Well, it’s day 3 of the great Washington, D.C. Road Trip to the RWA National Conference.

A Quick Recap:

1. The Museum of the American Indian was awesome. Not so much in the ‘old stuff on display’ way, but really interesting, thought provoking exhibits, several of which will wind up in a book by tomorrow. Did you know there’s an active skateboard culture on reservations? Do now!

2. Hotels in Cumberland, MD (famous for its Gap) are kind of hard to come by. But you can drive from Western Illinois to Maryland in one day. If you’re a little nuts.

3. I was wrong. Janet Evanovich was not at the autograph event. But instead of being really bummed, my mother walked around and looked at every single one of the 500+ authors at the signing and had a grand time anyway. She’s out at some museum as we speak.

4. I met my agent this morning. Good meeting. I like my agent in person, and she seemed to tolerate me pretty well. And I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up, but three editors at Major New York Publishing Houses have asked to see more of my works. My agent feels good about this. I feel ecstatic!

That’s about it for right now. Tonight is the Fire and Ice award reception–further awards-based updates as they occur. I’ve met a few people here that are neat and I don’t think I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth too much.

So far, the trip is a success!

I know this is a sign. But I just can’t tell what kind.

What do you think? Is a local furniture store (that shall remain unidentified-but let’s just say it shares a highly popular name with a bunch of girls) running an ad that ‘celebrates’ the 4th of July by offering a “17.76%” discount a sign of the Apocalypse? Or is it a good thing, helping people who’s brains are otherwise fried by sun, sparklers, and grilling remember a significant date in American history?

I’m going with Apocalypse.

I know the retailers are desperate, that times are overall desperate, but this is verging on ridiculous. The marketing campaign for Back To School is already in full swing, and has been for almost three weeks. And it’s July 2nd, people!

But that’s nothing. We were in a craft store a week and a half ago, and they had all of their ‘fall harvest/Thanksgiving’ merchandise out. I was horrified, really. And then I turned around and saw . . . a Christmas tree. Followed by five aisles-FIVE!- of Christmas ornaments, wrapping paper, and cards.

This was still June, people. It was June 22nd. And Christmas was in the house. You know, it’s just like a big ol’ marketing middle finger to the rest of summer, fall, even Halloween. From a sales point of view, it says, “Screw now.”

Well, I say, Screw Them. I’m not buying crap from stores that don’t grasp the concept of this nifty little device called ‘the calendar.’ I refuse to let my now–imperfect as it may be–invalidated just to be guilt-tripped into spending money I don’t have on crap I don’t need. In this economic climate, I get to vote with my wallet, and you know darned well that vote’s going to be counted. Power to the purse!

Who the hell wants to think about Thanksgiving right now, anyway? This is peak Joy of Summer time! I’m going to take my boy to a summer ball game and we’re going to stay late to watch the fireworks. We’ll eat sno-cones and hope to catch a fly ball and watch the clouds take shape, and then maybe go to a summer festival or play some mini golf. We’re going to just enjoy the here and now.

One day at a time, baby! It’s not just a bumper sticker. Now. Be a part of it!

WARNING: The following blog was written by a woman (me) who has two degrees in English. I earned them. I might as well use them. Sorry.

What the heck am I writing? What on God’s green Earth is a “new western?”

For Pete’s sake, what was an ‘old’ western?

What we think of as the “western” genre today is largely defined by the people who did the defining. Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour wrote the classic westerns, set between 1860 and 1890, and John Wayne was the western for a long time. These were your standard lone hero, sweeping frontier, horses and cowboys and maybe some Indians who may or may not have been ignorant savages, and some sort of good woman who needed defending or hooker with a heart of gold.

Then along came Clint. Mr. Eastwood singlehandedly redefined the genre, first in the spaghetti westerns, and then later in Unforgiven. Heck, those of us with one or more degrees in English can even claim that his last acting role in Gran Torino is a western – set in urban Detroit. Westerns became less good-guy-white-hat/bad-guy-black-hat, and more morally ambiguous. Even the ultimate cowboy Wayne lost his cowboy moral clarity at the end of his career.

