Moment of Truth: Timeline for Making HS Reunion Fantasies a Reality

I am totally turned on by envy Martin in Grosse Pointe Blank.
He's gone to his high school reunion.

One of my dear friends, Mama Milton, went to her high school reunion a few months ago. It sounded like so much fun that I began to wish I'd gone to mine. With all the reconnections I've made thanks to Facebook, I thought it might be not as horrible marginally bearable a real blast to get together with my former classmates.

Then some of the women began posting about meeting to plan a reunion. Our 30th reunion. Lawsy, that seems like ginormous number of years. And I haven't seen these people since I graduated. The momentous event will take place in the fall of 2011, so there's plenty of time to accomplish everything I've been meaning to.

Like dropping a hundred pounds.

Rather than trying to do it all the final week before the reunion, I've decided to spread the loss out over these next two years. Actually, it will be a little less than 2 years - I suspect they'll set the date for some time in September or October. So, it'll be roughly 100 weeks, which means I need to drop a pound a week. Easy as pie!

Pie. That sounds really good, don't you think?

Pumpkin Pie by Toni Dunlap - click on image for her blog

Let's redirect, shall we?

This gradual approach to weight loss will be so simple; truly a piece of cake. Which reminds me of my buddy Shana's post, WTF Wedding Cakes at So Not Zen.

Here's a lovely piece from Tattered Edges at Engaged: A Blog on the Bog.
She's doing NaNoWriMo too! - click on image for her blog

This is not going to help me in my endeavor, is it? My fellow HASAY Club members won't appreciate me putting all these yummy treats in today's post. So let's move on to the next goal I have for my reunion:

To be a famous author with my novel on the NYT bestseller list.

Or at least to have a book published.

Or at least to have a book written, being considered by an agent for representation.

I am hereby participating in NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The NaNoWriMo website describes it as "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

This is a much more short term project. It requires me to write 1612.9 words per day.

So you won't be seeing much of me this month. But hopefully I'll be back on December 1st to share news of my great accomplishment with you.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll share your thoughts on all of this. I'm especially eager to know who else is doing NaNoWriMo. And hear your wild tales of high school reunions. I have such limited experience; I anticipate something like this.

St. Valentine and the Dragon

Amazing Girl Child had her classroom Valentine's Day party yesterday. This selfsame darling little offspring who has to be shoved down the stairs and out the door each morning jumped up and headed off without a backward glance. I wish every day was class party day.

There is something magical about Valentine's Day. At least there is if your teacher insists that if you're going to distribute cards, you have to have one for every student. God bless my daughter's teachers and others like her. I remember some pretty humiliating Valentine's Days in my elementary school years. Some kids got tons of cards. I did not.

Today is the birthday of one of Amazing Boy Child's best friends. Even though this young man lives in Ireland, and we haven't seen him since August 2006, my son and he have kept in touch. They write about their day to day lives, about their cinematic and musical tastes, and share their feelings about growing up. It's a bewildering time, dealing with the challenges of mid-teens. But one thing my son is sure of is that he has a good friend overseas who cares about him. I still remember when we were about to leave Ireland, and I overheard this boy talking with his father on the phone. He was desperate to have some additional time with my son, and wanted to give him a small keepsake, a shiny little dragon figure he treasured. He wanted his Dad to pick him up so he could get the item from his room, then return him to our soon-to-be-sadly-vacated-by-us home. His thirteen year old voice cracked as he pleaded, "I have to come back. He's my friend." The depth of his sincerity touched me. Quite honestly, just thinking about it now touches my heart.

Have I told you all this before? I feel like I have. Maybe I've just been thinking about it a lot. I'm not 18 anymore, and the fluttery feelings of my first romantic love have been replaced by something else even more satisfying. The satisfaction of loving my children, and watching them love others and be loved by those others.

That's a whole lotta love.

Happy Day Before V-Day.


PS I got the cool picture at top from http://www.elfwood.com/art/j/i/jill182rabbit/amandadragheart.jpg.html. Please don't sue me!

From Peter's Friends to My Friends

Make new ^ friends .......... but keep the old* ^ones

one is silver and the other's gold!
*old only in the sense of having been met earlier, not old like aged or decrepit

A while back, I made a new friend. Her superhero blogging name is Bad Mom. You can read about our first meeting here at her blog.

She says what’s in my heart too. Only better.

It’s like when you have a child and think you can’t possibly expand your heart more. That all your capacity for loving is filled up. Then you have another child and realize that you can love them too. Exponential heart growth.

