I thought of two people fighting in the rain. Why were they fighting? Because they loved each other. But why were they fighting, I wondered. Because they weren’t supposed to be in love. The scene with the hero (hunky, of course) grabbing the heroine (delicate, of course) and kissing her really resonated. But why weren’t they supposed to be in love?

This was the caffeine. Usually, my daydreams meander aimlessly with no point. But I wanted to know why these people were locked in this important battle. And frankly, I had another 2 hours to go, so why not think about it? And then I realized he was her brother-in-law. And he was a lot younger.

Things got interesting. I spent the next two hours imagining the farm they lived on, the reasons behind their complicated relationship, and how it would all work out. You can imagine a lot in 3 1/2 hours on two cans of Dew. A Lot.

So I finally deposited the 92 year old back at her house and tucked my 2 year old into his crib and tried to forget about the interesting tensions between these nameless people in the rain (and no, it wasn’t raining on the drive home) as I told my hubby all about our crazy road trip. Usually, the daydream would be gone by morning. Ethereal things, daydreams. And I don’t have the short term memory to hold onto much, more or less imaginary people. Hell, most days, I can’t remember how old I am. I have to count. (Typical internal conversation when someone asks me my age: Okay, I was born in ’76, and it’s – um – 2008? Yeah. So that’s, uh, that’s 32, right? I’m thirty two?)(No, I’m not exaggerating.)

But they weren’t gone in the morning. They were still there, waiting for me when I woke up. And the next day. Those people waited around all week for me to get off my duff and think about them some more.

So I decided that I had to get them off my chest. If I wrote their little story down, my OCD mind would stop obsessing about them, right? Sure. Twenty pages became 60, 60 became 200, and 200 pages spawned 548 freaking pages of love and loss and love again in the middle of the Great Depression. When I hit 300 pages, I realized I had a book in there, a real book with a beginning, middle, and end, and it was coming out whether I liked it or not. And then my people had kids, and hell, they got their own books, and the grandkid did too. Seriously. Nearly 2,000 pages of one family’s saga in just over a year.

Now, the website. I thought about my hero’s parents. I even started a prequel book for them, but I couldn’t make a beginning for them that wasn’t both dull and depressing. (When it bores me, why would anyone else read them?) But the actual action was pretty interesting, so I decided to do it as a short story – straight to the point. The result is “The Widow of Emerson Farm.” And then I thought that the stories might be a good way to capture readers and drive them to the site – readers like me, who never bought books, but checked them out from the library. So I asked a good friend (same guy whose house I roadtripped to and from with my posse – same guy who provided the all-important Dew) to build me a site. And I love it. He’s bravely going to teach me to maintain it some myself so I can post my own stories without bothering him (he hates it when I say that).

But the point is, the stories are extras. The stories on the website didn’t make it to book form, and they probably never will. Instead they are rewards for people who liked the books enough to look me up online. And they are a marketing tool. That’s why you have to enter your name and email address. I save those, and you lucky people then get emails about blogs and – I’m optimistically confident here – future book publication announcements.

It’s really backwards. The stories are meant to be read after the book, because they fill in several blanks the books leave open. But, currently, no one but select family members and the Lovely Mary, Grammar Goddess, have read the books. And everyone has access to the stories on the website. So I understand your confusion. And I remain optimistic that one day, the blanks will be filled in. Hopefully soon, because natural patience is not something I have in abundance. But I’m working on that whole Zen and the art of waiting thing. Really. Ohm.

So stick with me. Things are getting interesting.