Science fiction – as western? It’s true, and not just because Joss Wheldon made that TV show Firefly/movie Serenity. You got your hero (Hello, Kirk), your Final Frontier, your ambiguous legal framework, your barely containable savages (aliens) etc. Just with phasers.

So, given this non-exhaustive review of the ‘western’, what am I writing?

To be totally honest, I didn’t even know I was writing ‘westerns’ until I had an agent reject me after reading the full manuscript of the Noseless Cowboy. Her short email said, “I normally love westerns, but the characters just didn’t work for me.” And I went, “DAMN!” and then, “It’s a western?” I had been laboring under the impression that I was writing Women’s Literary Fiction with STRONG Romantic Elements. So, when I sent out the next round of queries, I dropped the Literary Fiction part and stuck in Western (with Paranormal Elements). And my agent? She was looking for the “next new western.”

So, what is it? Three of the four books take place primarily around or in the West. (Warrior, Lawyer primarily takes place at Harvard, but they do go west in the last half.) There are cowboys. They do cowboy things, like ride horses to herd cattle with six-shooters strapped to their legs. They have a problem with authority, and someone needs to be rescued. Bad guys pop up, too.

But. My cowboys are, more often than not, Lakota Indians. And why should cowboys have all the fun? I have cowgirls – who aren’t hookers or the one-dimensional damsels who need to be rescued. They get to do some of the rescuing, too. My cowboys drive trucks. They have cell phones and Internet connections and DVDs of Disney flicks. They have advanced degrees in business, law, and secondary education.

Old stories of revenge and honor, love and loss, all set in a new world. Ours.

The New Western.

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

Given the complete and total insanity I’ve been occasionally overwhelmed with this year – The Patio That Wouldn’t Die (still not dead), the Call from the Agent, the New Project That Wouldn’t Die (sun room windows from the 1920s – way over my head here!), Massive Revisions on one book while finishing up another, coworkers on vacation (which requires me to work – GASP! – a full work day, five days a week!), incredibly bad sleep, and oh, what the hell, let’s scour the house from top to bottom for stuff we can sell at a last minute garage sale – I clearly see a bold new definition of insanity.

Doing a bunch of different things and expecting the same results. Because to think that in the midst of one of the busiest times in my life, I’m going to keep doing what I normally do is absolutely, totally, and hysterically insane.

I mean, in a few weeks, the contractors are going to rip out a wall in my office. I won’t even have a place to write for a while.

Luckily, revisions – Massive Revisions – take a different kind of brain cell than the one that comes up with new characters and things for them to do.

Massive Revisions – like when the agent says something along the lines of “So, can you finesse everything that happens after the bad guy dies into one chapter? Or maybe an epilogue?” It’s only four chapters. You know what I said? I said, “I think I can make it two short chapters.” And she said go with that.

This is different, no doubt. But it’s going to work. Insanity. It’s the new black!

The Authorial Mom’s lawn died over the weekend. Let us have a moment of silence as we mark the passing of this unremarkable plot of grass.

Immediate cause of death was not available, but reports on the ground indicated that a construction incident with a vehicle, identified only as a ‘Bobcat,’ was the chief cause of death. Additional reports indicated that a rainfall total of 2-4 inches over 34 hours may have sealed the lawn’s fate.

The Authorial Mom was quoted as saying, “It wasn’t the best of lawns – had a lot of weeds, lot of animals that had burrowed into it – but it was our lawn, and we loved it nonetheless.” Visibly upset, the Authorial Mom continued, “We (sniff) never even got a chance to mow it this year!” Further comment could not be made.

Other members of the family were not as distraught. The Hubby was overheard saying, “I’m glad it’s gone. I’m gonna get me some sod!” But when this reporter pressed him on that, he denied ever wishing ill to his yard. Local birds were also apparently delighted with the demise of the lawn, tweeting to this reporter through a translator that the worms and grubs turned up in the carnage were, “good eats.” News of this further upset the Authorial Mom, who ran off while bemoaning the loss of not only her grass, but the worms for her garden.

