A little trouble and a lot of fun

This summer, my partner and I are moving back to the town where I went to college. He's going back to school to study culinary arts -- YUM!

Yesterday was the application deadline for the summer term at this college. Said college is two and a half hours away from our house, so you would think he could just mail in his application.

But. There is an application fee. And we didn't have the money till Saturday.

I had a doctor's appointment anyway, so I took a day off work yesterday and we planned on heading out of town early in the morning to get everything done.

We slid into the car at five and turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing but crickets.

Okay, so we knew this day was coming. For weeks, the car has been refusing to start at random moments, then roaring to life minutes later as if nothing ever happened. You'd think we would have taken the car to the garage at that point to find out what was wrong.

But garages have never been kind to Dooley-Lilly cars. We take our cars to the garage and the mechanic humanely euthanizes them. Our cars do not get clean bills of health. They get the kiss of death. Garages are where Dooley-Lilly cars go to die.

So we tend to procrastinate about seeing a mechanic. Just a little. And if the car was willing to pretend that nothing ever happened, well, then, so were we.

Then last week, the car shut off while Jake was doing 50 on the twisted back roads of our county. Thank goodness there were no speeding coal trucks on his tail. But by then, we were broke and waiting on payday -- no money to take the car to the garage and find out whether or not it would live.

Saturday, there was high water all around us. The creeks and rivers in our county were on the verge of bursting their banks. All over the state, reports came in of floods, of closed roadways and wet basements and flood shelters in churches and fire stations. Facebook was nothing but a constant stream of photos from various corners of the state: "High water in Charleston." "The Greenbrier is up." "Check out my wet basement." "This used to be a trailer park."

We, being us, decided to make a quick run out to see the creek at its highest point. Because we're stupid like that. We also decided to take the dogs, just in case we couldn't get back. We made it just a few miles out of town and realized that more rainclouds had blown in and that if it started raining, the creek that was lying next to the road, touching the bridge and sending small waves across the yellow line, was going to flood the road completely and block our path home.

The first few drops of rain fell just as the car died.

Screeching, laughing, scaring the dogs, we wrestled the car to its senses and zipped home before it could shut off again. We made it just as the storm came.

So we were pretty sure we needed to see a mechanic, and we planned on stopping by the garage on our way out of town early, early, early Monday morning. Which we would have done, had the car started. But it was no longer willing to pretend.

No big deal, we said. We'll call a tow truck, ride with it to the garage, get this handled. We can still get Jake applied to school. We can still make it out of town.

Town. Ah, our little town. There's only one tow guy listed, and apparently, he sleeps late. It all came down to Joe the Tow Guy, who apparently was having a bit of a lie-in Monday morning. He Would. Not. Answer. His. Phone.

At eleven, six hours after we planned on leaving and in utter desperation, we called a tow truck from several towns away and he came as quickly as he could, which was none too quick. While we stood outside waiting for him, something large and red caught my eye for the very first time:

NEED A TOW? CALL US! RELIABLE 24-HOUR SERVICE.

Apparently this billboard has been at the gas station across from my house, facing my front window, for weeks. I swear on all that is holy, this is the first time I ever laid eyes on it -- twenty minutes too late for it to help us!

We rode in the cab with the tow guy while he stopped to run a few errands, finally dropped us by the garage, and charged us sixty bucks for his trouble. The garage guys doubled over in laughter when they found the problem. A loose battery cable. Nothing. They didn't charge us, figuring we'd paid enough for the tow bill.

So, sixty dollars poorer and quite relieved that the car survived its garage trip, we finally dashed across the state to get Jake's paperwork done. The rest of the day went off smoothly. He got his paperwork completed. I got to listen in on a lecture from one of my favorite professors. We had food that did not originate in our remote and limited county. And we got to see old friends we'd missed. Plus, we went to a bookstore and a Starbucks, neither of which we'd seen in months.

The power was off in town while we were there, which was odd, but not unpleasant. It was nice to walk along in our old favorite spot, a riverside park with water so high only the tops of the trees stuck out. It was dusk and there were no streetlights, no store lights, no traffic lights reflecting on the water. The only lights shone from the bridge, way down the river. We stood together and thought about how in a few short months, we will live close enough to visit the park every day if we want.

It can't come soon enough.

Just after nine, we finally headed home. Or, what I mean to say is, we headed back here. Home is where we'll be heading in a few months' time.

I just hope the car keeps working till then. But if not, I know the number of a tow place.

Washing my hair in a bucket on a snowy morning and thinking (in that order)

(Because any time you wash your hair in a bucket on a snowy morning, you weren't thinking to begin with)

YOU CAN SUBSTITUTE:

-Toilet paper for coffee filters
-Coffee filters for toilet paper
-Paper towels for both of the above
-Paper plates for glass ones
-Paper towels for paper plates
-Coffee filters for paper towels
-Cereal bowls for coffee cups
-Coffee cups for cereal bowls
-Empty coffee cans for both of the above
-Forks for spoons
-Butter knives for forks
-Dishpans for sinks
-Sinks and washcloths for bathtubs
-The cost of grocery store gallon jugs of water for your monthly water bill
-An electric kettle for a hot water heater


THINGS FOR WHICH THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE:

-Good plumbers (Anybody know one?)
-Wacky families and the friends who appreciate them (Got this! Appreciate it now more than ever.)
-Good books (Got lots of these! Reading an awesome one from my crit partner now)
-Hot baths (you can get clean without them, but there is no substitute for the emotional value of a hot bath)
-Buddy Sunshine (Keeping this one at all costs. Which is why we will be basically sledding to the vet again today.)

Spring is coming. I hope, I hope, I hope.

I despise lists. Here, have one.

THE GOOD:

-Finished rewrite. Love the result.

-It's February. That's the month before March. Which means spring is coming.

-Still groovin' on this gorgeous LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE cover. Love it, love it, love it. They got it just right.


THE BAD:

-Lost a good family friend, and it was too snowy to make it to her funeral.

-Buddy Sunshine is very sick. He's currently in a sad circle at my feet, probably dreaming of all the poking and prodding that goes on at his daily trips to the vet.

-Because of a water leak, we still don't have running water. Let me just point out how difficult it is to disinfect a whole house and yard with NO RUNNING WATER. And because we just basically spent every cent we had on vet bills, we're not likely to get the water leak fixed any time soon.

-The car is currently starting when asked with approximately 75% accuracy. (The other 25% is when we're in a hurry.)

THE UGLY:

-Did I mention we don't have running water? You oughtta see my hair. I look like I've been electrocuted. Also, Buddy and I are competing to see who can smell more like ... well, Buddy.

But spring is coming. Spring is coming. Spring is coming.

My Writing Routine

Do you find it helpful to have a routine to your writing? A rhythm?

I feel like I'm supposed to develop one. I mean, that's what I tell kids when they ask for homework tips. Designate a specific time and place for your homework. That way, it will become routine and it won't seem like such a chore.

So I try to follow my own advice and develop a writing rhythm. Up at four, feed the dogs, make coffee, write from 4:15 till 6:30, get ready for work, go to work.

Some days, that's how it looks.

This morning, it looked like this:

The alarm goes off at 4. Hit the snooze button three times.

Get up at 4:30.

Let three dogs out to go potty. Bring two of them back in. Holler myself hoarse for the third, who likes to lurk in the furthest and darkest part of the frozen yard and not come in.

Pour the last drip of water from the jug into the coffee pot, then search for the half-empty water bottles I know are lying around somewhere. Did I mention we have a water leak, so our water is shut off? Yup, no running water in the Dooley/Lilly house.

Call for dog again. To no avail.

Feed the cats.

Get chewed out by cats for not having any wet food.

Fill cat and dog waterer with the next-to-the-last of the half-empty bottles.

Step in waterer. Replace socks.

Call for dog again. To no avail.

Remember to put coffee in the filter.

Pin blanket that serves as office door open so the heat can travel, since the space heater is currently in the bedroom.

Plug in computer.

Call for dog. To no avail. Remember to push "start" on the coffee pot.

Re-tape computer with painter's tape so it will stay open.

Visit Yahoo mail, Google mail, 1 and 1 mail, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Verla Kay's Blueboards, Absolute Write, and Livejournal. Realize that 45 minutes have passed.

Hear an odd squeaking noise outside. Get scared. Then realize it's Dog Number 3. Let him in and feed him. Give other two now-whiny dogs an extra handful of breakfast to appease them.

Trip over angry cats.

Remember to pour a cup of coffee.

Now that so much time has passed, visit Yahoo mail, Google mail, and Facebook again to see if anything has changed. Squeeze in another trip to the Blueboards and LJ. Realize that another twenty minutes have passed.