My friendship with Bad Mom has led me to meet a whole bunch of great new in-person friends, the Happy Hour Home Girls. Her comments on my blog’s early posts encouraged me to write more, which led to my making some wonderful new bloggy friends around the world.

One of those friends is Khaye-Mydette Sy Cardenas. Her Melting Chocolate blog is written in the Phillipines. She’s not a native English speaker, but you’d never suspect it from reading her wonderful prose. She makes thinking about the craft of writing so fun.

Khaye honored me with a wonderful Let’s Be Friends award. The award says:
These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.


I’m feeling extremely warm and fuzzy on this snowy, cold day thanks to Khaye's sweet gesture. Before I bestow the little square of hearts on others, I first want to acknowledge all the lovely people who follow my blog. Some of them don’t have blogs. But they are still kind friends. Those who do have blogs certainly fit the bill for this award and you should click on their avatars to go check out what they’re up to. So followers, consider yourself awarded. If you wish to forward the friendship, great. If you don’t, that’s okay too. (I hate chain mail!)

I will try to spend this weekend traveling blogland to find some new friends to introduce to you all. Meanwhile, I am trying to help protect my Amazing Boy Child’s school orchestra program. This economic crunch is threatening to cause the school board to consider cutting the entire thing, grades 5-12. My violinist is alarmed. Off I go to be Amazing Activist Mom!

The Meme Stops Here

Hugh Laurie's character House is addicted to Vicodin.

I am addicted to Hugh Laurie.

My brain is growing so much since I began my journey in the blogosphere! It has to make room to hold all the incredible new things I'm picking up along the way. Those I follow drop little gems of wisdom that amaze and delight me.

Today, I'm writing on assignment. Contain your sense of wonder. Yes, I know you thought I couldn't handle direction. (Even though I am an excellent traveler. Get it? Direction? Like in being directed to do something, but also the points on the compass. Ha ha ha. I make such funny jokes.)
I've been hit with a meme. You seasoned travelers of blogland undoubtedly know what this means, but for anyone who doesn't, (like me, six minutes ago) I will tell all. Or at least some.
My exhaustive research led me here, The Daily Meme. It's an interesting place, and you should go there. But don't depart until you're done reading my post du jour. Essentially, it defines meme thusly: In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions.

Except I did not just decide to answer this question. It was delibrerately assigned to me. The very humourous and lovely Shana at So Not Zen tagged me and four other bloggers to write about this meme. This is a great honour. She charmed me by referring to me as one of her "happy hour homegirls."

So without further ado, The Meme Question...as phrased by Shana:

The rules are list five things that I am addicted to and then pass it on to five more blogs.

1. Travel. I really like to go places. Getting there is half the fun. (Cliche du jour!) Just the thought of making a trip somewhere gets my heart to go pitty pat. I think I'll go plan a trip as soon as I'm done with this.

2. History. I suppose this is connected to #1, because I prefer to actually visit historical sites rather than just read about them. My friend Stephanie gets this. We spent three and a half hours chatting, eating coffee and croissants yesterday. I wish you could have seen how dreamy-eyed she got while recounting her visits to places in Paris and London where famous writers lived and worked. What a dork. I love her for that. Because I get equally mushy. We may not have perfected tardis technology yet, but we can walk into the same bathroom that our historical heroes did.

3. Tangents. As you well know, if you've read anything I've written or listened to me talk for more than two minutes, I am easily distracted and can expound on tangents. This can be considered charming or irritating. I prefer to believe it is charming in me, although sometimes irritating in others. I will not speak further of this here, to avoid the risk of going off on a ....you know.

4. My children's laughter. I know this is sickeningly sweet, but please just deal with it. My two kids have the best sounding laughs on Earth. And I thrill to the sound of them like a junkie on really good drugs. This is not to say that anything which pours from their mouths is uniformly pleasing. I can live without the backsass quite nicely. (Does that cut the sticky sweetness for you?)

5. Breaking the Chain. Whenever I receive something that mandates I send it out to 6 friends or 10 women I like or 23 other fellow steak eaters or everyone in my address book, I rebel. I make the conscious decision that whatever it is, it ends with me. Finis. Of course, I break that rule frequently when the something is a vital political action alert because I know that asking my chums to take action will make a difference. Then goodness will spread over the land.

So I'm not passing this meme on because I am a chain breaker. Of course, if anyone wants to blog about five of their addictions, they are free to do so. Because this is a free country! (Bonus cliche! Lucky you.)