The lawn is survived by a large (five feet tall by twelve feet wide) pile of dirt and ruts that may have been made by the same killer Bobcat that are as much as three feet deep and still filled with water four days later. This reporter was awed by the amount of water the dead lawn was no longer able to absorb.

Yes, the lawn will be sorely missed.

Services will not be held.

Business note: The agent passed. Back to square one (again!) But now, on with the story!

So let me set the scene for you.

Jason and I had been dating for four months. After the third date, I was pretty darned sure he was the one. After just a month, I drove him south to meet his parents and drop him off for Thanksgiving, and I’d pick him back up when I left my folks. On the drive down, we discussed living together. We were going to try to tough it out until my lease expired in September, but by February, we knew we couldn’t make it. So we were looking at apartments, making plans, and generally being dippy people in love.

And here came Valentine’s Day. I had not, personally, celebrated this holiday in the seven preceding years. The closest I’d come was my senior year of college, where the guy I had been dating didn’t call on The Big Day and broke up with me when I finally got a hold of him two days later.

So there was some residual bitterness towards the day.

But this was different! I had a man! I was in love! I was an independent woman with a paying job!

Oh, yeah. Weekend getaway!

Valentine’s Day was on Wednesday that year, I think. Middle of the week. So the weekend before, we drove through a ‘wintry mix’ of snow, sleet, and freezing rain to Galena, Illinois. We rented a cottage at this bed and breakfast, and just had fun.

It was a good test of the relationship, too, because this little cottage had a bed downstairs with a fireplace and such. But it also had a second floor, open like a loft. That’s where the bathroom was. No doors, no walls. The view of the toilet was blocked by the shower, but ‘open’ doesn’t begin to describe this floor plan. When I told my sister Leah about this (after the fact) she started hyperventilating at the thought of no doors on the bathroom. But she has issues . . .

Anyway. The weekend was great, once we got done giggling about the bathroom. We drove home, made it one piece, and carried on.

Now, this next point is important. Now that I was an independent woman with a paying job, I had returned to one of my teen-age passions – horseback riding. I was taking lessons (from a girl not quite old enough to drive!) at a local barn. I rode on Tuesdays.

So, after our romantic weekend getaway, I went to my lesson on Tuesday. It had warmed up from the three weeks of sub-freezing temps, so the ground had softened a little in the arena.

My instructor (can you call a 15 yr. old an instructor?) had me going over trot poles. What that means to you non-riders is that there were four 2-inch PVC pipes laid out on the ground, and I had to get my crotchy old horse trotting at the proper pace to get him to step OVER the poles, not on them.

This horse was in no damn mood to trot over poles. Probably 20 years old, this old guy just wanted to be left alone so he could munch hay. So as I was trotting around the arena towards corners, this stubborn old horse tried to convince me that he thought we were going to trot right into a wall, and therefore he needed to STOP TROTTING to avert disaster.

The instructor was not amused, and neither was I. (It’s um, painful to stop trotting suddenly, ya know?) So she’s yelling at me to keep kicking through the corners, because I am the boss of this team, not the horse! So I kick and kick and kick, with moderate success.

But then the horse decided to get even for all this kicking. What happened next was entirely my fault. I gave him a window, and he just took it. I was so focused on kick, kick, kicking, I stopped steering.

Let me tell you how big of a mistake that was.

Before I knew what had happened, the horse decided that, damn it, if I wanted him to turn, he was going to freaking TURN. He PIVOTED sideways, throwing me completely off balance. So now, I’m still on the horse, but I have NO control. And we are now heading on a diagonal directly for the trot poles. Not straight on, but diagonal.

I saw in my mind’s eye the horse hitting one on the angle, breaking his leg, and rolling on me. We were both going to die.

So, with everything I had, I yanked him hard to the right, which threw my weight to the left. Now, I was going to fall off this horse and land on the trot poles myself, with many broken bones.

As my sister Leah would say, “Hell, no.”

So I overcompensated and threw my weight back to the right, which spooked the already confused horse. The combined shift in my weight and his direction launched me …. right into the newly thawed floor of the arena.

The horse immediately stopped trotting. Damn it all, he won.

And he really had, because any good horsewoman knows that if a horse throws you, you get your ass right back on that horse and teach him who’s the boss. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breath.