Take a sip of coffee. Notice that it's lukewarm. Add hot coffee to warm it up.

Visit 1 and 1 mail and Twitter in case anything has changed.

Remove cat from revision notes.

Open novel file. Re-read two chapters to find your place and get your momentum.

Remove cat from revision notes.

Realize your fingers are too cold to type.

Take computer to bedroom. Sit on floor in front of space heater and type slowly and quietly to keep from waking partner.

Remove cat from revision notes.

Write one paragraph.

Remove cat from revision notes.

Write three more paragraphs. Remove cat from revision notes. Then realize it is 6:58.

Hurry to splash cold water on face from the last bottle, brush teeth, brush hair, and try to find some clothes that aren't covered in dog and cat hair. Put on pants. Remove cat from shirt. Put on shirt. Dust cat hair off of shirt. Remove cat from shoes. Put on shoes. Remove cat from jacket. Put on jacket.

Frantically look for coffee. Realize that it's cold. Chug it anyway.

Go to car.

Go back inside and turn off coffee pot.

Go to car.

Go back inside to get lesson plan book. Remove cat from lesson plan book. Go back to car.

Go to work.

Speaking of work, I want to share a couple more quotes from that nifty place with you, because they're totally worth it:

-----------------------

ME: "Hello!"

STUDENT: "Ms. Dooley, I'm sorry, but you're a terrible computer guy. 'Cause one time, on the bicycle computer game, you went straight instead of turning. But don't worry. I'll show you. You're not a terrible bicycle guy, you just have to learn to ride a bicycle. Just a bicycle on computer. And don't wreck when you, uh ... uh ... What was that word I was looking for? Oh, yeah. Just learn tricks and then just call ... just call ... Hey, do you know my phone number? Well, call me and I'll tell you how. I just live right up the holler if you need help."

ME: " ..." Cue crickets, chirp chirp!

STUDENT: "Hello! What are you doing? Why aren't we working?"

-------

And my favorite quote from today:

STUDENT: "Miss Dooley, if you promise to leave, I'll fill in for you!"

A lot of moving, a lot of rolling

When I was in the single digits, my big sisters and I would stay up all night. Or, more often, one of us would wake up before the sun and wake the others, and it would feel like we'd been up all night, sitting together in the dark, with no grown-ups, looking at old yearbooks or playing with the cat who wasn't supposed to be in the house, giggling like crazy and listening to the trucks on the highway.

I think they're called jake brakes? Those loud, machine-gun rattles on the distant highway? Always distant, back then. They were away across a meadow, behind a mountain, beyond the horizon.

I teach eight-year-olds, and sometimes I don't give them credit for being dreamy, distant souls. Then I see that look in their eyes. The one that reminds me of the sound of those trucks.

We talked about them a lot, back then -- where they were going, what they were hauling. What it must be like to be out on the highway at four a.m., nothing but the radio and maybe a dog for company. I thought there could be no better career than truck driver. I hatched a secret plan then and there to learn to drive just as soon as I could reach the pedals.

I didn't actually know then that the sound was made by brakes. By somebody stopping. My sisters had to explain to me that the noise even came from trucks. I only knew the sound was associated with travel, with the road, with green road signs and white numbers that meant we were getting closer -- closer -- closer to somewhere. Or, more often, further -- further -- further from the place we didn't want to be anymore.

We took a lot of trips back then, some of them church trips, some of them just because we were restless and there happened to be gas in the tank that week. There was always a point on those trips when we each thought of what it would be like, never to come back. We could sleep there -- work there -- eat there -- play there.

And then there would be brake lights and usually rain and sometimes tears and the numbers would reverse, drawing us nearer and nearer again to the thing we could never escape.

I wasn't sure what that thing was, then. Still not sure I know the name for it.

I think the carpet in that living room when I was eight was yellow-green and had dirt and hair ground down in it from all the years. In daylight, we listened to Don Henley on the record player and we danced, and the whole trailer shook. It seemed light and airy and full of possibility. I remember thinking we could move at any moment and I hoped we did, even though I liked the trailer, because moving was something fun to break the monotony of hateful neighbor kids and earwax-colored carpet and trucks on a highway I'd seen once or twice but never taken far enough to not turn around and come back.

I live in a small town, the smallest of small towns. There's a sign when you roll in that says "No Jake Brakes."

I find myself thinking, "That's not fair." I find myself thinking, "That's hateful, is what that is." Across a mountain somewhere, some kid might be sitting in her living room, needing to hear those highway sounds. Needing to think about numbers on signs, and how the roads that start in this town lead out.


The more time I spend in this town, the more listening I do for the highway. And this time my sisters aren't here to explain things. This one's gonna be all me.

I don't know what the signs are going to say, or where the numbers on them will lead me. I only know two things: that my goal is to sit in a living room someday and not strain my ears listening for someplace else.

And that this is not that time or place.

Onward.

Ten Ways to Get Off-Task

After a two-week winter break and seven snow days in a row, it's Monday. A school day. And a two-hour delay day (which means an alternate schedule -- and let me tell you how much my kids with autism love schedule changes. They don't. At all).

In case you find yourself going back to elementary school for any reason (and I hope for your sake that you don't), allow me to pass on some wisdom I've picked up today from my students.


Ten Ways to Get Off-Task

1. Untie your shoe so you can ask your teacher to tie it for you. Do this at least six times per hour.

2. Untie your shoe and then trip over the laces. Fall. Fake a cry and say you "broke yourself" and you are "gonna dead."

3. Ask your teacher for a hug. Give your teacher a hug. Then tell your teacher you are made of Velcro and she is made of felt and you are stuck.

4. Choose an object from the "draw box" to inspire you at the writing center. Make sure it's something that rolls, like a miniature basketball. Roll it out of sight. Then tell your teacher you lost it and you need to find it so you can finish.

5. Place your pencil on the blue rug. Tell your teacher your pencil is at the bottom of the ocean. When she tells you to "swim over and get it, please" (read: when she gives you an inch), tell her you have to "dress appropriately" and then procede to suit yourself up in imaginary "flippy feet," "jar of breath," and "snorkel nose," one garment at a time (read: you take a mile).

6. Tell her you are "simply exhausted" and you must sleep. Then, when she directs you to your quiet space, stop at every desk on the way to tell each student to "keep your stupid voice down" because you need to rest.

7. Be six years old and imitate an extremely inappropriate scene from South Park.

8. Pick up the fake bird's nest from the phonemic awareness kit and burst into tears. Announce that your teacher is the meanest lady in the world for killing the baby birds and taking their home. Then repeat this to the principal when you pass her in the hallway.

9. When walking down the hallway, stop to hug every single teacher you see, especially the subs who don't know that this is your M.O. Then tell them you are made of Velcro and he or she is made of felt and you are stuck.

10. Read nineteen of the twenty words assigned. Then skid to a halt before the last word, which is your name, and tell the teacher that you never learned to read.

My Decorated Laptop

When I wrote Livvie Owen Lived Here, I lived at a boarding house in western North Carolina. The house was shared by the landlady, her daughter, two local fellows, my partner, me, six cats, and five dogs, and we all -- well, all the humans anyway -- shared one computer.

So when my landlady's daughter offered to sell me a laptop with a broken screen for $25, I bought it in hopes that I would be able to fix it, or at least plug it in to an external monitor and make do.

A month of saving, an Ebay spree, and a YouTube tutorial later, I installed a new screen. The laptop has worked beautifully ever since, save for one crash last year that was quickly resolved.

So, okay, my partner and I like to throw snowballs. I mean, is that a crime?

According to my 20-pound Rat Terrier, it is. When a stray snowball hit the window this afternoon, Lola apparently darted under the desk, clotheslining herself on the power cord and smashing the computer to the floor.

Don't worry. It still works. If it didn't, you would not be reading this. And I'm so relieved that the screen didn't break, because, without my partner's help, I would never have been able to get all those tiny screws into all those tiny holes to put the laptop back together the first time, and I didn't fancy going through that again only a year later.

The problem is, one of the ... hinges, I guess you'd call it? Broke. Now the screen sort of ... wobbles around. I have to line it up right to get it to close. There's a jagged edge of plastic held on by one of those tiny screws I can't get undone, and part of the frame sort of ... popped loose and won't pop back.

There are many who would turn to a professional. But I'm broke, I've got no car, and there's a blizzard on.

Okay, so. Duct tape? Nope. I don't seem to have any. Electrical tape? Seems to have all gotten used when my cousin installed our baseboard heat. Superglue? Dollar Tree brand, which I'm not putting on my computer.

Aah, yes. Painter's tape.

When we moved into this house, we had high hopes and big dreams. We bought complimentary colors and began painting with gusto.