Now, luckily, I had gotten a cell phone a few months earlier after a traumatic night of being stuck in traffic and being unable to get to Jason’s apartment until we were both frantic with worry. And even luckier, my friend the Lovely Zen-Master Becca lived less than five minutes from the barn. She had to come get me because I couldn’t even hope to drive my stick shift home. I was still having trouble breathing.

She picked me up (literally), drove me back to her place, packed me in frozen peas, and made the executive decision that I wasn’t going to die.

The next morning, I went to Ambulatory Care, got x-rayed, and was pronounced broken. Two ribs on the right side, cracked clean through. When I’d hit the ground, my right elbow had driven right up there and snapped them good. The good news (yes, there was some) was that the ground had thawed just enough that I didn’t break the arm I landed on, and more importantly, didn’t break my pelvis, which I also landed on. I hit that so hard that it took a week for the bruise to surface, and another month for it to go away.

That’s how I spent my Valentine’s morning. They gave me Vicoden, but both my father and sister Hannah had violent vomiting when they’d taken it. And no one with broken ribs wants to throw up. So I toughed it out with ibuprofen.

So I called into work. And Iris, the receptionist (you know the kind – old, smokes 2 packs a day and has the voice to prove it) said, “You HAVE to come to work today!”

“Iris, I broke my ribs!”

“But you HAVE to come to work! You have flowers here! You’re the only one who got flowers delivered at work!!!!” She was adamant to the point of hysterical.

Oh, that man. He’d never had anyone to celebrate Valentine’s Day with, so he was all in. Even after a romantic weekend, he’d made reservations at the Pump Room for a candlelit dinner for two. He’d sent flowers to work so everyone would know I was loved.

And I broke two damned ribs.

So you know what I did? That’s right. I sucked it up and drove into the city. I took only the back roads because I couldn’t shift above second. Hell, I couldn’t shift out of second, but I’m the kind of driver who can start from second too, so it worked. I couldn’t buckle my belt, so for 35 minutes, the car binged at me. The Customer Service manager saw me first and brought the flowers out to me, Two dozen roses, plus Belgian chocolates.

Oh, that man. It was enough to make a girl cry out of sheer joy, but that made my ribs hurt, so I didn’t. The manager then buckled me in for the rest of the trip down.

He was waiting for me, somewhere between panic and hysteria. He gamely said we didn’t have to go to dinner, but screw that. This was Valentine’s Day. I’d made it this far. He just had to work the stick while I worked the clutch.

And we got there. I’ve never been so glad to see valet parking in my life. The Pump Room is Old School dining. The likes of Frank Sinatra and such were old regulars back in the day. Cozy booths, exceptional service, a live band playing the best of the romantic songbook.

The matire de headed towards our table with a crisp click of his heels. I couldn’t do much more than two steps a minute – did I mention the ribs? – and Jason was holding tight to me. So the matire de gets to our table – clear on the other side of the room, of course – and turns around, and we’re all of six steps in the door. He rushed back and took my other arm and the two of them practically carried me the rest of the way.

After that, dinner went smoothly. Another round of ibuprofen kicked in, and a Chicago Bears lineman got down on one knee and proposed in the middle of the evening (we ran into them at coat check, and she showed me the ring. HOLY MOLY, that was a lot of diamonds!). By the time we (slowly) made our way out of the restaurant, I even insisted that we stop, right on the edge of the dance floor, and sway gently. I wanted to dance on Valentine’s Day, dang it!

Needless to say, I spent the night with him, because I couldn’t drive myself home. And, needless to say, it was a irritatingly chaste sleep over. It was more like being tucked in by my father, what with the concerned kiss on the forehead and all. But I was beat, and hurt like hell.

But I’d done it. I’d done my very best to ruin Valentine’s Day, and then stubbornly refused to let it go. Thank God we’d gone to Galena the weekend before, not after. That would have been even worse!

Now, we laugh about it as we eat our take-out dinner and share chocolates with our little boy. No overnight vacations, but also no broken ribs.

I like it better this way.

Man, what a couple of weeks.