Six hours later, we were permanently done. Not the house, I mean. Just US. The trim still hasn't got painted. In fact, there's still painter's tape up in my office, framing the unpainted trim that I've just never gotten around to. Luckily, there are also still six unused rolls of painter's tape out on the porch.

And half a roll holding the screen onto my laptop.

Oy.

I love this little machine, though. It's a trooper, that's for sure. It'll be a sad day when I actually have to replace it.

Cars Wrecked - 1. Marriages Destroyed - 1. Dogs involved - 16. What a Holiday.

I'm really glad tomorrow is another snow day. That means the number of clean, dog-hair-free, more-or-less-professional outfits I have to find for this school week has been reduced almost by half.

We used to do laundry at the home of one of my partner Jake's relatives, Michael. That, by the way, is not his real name. Since this man is my future relative, too, I tried not to feel uncomfortable invading his home to do my laundry. He swore he didn't mind, said he understood that we were without water at the moment, thanks to a leak somewhere in our underground line and the constant snow that's kept us from fixing it.

Our laundry invite has since been revoked. Even if I could drive to town to do laundry at Michael's house, we are no longer welcome there after nearly breaking up the man's marriage last week.

That's when the car still worked, of course.

More...
Christmas. Let's go back that far, because that's the last time things went according to plan. Of course Jake and I knew we ought not drive as far as my sister Jennifer's house, because, from the moans and groans coming from our old Ford, we could tell the vehicle no longer wanted to bear weight on all four wheels. The right rear tire was held together by little more than the grace of God and a can of Fix-a-Flat as it was. We were pushing our luck driving two hours over the river and through the woods.

But my niece has autism, which means she's a head and shoulders above the rest of us when it comes to event planning. Everything was ready, down to her detailed maps of sleeping arrangements. She had even knitted new collars for my three dogs and wrapped them in notebook paper so the animals wouldn't feel left out on Christmas. Canceling our trip now, on the heels of my niece's other aunt, my sister Heather, announcing that she couldn't make it in from Philly, would be akin to killing Santa Claus.

So we drove across the mountains, dodging patches of ice still clinging from last week's storm. And the worst that happened on the trip was that the puppy peed in the laundry basket. Yuck, yes, but he's done worse. The car held up and the family had as smooth a holiday as a blended family with several members in various positions on the autism spectrum can have. Jake and I even stayed an extra night, even though we hadn't brought enough clothing along, and the clothing we had had been puppied.

Then we made our first mistake.

We started back.

I guess the first bad omen was that the dogs ate the muffins. Good Heavens, did those muffins smell good. I woke the day after Christmas from a nightmare about slipping on ice and falling on my rear end, but I promptly forgot the dream because of the smell of baking muffins. Jennifer sent us on our way with a butter tub full of them, but we weren't a mile out when the dogs pulled the tub out of my overnight bag and ate every last crumb. I still don't know how they opened the container. All I know is that those muffins were tragically taken before their time.

Jake's sister Mandy happens to live at the halfway point between Jennifer's house and our own, just across town from Michael. Jake decided to visit his sister, but because she and her family have eleven dogs already – for real, eleven – there was no way we could ask her to let our three pooches stay, especially not with Buddy being the size of a Budweiser Clydesdale and still growing. So I agreed to take the dogs home and spend a night writing, planning to return to town for Jake in the morning, at which point we would do a load of laundry, as was our weekly routine thanks to Michael's willingness to share his appliances in the interest of us not smelling bad. Mandy even offered to send her cell phone with me in case I ran into any trouble. But I assured her and Jake that all would be fine.

I made it halfway home from Mandy's house.

We'd made this CD to get us in the Christmas spirit. It was mostly the Trans Siberian Orchestra and my favorite song had just come on. The headlights of an oncoming Chevy flashed at me, so I slowed down as I entered one of the many U-turns my stretch of southern West Virginia byway makes between the nearest town and the heart of my county.

When I saw the fire truck, lights flashing, and the firemen milling about in my lane, I slowed nearly to a stop. I say nearly, because there is no stopping completely when you find yourself on a solid sheet of black ice, especially not if you're a bad driver like me.

To the crashing crescendo of Carol of the Bells, the guy behind me hit my bumper.

It took me about thirty seconds to realize I'd just been hit, after which I started panicking as I inched by the firemen so I could get off the road. After we all stopped and it was clear that nobody was hurt and the worst that had happened was that my bumper had a new ding and my littlest dog was suffering from PTSD, we all went on our way to get home before the roads could get any worse.

At this point, I'm pretty sure what happened was that I hit more ice. There was water gushing across the road, after all, and it was more sluggish than usual by the time I reached it. But I was so freaked out by the accident and so distracted by the insistent stress-barking in the back seat that when the Ford took a shimmy to the right, I did a U-turn and went back to the nearest open business.

Open, actually, was not a fair assessment. The Mor-for-Less Grocery was scheduled to close less than two minutes after my arrival. Only then did I think of Mandy's cell phone, still in my pocket. I pulled it out only to find that, of course, of course, of course, it did not get a signal down in my mountains. Luckily, the manager of the Mor-for-Less was generous and after about six tries, I managed to dial Mandy's landline. She and Jake agreed to come and get me, since I was afraid to drive the rest of the way home.

After sitting in the Mor-for-Less long enough to learn their floor-waxing procedure, to witness three separate visits by a worried father to warn his cashier daughter that the roads were getting slick, and to finally be kicked out into the parking lot so the store employees could go home, I spied Mandy's Jeep. Nobody fancied driving the Ford in this weather to ascertain whether anything was wrong. Because a formidable mountain stood between us and home, and because Cashier Girl's worried father had already declared that particular mountain “slicker'n spit,” Jake and I decided we would have to go back to Mandy's for the night.

Did I mention she drives a Jeep? Yeah. A Wrangler. Soft-top. And Jake and I have three dogs -- one of whom is Buddy, who is sort of like keeping a gentle grizzly bear for a pet. So I piled in the back seat with all three dogs, and of course of the three of them, it was Buddy who was most frightened and who insisted in sitting on my lap the whole way. All hundred and twenty pounds of him.

It took over an hour to make the 45-minute trip to Mandy's. By the time we got there, we'd worked out a plan to deal with the dogs. Rather than inciting a riot by trying to take them into Mandy's already-dog-ridden home, we would drop them off at Michael's house, the place where we usually do our laundry. It would only be for the night, after all, and he only had two dogs instead of Mandy's eleven, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, well, his wife disagreed with us.

Worried that we were causing marital strife between Michael and his wife, we decided to pay him a visit at his place of business. He works nights and we found him caught up in his work. His coworker assured us he would be with us just as soon as possible. Then she kept looking at us after that. Just looking. I guess we must have looked hungry, because she finally said, “Have some of this.”

Where she was hiding such a gigantic tin of sugar cookies in that tiny little office, I don't know. We tore into the cookies like they were going out of style, which, I guess, since they were Christmas cookies and it was now an hour and forty-five minutes into December 27, they kind of were.

After the cookies came peanut butter fudge, and after the peanut butter fudge came warm, flat Pibb Extra from a 2-liter bottle. Then, at long last, came Michael.

We discussed our doggie invasion of his home and he was quite patient and understanding, given the circumstances and the hour and his wife's repeated phone calls. (“Michael, I think it's your wife,” his coworker said on answering the phone. “It's hard to tell – there's lots of barking --”) Reassured, we took his coworker's parting gift of caramel corn and headed for McDonald's, whose 24-hour drive-thru might as well have had magical beams of Heavenly light beaming down on it from the night sky. Hot food! And, at long last, we headed to Mandy's.

The next morning, dodging the phone and ignoring the voice mails about our puppy's transgressions on Michael's kitchen floor, we hurried back down to the wilderness to rescue the car. Only problem was, when Jake drove it, it didn't feel quite right to him. So Mandy drove it. Same conclusion.

“Crud, I've gone and messed up the car,” I groaned, wondering what on earth we were going to do with our kitchen-full of unwelcome dogs and our new lack of transportation.

“I can't just leave you all stranded down here,” Mandy pointed out, which, actually, was an excellent point given the fact that we have no phone at our home and it's tough to schedule a tow and a garage visit if you've got neither car nor phone.

So Mandy took us to feed my cats, who were delighting in their time alone with the house. On the way back to town to walk the dogs before putting them back in Michael's kitchen just for one more night, Jake nearly panicked at the sight of a car upside down in the creek. We stopped and he slid down the bank to make sure no one was inside, but whoever they were, they'd gotten out. I'd been feeling guilty all morning about the craziness, and wishing I'd made it home without incident, but seeing this car, off the road and upside down at the foot of the mountain I was moments from descending when I got rear-ended in the first place, I was suddenly grateful I'd gotten stopped before I made it any further.

We walked the dogs and dodged the daggers of hatred sent our way by Michael's wife. Now all that was left to do was get comfortable and settle in for the night.

You know, when I graduated college, I remember sitting on a hard metal folding chair thinking about all of the things that were about to change. No more classes, no more professors, no more all-nighters to finish term papers.

But believe it or not, it didn't occur to me to wonder whether I'd ever make another middle-of-the-night Wal-Mart run for clean underwear. I just assumed that after college, those days were over.

No such luck. Now four years into my teaching career, I found myself at Wal-Mart at a couple of minutes past midnight, buying underwear and socks because I could no longer stand wearing the ones I'd been rotating since Christmas Day. It was now the wee hours of the 28th and we still weren't home.

Later that day, we were finally able to schedule the towing and mechanic work on our Ford, so Mandy drove us over to pick up the dogs. After an ugly scene at Michael's home, we left in haste and shame, toting three disgruntled pooches and the understanding that it was entirely possible they had single-pawed-ly wrecked my future relative's marriage.

And thus, revoked our laundry privileges. Crud.

We made it home without further event, and the worst that's happened since is that we learned the car was damaged not by the accident but by a problem it had already been developing. A twelve-hundred-dollar problem. Since that's most likely above the car's blue book value anyway, the Ford is currently sitting in our driveway, good for nothing more than a trip to the grocery store less than a block away.

My hastily-purchased Wal-Mart socks and underwear are all dirty now, and we have no way to get to a laundromat, or, better yet, to any other relative's houses. I've got one carefully-protected clean school outfit hanging from the curtain rod in the living room, and after that I'm going to have to get creative.

So I'm really, really glad that tomorrow is another snow day. Not just because I've got nothing to wear, but because, after my Christmas vacation, any day spent at home and off the roads is a good day in my book. Biased as my book may be.

(More or less) home for the holidays

So I'm walking back from Sunoco in a just-after-dusk winter-is-coming see-your-breath sort of cold, with Christmas lights twinkling on the rooftops of probably a third of the houses directly in my field of vision. Big lights, small lights, blue lights, white lights, bulbs and wreaths and icicles in merry loops and patterns. But there's no question which one is best.

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There's a sweet little house just in the bend of the road, a cottage of stone with a neatly-fenced lawn and about two hundred thousand twinkling bulbs in every color of the rainbow. They 're stapled to every inch of the house that could possibly hold a staple. The roof is not only outlined, but colored in. The bushes are shimmering. The walkway is glowing.

My leanings on winter holidays are scattered like the lights. Like a good semi-non-practicing Pagan-ish type, I dutifully light a Solstice fire on the longest night and burn the things I want to do away with for the coming year. But that holiday is a little more stern than I like, because, to take part, I have to admit which things I might still want that I definitely don't need anymore, and I'm a Taurus -- read, a pack rat -- mentally and emotionally as well as physically. I don't just collect trinkets and knick-knacks and about a million useless papers. I collect acquaintances and habits and emotional states that perhaps don't serve my best interests anymore, and I find it very hard to let go of them.

So Solstice, though I practice it, is not my most beloved of holidays.

And here are these Christmas lights.

I'm not a Christian, but I love me some Christmas. Sparkling lights on see-your-breath nights, people singing, bells ringing, that special sound scissors make when they cut through wrapping paper, the smell of Scotch tape and the way kids (and teachers, truth be told) squint at streetlights and headlights to try to discern if the misty rain working its way down out of the sky on a forty-degree night might possibly -- possibly -- possibly be snow, falling on a school night -- I love me some Christmas. Which is why I'm staring at this precious little cottage with its Christmas lights twinkling in the night.

Then my gaze roams from the house. Down its walk. Past its fence. Across the highway.

To the other house.

This one is white, not stone. It's still sweet, in its own way -- or at least you can tell it would be sweet if somebody would just clean it up. Right now, the brown lawn rolls listlessly up to the edge of a pile of trash that's been sitting there for over a month. Past that is the picture window, in which there is a slight green smudge along the bottom of the curtain -- then a slight blue smudge -- and then yellow -- which is the Christmas lights that have fallen from the window frame and are now lying in a heap on the sill, out of sight.

Two crotchety cats guard the door like stone lions, angry and disgruntled, and beyond the corner of the house, you can glimpse the half-a-shed, which is a building that used to be a whole shed before somebody took a sledgehammer to it -- then an axe -- then a car with a tow chain -- and finally gave up and let the crooked thing stand. Its parallelogram frame is marred by broken bits of siding and a scattering of a million bent nails, shining like drops of ice.

That one's mine.

I've got homework to grade tonight, and lessons to plan, and those crotchety cats look ready to move on and find another home if I don't pay them a little attention sometime soon. Just looking at the half-a-shed and the trash pile makes me tired.

But I love this season, with its scattering of holidays, its sparkles and its jingles and its hope. I think maybe I can find it in me to at least re-hang my single strand of holiday lights before I turn in for the night.

It's just a carpool. What could go wrong?

Okay, here's a dog story for you. You're not going to feel like it's a dog story at first, but have faith. The dog will pop up when you least expect it (just like he did to us).

Yesterday, I had to travel about an hour to a nearby city for a conference for my job. Two employees from other offices and I decided to carpool. Let's call them Gretchen and Betsy. Gretchen and Betsy agreed to meet me at my office, the central point, to drive together.

After a harrowing car ride during which I discovered a few things about Betsy's lack of talent concerning driving while talking on a cell phone, coupled with her determination to practice as often as possible, we arrived to learn that the start of the conference had been delayed by almost two hours. Luckily, we had parked across the street in the mall parking garage.

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Well, you know, malls have bookstores. Me and Gretchen are both writers, and we hit the children's section and happily settled in for a while. Betsy wandered the bookstore to browse for a good mystery, because, apparently, not every late-twenties-early-thirties employee of our company finds the need to frequent the children's section at the bookstore.

Fast forward half an hour. I had shown Gretchen every book on the shelf with my publisher's logo on the spine. She had shown me every book on the shelf that "kinda gives me an idea ..." and was furiously scribbling on the pad of paper that basically stays glued to her at all times.

Eventually, we realized that we hadn't seen Betsy in quite some time.

A quick search of the bookstore revealed that she was, in fact, gone, and of course, that was when the phone rang and we were informed that we were needed across the street in ten minutes. Faaaabulous.

Gretchen is a mom, and therefore, her "worst-case scenario" skills are finely honed. She began to worry that Betsy had been abducted and possibly murdered in the 10 or 12 minutes since we'd last laid eyes on her. She wrung her hands and walked in circles. She was near tears. I thought it was more likely that the Starbucks or Taco Bell had called Betsy's name, so I finally talked Gretchen into walking with me to the food court to see. And sure enough, there she was with a giant plate of Chinese food.

We'll call that entire portion of the story "Misplaced Coworker Incident #1."

Now let's move on to "Misplaced Coworker Incident #2."

The conference, having started two hours late, ended only an hour late, so that was good. Still, we had a long road ahead of us and it was just after six in the evening. Betsy had "just a quick question" she wanted to run past our boss, but Gretchen and I, having skipped lunch in favor of the bookstore and a misplaced coworker search, had been knocking back bottled water like a college kid knocks back Miller, and we had to pee. Bad.

"We'll meet you outside the front entrance downstairs," I said to Betsy. I promise I said it. I remember saying it. You know how sometimes when you say something, it kind of gets stuck in your head for a while? Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, I promise this sentence echoed in my head for quite some time after, so I know I said it.

Gretchen and I waited outside. And waited outside. And waited outside. There was a huge event going on in the conference center -- a ticketed event -- so we couldn't get back inside to check on Betsy. After 45 minutes, I finally snuck past a security guard and took the back stairway up to the second floor to our meeting room -- luckily, I spent a lot of time in this conference center when I was a Young Democrat in college, so I knew the back hallways from the days when I needed to sneak past pompous jerks from other campuses who who wanted to shake my hand and tell me their views on gay marriage when I was too tired and frazzled to defend myself.

Calmer this time, I found that my sneaking skills were even more efficient. But when I reached the conference room, I found it dark.

Oh, crud.

I hurried back outside to let Gretchen know that Betsy had slipped out another entrance, or flown, or Apperated out of the conference center. We hurried back across the street to the parking garage and found that she had started talking to a coworker and walked out the upstairs service entrance with her without a second thought to where we were supposed to meet.

That, in all its glory, was “Misplaced Coworker Incident #2.”

We reached the city that my office is located in at 8:05 p.m. Keep in mind, of course, that all three of us had at least an hour to commute home from there.

Then prepare yourself for “Misplaced Coworker Incident #3,” my personal favorite.