Remember last week? Remember me being sick and getting rejected, all on the same day? Yeah, it got worse on Friday, when I managed to drag my butt back to work. My boss informed me that I was going to have to work on a day-by-day basis – as in, if there was work for me to do, I could do it. If not, I had to go home and not get paid for that day.

Oy. Damned economy!

Now, it’s not like me and my family are one step away from the curb. My hubby is in no danger of losing his job anytime soon – not when he’s working 12+ hour days, 6 to 7 days a week. He’s the breadwinner of the family, and there’s a lot of dough left to rise. (Tangent: does that metaphor even make sense? I’ve been hitting the metaphor/simile box pretty hard recently, and I’m not sure if I’m making sense. Let me know.)

But my paycheck pays for two things. Daycare for the toddler, and home improvements. Over 3/4 of my piddly little paycheck goes to daycare.

As I have previously stated, I love daycare. My son – an only child who’s probably going to stay that way – gets to interact with other short people and work on important concepts like ‘sharing’ and ‘establishing pecking orders’ and the like. He couldn’t get that kind of socialization at home with me. I’m the top hen in this house. Plus, I’m a mom who embraces Quality, not Quantity. I’m a better mom if I get the regular opportunity to listen to music that isn’t Backyardigans or Thomas the Tank Engine and read things besides Corduroy and Dr. Seuss and talk about things that aren’t related to potty misfires and who tattled on whom. I know some people don’t agree with this concept, but it works for me.

But if I’m not bringing in a steady paycheck, it’s hard to justify the expense of daycare. The prospect of being a stay-at-home mom again is looming large in this house.

But I have options. I called the employment agency who set me up with this job almost three years ago and left a message. Then I went by after work. These women are amazing. They’d already made one call for me for a tech writer position. (Although I have no idea if I am capable of being a tech writer. The writer part – no problem. The tech part? Iffy.)

Plus, they had called me several months ago about a position in their office, but we were busy at work, so I passed. When I went in to talk to them, I mentioned that maybe I should have taken that position.

“Well,” the manager hemmed. “The woman we hired didn’t work out, and we never filled the position again because things were slow. But . . .” Oh, that was a happy conjunction, right there. “We just got a major contract, and things will be picking up . . . We were thinking of filling it again.”

So I threw my hat into that ring right away. I left feeling pretty decent. Something will turn up in the next few weeks.

So Monday, I was home. I decided to spend part of the morning sending off new queries for the Noseless Cowboy book. This put me in a bad mood, because I hate rejection.

But then the weirdest thing happened. Less than 24 hours after I sent the query, an agent requested the first 30 pages. This agent is in Colorado, so I’m hopeful that she’ll be able to handle the concept of the Noseless Cowboy better. And I have actually gone to a talk this agent gave, and heard directly from the horse’s mouth how her agency got 75,000 queries in 2007, requested fulls on 75, and only signed 7.

As the Oscar contenders say, it’s an honor just to be nominated.

So things are swinging back up. My boss at work is tackling a new project, so I should be able to get two days a week (just enough to cover daycare) while I wait for the employment agency to get back to me.

And this agent thing – well, it could still end with another pass. But even if it does, I’m feeling tons more confident. Two rounds of queries, two requests. Not a fluke, but an upward trend.

This is going to happen. Eventually.

Programming note: Stay tuned for next week. Since you all enjoyed How I Met My Hubby so much, I’ve decided to tell you all about How I Ruined Valentine’s Day. Seriously.

So this is late. My apologies to the two people who looked for a new blog today and didn’t find one. But I have an excuse! A lousy one, but still, an excuse!

Today was an example of what you might call Life Happens. But in a good way.

My Mom and Gram (who will be 94 in exactly two months) came up for the day today. I knew they weren’t going to get here until 10, but then I remembered some errands I needed to do, and that left me with all of 10 minutes to sit and contemplate blogging. And instead, I spent ten minutes thinking about Lakota cowboys riding horses without their shirts on.

So it’s not like I wasted the time.

I’ll have time this afternoon, I reasoned. Gram is, after all, Old, and will probably need to come home and rest for an hour or so in between bouts of shopping and playing with her great-grandson.