This is where the dog comes in.

So, we were gabbing all the way home, of course, and two exits away from my office, Betsy, who was driving, was just preparing to tell us a great story about a time she got money in the mail when she didn’t expect it.

Her word choice, unfortunately, begged disaster.

“Let me tell you about the best thing that ever happened to me,” Betsy said, and then the semi truck in front of us swerved into our lane.

Betsy managed to swing the car onto the left shoulder and slam on the brakes, screaming the whole time. Because she was too shaky then to continue driving on the interstate, I urged her to get off at the next exit and take the back way.

We were almost to the office on the back roads when we spied a little scrap of white running into the road in front of us. We slammed on our brakes as a little dog – Boston Terrier body with a Jack Russell face – happily danced in the road for a minute before running off into a parking lot.

Betsy, still shaky from her earlier driving experience, was not up to stopping for a dog. Gretchen and I immediately began to worry that the dog was going to get hit if he kept waltzing with the passing cars.

Luckily, we were less than half a mile from my office. Betsy dropped us off and went on her merry way while Gretchen and I hopped in my car and drove back up to the stoplight to try to rescue the little dog.

About this dog. He did NOT want to be rescued. Gretchen hopped out of the car, leaving her purse and keys in my car, and tried to coax him to her. But the dog didn’t want to be coaxed. He darted into the road and began trotting – right in the center of the lane – toward my office.

“I’ll come right back for you!” I hollered to Gretchen, and I followed the dog down the road at the rapid clip of point five miles per hour, preventing any other traffic from flying around a turn and taking out the little white scrap of orneriness.

By the time the dog had gone almost the whole half mile to my office, occasionally pausing to smile over his shoulder at me, I had quite the impressive string of angry traffic behind me. Some saints in a Hummer drove up the wrong way in the oncoming lane to try to block the dog in from the front, but any time any of us hopped out of our cars to try to get him, he smiled huge at us like he was happy we wanted to play, and then he darted out of reach.

At this point, we will begin to refer to the dog by what I would have named him if I could have caught him, which is “Sheriff” because he was so good at directing traffic and he had so many of us pulled over.

After a few minutes -- and many, many honks and hollers from the traffic tied up behind me -- Sheriff darted up over the hill and out of sight. Goodbye, Sheriff. I wish you the best.

I found a place to turn around, checked the local business parking lots for signs of the spunky little pooch, and then drove back up to the stop light as quickly as possible to pick up Gretchen.

Can you guess? I mean, do I need to tell you?

Yeah. She was gone.

I checked Wendy’s in case she’d gone for a Frosty. I checked the hotel lobby in case she was sneaking a free coffee. There was a steakhouse nearby and I thought maybe she needed a cold drink – God knows I did. But she wasn’t there, either. Eventually, after stressing out in the parking lot for a while, wondering – Oh my god, she was so worried about getting abducted and murdered, maybe she knows something I don’t – I finally drove back to my office, where she’d left her car, to see whether she’d found a way back.

There she stood, next to her car, in tears. She had hitched a ride back and passed me on the road.

I gave her her keys. Said good-bye. And sent her on her way, then went on my own. I got home at ten-thirty from a conference that ended at six.

Here's everything I learned at the conference (but don't tell my boss if he asks):

-Usually, the person you're looking for hasn't been abducted and murdered, even if you start thinking that might be a viable option for dealing with their behavior once you find them

-Sometimes poor, innocent little doggies who need rescued are neither poor nor innocent, and they don't want no stinkin' rescue

-The emotional cost of carpooling far outweighs the financial cost of going alone. Next time we have a conference, I will drive myself.

Wet pants, wet roads, wet cheeks

It was a damp sort of day from beginning to end.

Even the grass was wet when I tiptoed through it in my turquoise flip-flops to start my morning commute. It was early -- although not as early as I'd planned on leaving, since I needed to stop at Wal-Mart to buy each child in my class something special for the last day of school. Bubbles for one. A fancy pen for another. For the child who wishes it could always be either November or February, a daily planner -- one she can crease open to her favorite months and make-believe to her heart's content, ten months out of the year. For the child who is happiest with the simple things in life, a coveted orange soda. For each child, I searched for some special little something so they would know how much I appreciate them.

Except it's hard to shop for a kid with autism who likes exactly two things in life: his squishy ball and his flip-flops -- and he owns both of those already.

One magnificent giant bubble wand and ten dollars later, I sped out of Wal-Mart now fifteen minutes behind schedule. Having stood in line behind an old man buying a rotisserie chicken (at 6:57 in the morning? Really?), I was starving and ripped open my Slim-Fast bar as I pulled onto the highway.

Slim-Fast bars make me thirsty. So I balanced my giant bottle of water between my thighs and began to work on unscrewing the lid one-handed.

Just as a car slammed on its brakes in front of me.

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I slammed on my own brakes just as the lid came loose, and, lo and behold -- an eruption of ice-cold water. Right in my lap. If I were one of my students, I would have adjusted my schedule to include an extra bathroom break at the mere sight of me.

Of course, because it was the last student day and we would spend much of it stacking chairs and sweeping floors, I had dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans. I couldn't find my belt this morning, and the denim, now heavy with water, sagged mercilessly. All I wanted was to stop somewhere and shake the spare water loose from my outfit, but I was mired in morning traffic and it took 15 minutes to find a place to stop. By then, my jeans were soaked through, all the way up to the back pockets and nearly down to my knees.

Now twenty minutes late, there was no time to give in to temptation and stop at Wal-Mart to buy dry pants. Instead, I rushed into the school building, carrying a half-empty water bottle and wearing the rest of it on my clothing. Luckily, one of my students who wasn't quite toilet-trained yet wore roughly the same size as me and kept spare pants at school. I wore his baggy blue shorts all morning while my sopping jeans were in the dryer.

"It's okay, Miss Dooley," one student commented when she noticed my ordeal. "Everybody has accidents sometimes."

Speechless, all I could do was shake my head and give her a hug.

Just after ten, one of my students was picked up early. The minute I said goodbye to him, I knew I was going to lose it at some point today. But I held it together, gave him his gift (a daily planner so he can keep track of the weather over the summer) and waved goodbye.

We didn't do much work today, opting to play Yahtzee and stack chairs and dust shelves in the classroom. The rest of the school was locked down silent, taking end-of-year exams, so we couldn't leave our classroom, but that was okay; we didn't want to. Although the children didn't know yet that I wouldn't be coming back next year, I think they could sense something was amiss. We all took the day slow, basking in each other's company for one last long high school day.

Just after two, another student was picked up early. I gave him his orange soda and sent him on his way.

On Fridays, we watch movies. Or I guess I should say, on Fridays, we used to watch movies. You know, back when I was a teacher. The students worked all week for the privilege and then they took turns bringing in films. Today was Wednesday, but it was the last day of school and the general consensus was that it was sort of like a Friday, so we watched Twilight, which one child had been begging for months to watch. Normally, I spend movie time at my desk, using it as my weekly planning time. But today, I sat with my kids to watch the movie. There was nothing left to plan.

At two forty-five, a third student was picked up early. He didn't like hugs and couldn't wait to get home and play with his new bubble wand. So he wouldn't say good-bye. My eyes were starting to water. I gave the remaining kids their presents, packed book bags, changed diapers, untied knots in shoelaces, brushed hair, found missing earrings, and tried to deny that the clock was carrying us all closer and closer to 3:01.

At 2:59, teachers got an e-mail saying school would not let out until 3:05 because of testing. Sweet reprieve, a whole four minutes.

But the bell's ring came anyway, and with it, a tide of parents and buses taking children away from me before I got to say a proper good-bye. Before I knew it, one student was out the door with her new poster, and another with her coloring book, and another with his Yahtzee game. This last, I followed down to make sure he got on the right bus, and we sat outside playing Yahtzee in the post-three-o'clock-on-Wednesday-June-10 chaos that was the end of the school year.

Three fives. He rolled again and got a fourth. Then again and got a fifth -- the first and only true "Yahtzee" of the whole school year.

"Rockin'!" he screeched, hands in the air.

There was something yellow in the distance. I tried to deny it till it pulled up and flashed its stop sign. No matter how hard I ignored the bus, it wouldn't go away.

And wouldn't you know it, this kid didn't like hugs, either.

Blurry-eyed, I somehow ended up back in my classroom, lost, looking around in bewilderment at the stacks of papers and supplies. Worksheets I ran off that we never got to finish. Craft supplies for a group time unit that never got taught. There were books with bookmarks in them, half-read, and someone left their cake on the table, half-eaten.

There was still a half-empty bottle of water on the table, too. But that wasn't the cause of the dampness in the room, not this time.

I dried my eyes when I heard the assistants coming. Things were always tense between me and my classroom assistants, and try though I did, again and again, I was never able to make things right. That's okay. Three more days of entering grades, boxing up materials, filing papers, and Clorox-wiping surfaces, and they can go back to plastering Easter crosses all over the classroom and requiring the kids to pray before meals. It won't be any of my business anymore.

Still, when one of the assistants accused me of procrastination because of my messy desk -- a desk buried in the paperwork that just didn't top the priority list when there were so many other things to do -- I lost it a little. Which is why, when ten after four rolled around, I was still in my classroom, boxing and bagging and sorting, determined to prove her wrong.

Because she wasn't wrong -- at least -- not entirely. My desk was messy. Ridiculously messy, in fact. But that's what happens when you are teacher to eight kids who are always moving. There are always problems that need solved, diapers that need changed, children who need encouraged, tears that need dried. And sometimes, even as the tower of papers on my desk climbed sky-high, I just couldn't do anything except stand, and watch, and enjoy my kids while I had them, knowing that it wouldn't last forever.

Of course, if I hadn't stayed late to prove wrong something that may well have been right, I would have made it home before the sky broke open. The storm hit halfway home, so sudden and with such force that my Bonneville nearly slid off the side of the highway. I pulled it straight and slowed to fifteen, inching through the torrents of rain that bounced back up off the road so thick, it was like both Heaven and Hell were raining.

I found shelter in a gas station, where old men in flannel stood lined up in front of the window with their coffee, gabbing about cattle feed and taking in the storm. I sipped coffee, too, and borrowed a phone to call home and let my partner know I would be later, even, than usual. Did you know old guys in flannel talking about cattle feed carry cell phones? Once the call was made, I holed up in my car with my coffee.

The storm kept pounding for almost an hour before I felt like it was safe again to make the remainder of the drive. There was a time, once, when I would have been impatient for the end of the storm. After a long day at work, I would have wanted nothing more than to get home, take a shower, and have things go my way without a hitch. I wouldn't have wanted to spend an hour outside the Texaco, watching shoppers dash to and from their cars as the sky got darker and darker.

But there was streak lightning blasting sideways, just over the mountains, and I'd never seen rain blow quite so sideways before. So I sat and I sipped and I watched the whole world get watered down to match my day.

Of course, because I had those rare moments for quiet reflection, my mind kept going over the goodbyes -- and the lack thereof -- that had punctuated my day. It hurt to say goodbye to those kids. Supposedly, according to wise men, I was supposed to take comfort in all that I had taught them. Calendar facts. Time-telling skills. How to go to the restroom, tie their shoes, and do the laundry.

But sitting in my car at the end of the last day of the privilege of being their teacher, I was much more concerned with the things they had taught me. To write a novel, for one. To play Yahtzee. To care about the weather. To draw accurate Beauty and the Beast characters. They taught me that sometimes it's okay to count on your fingers, and that sometimes you need to have cake even if you're watching your waistline. They taught me that anyone can dance, to any song, any time, no matter what people think.

And they taught me that when it's raining, there's no point in getting impatient and there's no point pretending it's not beautiful just because it's a tad inconvenient. You might as well give into it and sit. And watch. And enjoy it while you've got it. 'Cause you're not going to have it forever, and no matter how tired and frustrated it made you, you're going to want it back once the sun comes out.

Absurdity

Does everybody else have to do absurd things to get through the day?

The reason I ask is, our toilet is clogged and our landlord has already left for work. And when I say clogged, I mean it is demolished. I've tried every trick I know, and I can't get it to unclog. Which means every, oh, three or four hours, I'm driving up the road to the gas station to use their loo.

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In other, absurdity-related news, my West Virginia apartment search brought me to this building, which I used to live in. In fact, I used to live in the apartment featured in the photograph on the top right -- the apartment described in the text as "smaller."

Yeeeah. That's one word to use. Our bed quite literally took up the entire living area of this efficiency apartment. I'm glad to hear they remodeled the place, since, when I lived there, the freezer smelled like rotten meat, the oven only heated to a balmy 70 degrees, and the bathroom sink was both clogged and leaky, so we had to bail it out a couple of times a day to prevent overflow.

Like I said. Absurd.

What absurdities do you have to embrace to get through your day?

Sometimes your characters need to run out of toilet paper.

I write characters who wear shoes that don't fit. They tug at crumpled hemlines and try to suck in their bellies so they don't look quite so funny in their pieced-together outfits. My characters have tangled hair. Broken glasses. They eat Doritos or cheese toast or fried eggs for dinner. They fight with their sisters over the last of the toilet paper.

My partner and I had an argument tonight. Not over anything. That's the trouble with being broke. More...It doesn't take two seconds for an okay evening to disintegrate into a bout of venting and taking stress out on each other. When you've just dusted a silverfish off your only "clean" plate so you could share the last piece of toaster strudel for dinner after a long day of -- him, job hunting in an impossible economy, and, me, teaching and an hour-long commute in bad traffic, well -- you just don't have the patience left for somebody to say to you, "Honey, did you remember to pick up the toilet paper?"

If I had, it would have been with our final dollar. I've been hanging onto the thing all week for exactly this moment. The number of non-toilet-paper items I've used as toilet paper this month is astounding even to me. Paper towels, of course -- that's a given. But we're never actually in possession of those. Coffee filters, but you have to crinkle them a while first so they're worn and not so crisp. Paper shopping bags. The empty toilet paper roll. Eventually it gets to the point where you just have to jump straight from the toilet to the shower. This is the reality of being flat broke and I've moved past being ashamed of it -- after all, I work hard for what living I make. I get up at 4:15 to hop on the computer and write until 6:00, when I embark on the hour drive to the high school. Once there, I spend eight and a half to nine hours straight with the kids, with no planning time or lunch and only the briefest of bathroom breaks (although there is usually toilet paper there).

Then I rush home to relax with my partner. Sometimes this means watching ghost-hunting shows and spooking ourselves silly. Or we get down on the floor and wrestle with the dogs. A lot of times, we relieve our stress by giggling uncontrollably while stretching our dollar at the grocery store. We've gotten really good at budgeting. We've also gotten quite good at alienating other shoppers, who happen to be passing by when we, for example, scoop up entire fistsful of the sample butterscotch chips lying out in the baking aisle. Or make the fish in the seafood section talk to each other. Or name the veal. Or wonder aloud what it might taste like to fry Jello.

Only when we get really down low -- when there's no food and no money and the landlords are mad because of the ink stain on the carpet and our basement apartment is filling up with ugly basement-type bugs -- When we get really low, there is less relaxing than there is verbal sparring. Not that we're not in love, because we are. Quite deeply. But we're in our fifth year of hollering such sentences to each other as, "Babe, will you bring me the coffee filters?" and frankly, it's easy to get cranky.

I know there is true poverty in this world, and I know that it's not us. After all, in this very post, I've mentioned having a television, a car, and a computer, all luxuries I relish after years of dreaming of them. I understand that what we are is just good ol' fashioned broke, and we are certainly not alone. I also realize that being broke has made us good at things like finding our way out of jams and making dollars stretch for miles. And I have a hunch -- a very strong one -- that I get my characters from being broke, and I wouldn't trade my characters even for a lifetime supply of Charmin. So, usually, I try not to wallow or to dwell on what we don't have.

But an Angel Soft commercial just played and I sort of feel like my hair is on fire.

Well, my partner just interrupted me to give me a kiss on the cheek and a bite of his sugar-free, fat-free pudding (45 cents at Go Grocery). Now he's trying to close the computer with his foot. So I guess we're making up. Which is the good thing about being broke. He and I have been through so much together, we can't bear to stay mad long.

Anyway, this was all by way of saying:

When you're writing -- or when you're out in the world, dealing with people -- just try to remember that some people are a little chafed from using coffee filters in ways God never intended, and they didn't plan on wearing plum PJ pants with a green sweatshirt to the grocery store -- that's just sort of how it happens. I hate to read over and over about characters who are always rested and clean, with dinner foods at dinner time and a magical supply of endless toilet paper. Sometimes characters just need to be crabby and messy and frustrated and griping at each other for the heck of it. That's life. And it's usually a good read, too.

Places I Have Lived

In almost all of the stories I've written, the protaganist is either moving to a new home or attempting to find a new home to move to. I guess that's because I've lived in 42 different places in my life, and each one is a story.

I think they're in order, but I can't promise.

1. The Uncle Lewis Place in Mt. Nebo, WV. I don't know why it was called that or if there was really an Uncle Lewis. It was an old, white, haunted house where we lived till I turned one. When I say it was haunted, I mean both that it was listed in a book of haunted houses and that when you used a camera in that house, sometimes there were snakes in the photos that weren't there in real life.