Boy, that didn’t happen. Gram is the original frugal German in our family tree – I suppose her parents might have also been frugal, but for me, the line starts with her. A normal shopping expedition with her involves a couple of known events:

1. Searching for something she ‘needs’ (which is almost always those little old lady double knit pants with the solid band of elastic around the waist – you know the ones)
2. Yelling at hapless clerks who do not understand what she is looking for (which is almost always because the clerks didn’t know such pants still existed, more or less that anyone would actually want to BUY them)
3. Sitting down to rest (because she’s just not as spry as she was when she was 82)
4. Finally finding what she ‘needs’
5. Deciding that she doesn’t need the item right now and will wait (thereby guaranteeing a repeat of the entire laborious process)

Always. This is a given when Gram says she wants to go shopping. I suppose it’s because the pants are never on sale for $1.98, but I’ve never seen her buy herself something without major arm twisting on behalf of me or Mom, and even then she will complain that she either spent too much on something she didn’t need or didn’t get the right version of the item for weeks on end. As you might gather, shopping with Gram is not what some might call “fun.”

But today, something magical happened. Well, not at first. At first, we went to a store, Gram yelled at some clerks who were doing their dollar best to find pants with all elastic, not just elastic in the back, and then sat on a bench while Mom and I tried on stuff that was 90% off.

(Side note: Can you smell the desperation in the air at mass merchandisers? Wow. Usually the only time of year you see 90% off is for crappy Christmas decorations no one wants around St. Patrick’s Day. But in this economic climate? The stores we were at had racks and racks – and several more racks in the back – of stuff at 70%, 80%, and 90% off. One local department store sent out flyers yesterday advertising 75% off the whole damn store (Levis excluded). Today another store was advertising buy one, get one on just about everything but the diamonds. The clawing hopelessness was contagious. I was morbidly depressed after shopping at one store. But then I bought some pearls and felt much better, because, man, they were on sale!)

Back to the story. After that predictable shopping disaster, we picked up the toddler from daycare and hit the mall. And after a brief stop in the Misses section, we rerouted to the Petites (because Gram was, in her heyday, all of 5 feet tall. She’s down to almost 4″10′ now. Or is that 4’10”? Whatever. She’s short.) We found the pants. In her size. She tried them on (which has only happened about twice before in my memory), and then – this was the shocking part – bought them. No clerks were harmed in the process, even!

My mom – who figured she had about 40 minutes of browsing before Gram decided not to buy pants – wandered over to make sure I still had line-of-sight on a toddler after about 10 minutes. “Where’s Gram?” She asked.

“Buying pants.”

Mom’s jaw hit the ground so fast that it bounced back up and knocked her backwards. “She’s buying PANTS?” This after we’d been shopping for pants at other stores for several hours.

Yes, it was a weird day here. Not only did Gram buy pants, but she bought other things as well. She even bought a jacket! Taken together, she bought a whole outfit!

Needless to say, there was no afternoon break to recharge. The closest we got was 15 minutes at the cafe at Sam’s Club. (Can you call that a cafe? They do, but I’m not sure it’s really a cafe.) She downed half of that massive cup of Coca Cola, and we were off again.

She had fun. Mom had fun. I had fun. Even the toddler had fun (fun helped along with a matchbox car wash set on sale for $1.65, but fun nonetheless). And the truly shocking thing was that we all had fun together.

We got home at 6:40, at least three hours after I thought we would, which barely gave us enough time to turn around and pick up the hubby from his fun-filled 13 hour January work day (it gets better in February; March is a dream come true!)

So, as you can see, I am just now getting around to this blogging thing, because today I had to work on one of my New Year’s Resolutions, which was Be a Better Daughter and Granddaughter.

Life Happens. But in a good way.

In my capacity as Authorial Mom, I thought I would offer these 29 steps to easier, more beautiful presents. Just follow this easy program to achieve the same kind of Christmas Satisfaction that the Authorial Mom basks in practically year-round.

1. Buy awesome gifts that your child(ren) will love, like the aircraft carrier complete with die-cast planes and helicopters, real aircraft sounds, and a control tower.