2. Bent Tree Farm, somewhere, I'm not sure where, in West Virginia. We raised goats and chickens and a cow or two. When I say "we," I mean Mom, who also took care of us three girls. Dad, too, of course, but I think he also worked in the mines at this time. I'm not sure; it's a little fuzzy. I know the chimney burned once. I know there was a swimming hole. We left when I was three because somebody vandalized the place so bad we couldn't live there anymore, and a neighbor's dog killed the goats. Years later, the whole house burned. I think it was actually burned on purpose as a practice exercise for the fire department. There was a neighbor called Jug who sat on his front porch with a jug. Years later my sister drove me back to find the place, and there Jug still sat, like not a day had gone by. Waved just like he knew us.

3. The brick house in Cottle, WV. This was a little brick house and I remember that the neighbors had a cook-out and I lost my jelly shoes. We left when I was ... still 3? Four, maybe? This house also burned later.

4. Williams Road, Craigsville (I think), WV -- a green house where we took care of a stray dog for a while. I had nightmares a lot. We had a yardsale. It was the first place I noticed that mist made me nostalgic. My sister accidentally cut herself on a neighbor's knife. We made up imaginary friends named Dusty, Waggy, and Marbly. I was four. I carried a lunch box and desperately wanted to go to school.

5. Coke Road, Craigsville, WV. This was actually called Bottle Plant Road, but we called it Coke Road. I had my first best friend, named Amber, but I didn't really like her. Her grandmother made good chocolate chip cookies. We made cornhusk dolls. I think I was still four. This one also burned later.

6. Pine Trailer Park, Summersville, WV. There was red carpet. I started Kindergarten at the Christian Academy. My mother worked there and after my half-day classes, I bounced around the halls on a bouncy horse. My horse-loving root, I guess. I wet my pants a lot. I wanted Snuggle Bear from the dryer sheet commercials as a pet.

Edited to Add: 7. Lee Street. White house with black shutters. We had a puppy named Sunday, but we only got to keep him from one Sunday till the next before we had to give him back. We walked out at dusk to get ice creams from the U-Save gas station. We had a cat named August who got hit by a car right in front of us and killed. This house always seemed creepy to me, though not for any real reason.

8. The Carpenter House in Mt. Nebo, thus named because we rented it from people named the Carpenters, but I also thought it was because the house was wooden. We three girls shared a room at the top of the stairs, and I liked to stand on the top step and watch storms. My favorite song was "Wake Up, Little Susie." My sisters and I played Civil War and Wild Horses and Gold Rush. I stepped on a hamster in the sandbox and it crunched. We liked MacGyver. I rode an imaginary horse everywhere I went. We had a brown Chevy Suburban named Teddy Bear. I was six.

9. Uncle Emmett's place in Mt. Nebo, WV. I don't remember an actual Uncle Emmett, though. My sister grew crystals for a science project. My other sister won a red ribbon in a social studies fair. There were two dogs, not ours, but they loved us enough to chase the schoolbus We walked down to the gospel sing to use the payphone. There were bunkbeds. I was seven. I started the first of three elementary schools I would attend in my second-grade year.

E.T.A. -- 10. Summersville Place, a retirement home, with my grandmother. We weren't allowed, but we did anyway. I remember watching Westerns and eating strawberry candy. There was a lady upstairs we thought was a witch. I don't actually remember sleeping there, but Mom says we stayed in Grandma's bed and she took the couch.

11. At a Christian bookstore in Muddletly, WV, for forty days and forty nights. The owners let us use their back room and I think my mom helped in the store. We weren't allowed to read. There were prayer meetings and the lady we lived with kept a bowl of glass-like green candy, which I loved. There were bees in boxes, and a stream out back. I remember we had a snow day once. I wanted a horse. We got a little gray car that my parents told me dropped from Heaven, and I never did know where it came from. I switched to the second of three elementary schools in second grade. My second-grade class shared a room with the third-grade class and it was too cold to use the playground, the whole time I lived there. We decorated shoeboxes for Valentine's Day.

12. With Yvonne in Canvas, WV. There were plastic runners on the carpets, and one whole white room of furniture that nobody, including Yvonne, was allowed to use. A mirror jumped off the wall during a prayer meeting and shattered on the living room floor. Yvonne had shoulder pads and liked Cool Whip on peanut butter sandwiches. Maybe this was where we weren't allowed to read. Or maybe it was both. There was a room in the back she didn't use, and that was our hideaway for Mom to read to us. Or maybe that was at the bookstore, too. Yvonne finally sat our stuff out on the sidewalk. Luckily, my parents had gone out and found us a place that very day. I'm not sure what we did about school, but I never did go to one in Canvas.

13. Maria Estates, in Glade Creek, WV, for two delicious years, my eighth through my tenth. We stopped going to church. We were off school during Indian Summer because of the teacher strike of 1990. We had a cat named Panther J. Andrew Cade who could knock on the door. My mom read us everything. The neighbor had a horse, but she didn't like us at first. Then she taught me to ride in the back meadow, and I don't remember being scared. We were convinced the meadow was haunted. She was my first real best friend. I liked listening to "Back in the High Life" by Steve Winwood and "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley.

14. In the car, moving to and from Illinois. I don't remember much, only that there was a rest area with phones that you could pick up and they would automatically tell you the weather. I thought it was magic.

15. Camp. This is to say, my grandmother's camp in Mt. Nebo, WV. I started fifth grade at the same school I'd attended for a couple of months in second grade. I made a friend who liked horses, and she broke her arm on the playground. My grandmother didn't have indoor plumbing and we washed in basins outside with water from the well. I ate peanut butter toast in the dark before school.

16. Dotson Trailer Park, Glade Creek, WV. There was a horse named Diamond who lived down the road. He was my best friend. I was eleven. There was a blizzard that winter and we made roads in the snow. There was an orange cat named Misfit. The neighbor boys and I built a fort down in the valley. I remember spending a lot of time walking in circles and brooding. My bedroom was in a corner of the living room.

17. E.T.A. -- Camp again, apparently.

18. Battle Run Campground in Mt. Nebo, WV. We couldn't afford rent, so we moved into the campground. We had to switch campsites every two weeks, as per their rules, so actually there were lots of little moves in between. We had a brown Nissan truck, and sometimes we rode in the back and held our tents, still pitched, against the wind while Dad drove us to a new campsite. It was easier than taking them apart and putting them back together. We hid out in the shower houses during the biggest storms. Of all the summers to live on Summersville Lake, we picked a drought year, the year they drained the lake early. There was a lot of mud and dry, cracked earth where there ought to have been water. I started seventh grade from the campground and yelled at the campers next door, who played a song about a muddy river over and over until one in the morning on a school night. I had a different best friend every week because the old ones would stop camping and go home. I did my homework in the laundry room. My roller skates went through the side of my tent. I had a boyfriend who was gay, like me. He took me to horse shows. I was twelve.

19. An old post office, Canvas, WV. My sister and I had a mail slot between our rooms. The walls didn't quite reach the ceilings. There was a horse a mile away named Star. Just past her lived my best friend, Kari. There was a swing in the back yard. I danced by the creek to classical music. I kept a journal of my daily activities with my imaginary horse. I wrote my first novel, about a magical land of horses called Aquilla. I was twelve.

20. A red cargo van, first moving to, and then back from, Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It just didn't feel right once we got there.

21. Harold Court, Summersville, WV. Hidden Springs Farm was a mile away and I got a job there cleaning stalls in exchange for riding lessons. Kari rode there, too. I met my best friend Stacie. My sister moved away and came back several months later with a baby. It was sweltering hot and it was my other sister's turn to live in the living room. I had a cat named Mikey who stole tomatoes off the counter. We lived there for three years and I started high school.

22. A haunted green house in Enon, WV. My father and my uncle built me a barn and I brought my first horse home from Hidden Springs Farm. Stuff and I rode for hours up and down country roads. He was scared of calves. Best friend was still Stacie and she learned to drive and visited a lot. I lived in the attic. Something knocked on the walls from the other side. My sister and I watched the X-Files religiously and I learned to bake cakes with green X's made of sprinkles to celebrate the release of the X-Files movie. My other sister visited on weekends with the baby. Kari and our other horsey friends visited and we bet dirty socks and broken hair bows on the Kentucky Derby every year. I lay on Stuff's back for hours and hours, reading horse books. We had a cat named Carter who slept on Stuff's back. He was killed by a car when he was one. We got a cat named Milagro next. I did my homework on the barn roof. I was seventeen.