2. Hide it in the garage and pray your child(ren) won’t notice it.

3. Assemble your wrapping supplies: Festive paper, sharp scissors, and clear tape.

4. Realize someone used your best scissors to mutilate crayons. Decide to forge ahead anyway.

5. Heft aircraft carrier out of garage. Realize that it’s 2 1/2 feet long and 9 inches tall at the tower. Not exactly regularly shaped. And because you bought it for a song at a thrift store, it did not come with in-store wrapping, or even a box. Its only covering is a garbage bag.

6. Begin frantically tearing through your insane stash of boxes accumulated over a lifetime of hording for something big enough to fit an aircraft carrier.

7. Repeat process with festive holiday bags. Again, come up short – literally.

8. Decide to make your own box, just like your father-in-law does.

9. Mutilate six boxes trying to find enough matching parts to encase an aircraft carrier.

10. Give up trying to match box sizes after giving yourself the mother of all paper cuts. Go get a glass of wine and a band-aid. Several band-aids.

11. Newly fortified, return to the battle scene. Begin taping box parts around aircraft carrier.

12. Realize control tower isn’t removable. Remove it anyway (using the tips of your ruined scissors) and tape it to the side.

13. Run out of tape.

14. Get another glass of wine while tearing the house apart for more tape. Settle on packing tape. It’s still clear, after all.

15. Return to the battle scene. Experience a pang of liberal guilt for giving innocent child a war toy for Christmas. Finish wine and get over it quickly.

16. Begin wrapping festive paper around jerry-rigged box-like covering.

17. Run out of festive paper, leaving a three inch gap between edges.

18. More wine as you debate how to cover the gap.

19. Settle on using different festive paper. Reason that Santa has to improvise, too.

20. Another paper cut.

21. The secret to beautifully wrapped presents is the crisp creases on the edges. Realize that there are no edges on your aircraft carrier you can crease the paper on without poking the tower out through the side.

22. Poke the tower out through the side.

23. Begin rooting around for Christmas ribbon to wrap over the hole the tower made.

24. Find acceptable ribbon. Begin wrapping around carrier.

25. Run out of ribbon.

26. Realize that all children like bows. Dump out whole bag of bows and apply liberally.

27. Stand back and, glass of wine in hand, admire your dedicated handiwork.

28. Overcome by holiday spirits, go lay down until Christmas is over.

There! Wasn’t that easy? And the true reward for all your hard work will come Christmas morning, when your child(ren) will rush down, see the highly festive package under the tree, demolish the whole thing in under three seconds, and spend the rest of the day building sheds for trains he already has out of the mutilated box parts and bows, leaving the aircraft carrier to collect dust in the corner. Finally arrive at:

29. Next year, all the presents will be in garbage bags. With a bow.

Okay, so the polling feature didn’t go over too well. Don’t have to do that again unless everyone just demands it. For the record, The 24/7 Media Cycle scares the most people, all three of you.

Anyway, moving on! I’ve been thinking about wine a lot recently. First, Sam’s Club opened up in town, and we bought a bottle of Riesling that was so big we had to rearrange our fridge to get it to fit. I think it’s three bottles worth, all for $11.82. And what with election coverage and stuff, a glass (or two) of wine at the end of the day has been kind of nice.

Ironically, though, I’ve been working my way through the final re-writes of The Best They Could, where the hero Bobby is struggling to put his life back together after wallowing in the pits of alcoholism. (He does. Eventually, like in all my stories, everyone gets a happily ever after. Eventually.)

And I’ve been to two book release parties and one Halloween party in one week alone (usually, that much socializing would last me months), and liquor was prominently featured at all three. But, as you may recall, my hubby is technically blind, so I’m the permanent sober driver of the family. Emphasis on the sober.

We go to this Halloween party every year, but in the past it’s been held at the hosts’ house, three blocks from where we live. No driving, no sober driver, see? It’s really the one party where I get to cut loose and get sloshed. But this year they had it at a hall. (Honestly, can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want drunken revelers running amok through my house wearing weird outfits either.) So I drank water.

Usually, when I walk to and from this party, I talk to just about everyone, wine glass in hand. And, because the other vampires and pirates have also got wine glasses in their hands, they listen and even laugh at the weirdness I spout. (For those of you who know me, you might realize it only gets weirder when my inhibitions fall to the wayside. I won’t take it personally if you shuddered at the thought.) A win win, really, except for the hangovers.

But at the party this year, water in hand, I talked to almost no one but my hubby. We did manage to talk to a few other people, but that was maybe twenty minutes out of two and a half hours.

Last night, we went to the book christening party last night for Saadia Ali Aschermann’s new volume of poetry, Words Gone Wild. (Yes, I expect you to read it. The poems are short, easy to understand, and crackle with an erotic edge that you just cannot get from Robert Frost.) But this party only emphasized my social lameness. We were at a wine bar, for goodness’ sakes, with other people sitting around drinking, and besides talking to Saadia (who I already know), I managed to compliment a woman on her necklace, and she said “Thanks.” Another woman took our picture and showed it to us. “I think it’s a nice picture,” she gushed. “You two aren’t having an affair, are you? This is going up on Saadia’s site.” She was quite relieved that we were married – to each other – and moved off to take other pictures of other people. That was the extent of my conversations with other people.

So I’m sitting at the bar, wondering how on earth I’m going to ever be able to network and schmooze like Saadia does, and I starting thinking about me and wine. When we’d gone to see my old friend Erik in Minnesota this summer, he’d been shocked – really, truly shocked – when I had three hard lemonades during and after dinner. “I didn’t think you drank,” he cautiously asked. “Didn’t used to,” I answered.

And I didn’t. I had two, maybe three SIPS of alcohol before I turned twenty one. In college, I was the sober walker (you know, the person who knows which way campus is at all times and makes sure none of the group gets left behind in a gutter) when I went out with my friends (which wasn’t often). Part of it was that I didn’t like losing the control. When I watched other people drink, they all wound up looking, acting, and sounding like loons. I had no desire to look more like a loon than I already do, and they were plenty entertaining on their own. Part of it was (and is) that I do not like the taste of beer, the college beverage of choice. And part of it is that booze costs a lot of money, and I’m damn cheap (ahem, I meant frugal).

After I did turn 21, I had to rely on friends like Erik to order for me. “What should I drink?” I asked on the occasions when I was going to plunk down the money. “Um . . . . .” and they’d scratch their heads. “Amaretto sour? That’s fruity.” I swear, I probably only drank amaretto sours for maybe five years, and still probably only had 20 of them. When Erik came back from the Peace Corps (you should ask him about that), he and Joshua and I broke into a 19 year old bottle of whiskey – the really good stuff. I got one sip down, and that gagged me. (True friends, they laughed hysterically.) Seriously, my first hangover was the first one of those Halloween parties. That’s right. I didn’t have A Hangover until I was 31.

My hubby, in his foodie capacity, has been diligently working on introducing me slowly to wine over the last eight years, and I still can’t handle red. But I find that I do drink much more now than I ever have. All those flavanoids, I like to reason. Wine has been scientifically proven to be good for you in small doses (true, red is better, but hey, can’t win them all). Riesling, hard ciders and lemonades – maybe its that I’ve found something that tastes good. Maybe it’s being run ragged by a three year old. Maybe it’s knowing that my hubby is always near, so if I lose some that control I always hated to let go of, he’ll keep me from doing something foolish.

But at least a small part of it is the realization that a glass or two of wine erases the nervous pit from my stomach, eases back the social anxiety that has me fidgeting constantly, and lets me just talk to a stranger. It worked best at the conference I went to in April, where, with one glass of Riesling, I was actually able to strike up a conversation with the editor at the bar and not (I most sincerely hope) stick my foot in my mouth. I was practically paralyzed with the wine – without, I’m sure I couldn’t have done it. Sure, maybe I talked a little bit louder or faster than was ideal, but that was one of those times when talking too loud is better than not talking at all.

I hope. After all, it’s been six months since I mailed the partial. I hope every day that that conversation at the bar did me some good. I’ll let you know when I find out. And then we can celebrate over a glass of wine!