23. Kintacoy. This was a half-finished apartment in a barn in the wilds of Mt. Nebo, WV. I lived upstairs. My parents lived downstairs in the kitchen, and Stuff lived up the hill in a rough, half-finished little shed. My parents spent a lot of time at the neighbor's haunted house. I was too scared, so I stayed alone at Kintacoy. We had our first computer with Internet and I built a website about my horse. I read a lot of X-Files fanfiction and watched Sports Night religiously by holding onto the TV antenna to get reception. There was no indoor plumbing. Or outdoor plumbing, either, once the porta-john got repossessed. I remember freezing my private parts peeing on the ground in January. It was one of the coldest winters I remember and I was very, very moody. I was still seventeen.

24. Hester Hall, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky. I spent one semester majoring in journalism. I had a best friend named Annie. I minored in equine science and came home after one semester to be with my own horse. Found out western Kentucky was too flat for this mountain girl.

23, revisited. Kintacoy again. Still moody. Stayed part time with my sister in her apartment in town. She drove me to Glenville College's Nicholas County campus, back when there was one. We fought tooth and nail to keep Sports Night on the air, of course a losing battle. We drank Dr. Pepper and I attended her entire distance learning lab with her without an instructor ever knowing. We ate lemon poppyseed muffins and argued politics for fun.

25. Buskirk Hall, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. My sister and I lived and breathed Election 2000. After a sleepless night watching the returns, which proved to be mostly pointless, I crossed campus to Jenkins and changed my major to education. We drove back and forth across West Virginia nearly every weekend.

26. First Avenue, Huntington, WV, with my sister and Stacie. I came out as a lesbian. I rode the bus out to Barboursville to work with an autistic teen and to ride my horse.

27. Fourth Avenue, a little efficiency apartment, my first solo place, Huntington, WV. I had a balcony three stories above the street. I lived above the deli and the Chinese restaurant, and just across the street from the bus station. I started dating. Eventually I started dating a woman named Tracy, who later came out as a transgendered man named Jake. I got a cat named Sage, and then found a cat named Henry (see cat-hat in userpic) in Wal-Mart.

28. Tenth Avenue, a haunted, scary house, with the campus gay and lesbian group. We rented the downstairs and our friends rented the upstairs. Something kept locking and unlocking doors and scratching mirrors. The gas got cut off and I learned to take cold showers. We got our first truck, an '88 Ford Ranger.

29. A trailer with no plumbing. Huntington, WV. The wheel fell off the truck and we started walking the mile and a half to catch the bus. I was supposed to start student teaching, but the wiring failed and we had to move into ...

30. Jake's sister's dorm room for three consecutive days at a time, the maximum allowed. Then my friend Steve's apartment for a night. Then back to Jake's sister's room. All the while student teaching.

31. Linden Circle. Huntington, WV. A pretty apartment, but with scary neighbors and a scary neighborhood. Jake and I broke up. He moved out. I graduated college and bought a gold Chevy.

32. With an opera singer, Brevard, NC. First by myself. Then Jake moved to NC to be with me and we got back together. My first year of teaching special education. Stuff, my beloved first horse of nine years, got sick suddenly, and I drove all night to be at his side when he passed away. My cat Sage disappeared, but came back three weeks later. We were asked to leave.

33. At the boarding house, Brevard, NC. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. We lived there till school was out, then left for Virginia, where I'd accepted a job. I was given a sick horse who turned out not to be too sick. That was Magnum. We rode in a show in the rain and got a blue ribbon.

34. With my sister in Charlottesville, VA, for a few days, on the floor of the office.

35. A sublet in a scary neighborhood in Charlottesville, VA. I started teaching at a private school. We had a dog named Hunter who hated apartments.

36. A farmhouse you got to by driving through cow fields in Afton, VA. We brought Magnum home and got him a pet goat, a Nigerian Dwarf. Learned that goat fencing must be water tight. We drove our car without insurance. My sister moved away to Philly and it was just me and Jake with the animals. Something knocked on the door in the middle of the night, most nights, although we were the only house for miles. We got evicted with five days to find a new place, and we had to part with Pete the goat.

37. A horrible hodgepodge week where we lived in our car, drove back and forth from my parents' apartment in West Virginia, and stayed in cheap motel rooms. Our car broke down and was towed away and that left us stranded in a cheap motel with a hole in the wall. I pulled Henry-cat out of the wall by his tail. He was traumatized. We maybe all were.

38. My parents helped get us into a cottage on a horse farm in Staunton, VA. We kept Magnum there and worked in the stable while I also commuted 45 minutes to the private school. The horse farm owner possessed a strong personality and the farm was never peaceful. We got rid of Hunter because she was sick and we couldn't afford her care. We knew we were about to be homeless. My Henry-cat couldn't take the stress and ran away in January. I found him dead on the road in March. He was four. We were finally asked to leave. We left the dead Chevy sitting there next to Henry's grave.

39. With a friend named Julie, for about a week. She was awesome. So was her dog. Sage was lonely. So was Jake. So was I. We didn't talk much. We drove a tan minivan with 300,000 miles on it.

40. Back to the boarding house in Brevard, NC. I count it separately because it was so different this time. The cast of characters had changed. I taught preschool, then started my third year of teaching. I got my dog, Lola. Jake got his puppy, Buddy. Lights flickered willy-nilly and there were disembodied footsteps that walked through the house. I wrote LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE. We were asked to leave. Jake came out as trans and changed his name. We ditched the van and bought a Bonneville from my coworker. Still haven't finished paying.

41. A rental in Asheville, NC, with a friend named Erika. Obama was inaugerated. Erika moved back to Florida. She was the perfect roommate and I miss her like crazy. This was the first rental in a long time that I don't regret.

And, finally,

42. A basement apartment that is half apartment, half dank, creepy, unfinished basement. No kitchen cabinets. A jazz band practices down here once a week. Occasionally, somebody taps you on the shoulder, even if you are alone in a room. This is where I live. I'm twenty-eight.

In just a few weeks, Jake and I are moving back to West Virginia. We're not sure where to, exactly, so we might be doing the campground thing again. I kind of hope so. Of all the places I just listed, it was one of the most fun.

So now you know why I write what I write. I just listed 42 novel ideas, minimum.

I sound like a kazoo.

I sound like a kazoo.

But we'll get to that in a minute. First of all, it's important to know that everyone is all right. My father had a heart attack Sunday -- or, rather, my father realized he had a heart attack Sunday. He actually had the attack last Thursday, in the middle of a county land auction.

Apparently, it went something like this:

Auctioneer: "Do I hear 350?"

Dad: (wordlessly raises number, while noticing crushing pain in chest and arm)

Auctioneer: "I've got 350. Do I hear 375? 375?"

Dad: (disoriented, wordlessly raises number again)

Auctioneer: "Uh, Mark ... You've already got it for 350, but I can go higher if you'd like."
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And then Dad stayed to bid on two more parcels, after which he headed home over the mountains to look after his granddaughter for a few days. Then drove her back across the state to her own home. Then back across the state to his own home. My parents live in a small town -- population 1,477 -- in West Virginia, and my mother doesn't drive. By the time Dad decided to drive himself the hour to the hospital, three days after the attack, the heart damage was so bad that they immediately rushed him to Roanoke. Which, of course, left my mother stranded and sleeping in a car in West Virginia.

I didn't know any of this when I got up for work Monday morning. I only knew that my mother had left a brief message for my sister saying she and my father were heading for the hospital "as a precaution." I also knew I had the beginnings of a head cold and that if I did, my kids probably did, as well. By ten, I'd had one kid puking and one seizing. By twelve-thirty, I'd sent both home. Meanwhile, a third was running a mild fever and my mother still wasn't answering her cell phone. Plus my cold medicine was making me dizzy and I was feeling a little out of sorts.

Ten till one, my mother answered, with the news that my father was in a Roanoke hospital and mom was still stranded in West Virginia, waiting for a ride. Turning down my immediate offer to head in that direction, Mom swore she had a ride on the way.

I was running a fever when I left school that afternoon, and had the beginnings of a migraine. I went to sleep early and woke the next morning to toss the dogs into the fenced yard, grab a couple of changes of clothes, and head for the mountains to see my father.

My mother didn't want me to make the trip, but I didn't tell her. She found out anyway by calling the school and discovering her daughter playing hooky. I was halfway there by then and came on, even though the Google Map's promise of 4 hours turned out to be wrong by two. My partner was experiencing a severe sort of anxiety about driving on the Interestate, and every time we went up a mountain, my sinus pressure increased till I started seeing spots. So, we weren't exactly the safest of drivers.

We made it as evening came on, and surprised my dad -- in retrospect, probably not something you want to do to a heart attack patient. But he seemed thrilled to see us. My mother had also made it to the hospital, driven there by her sister. Apparently, in addition to turning down my offer of a ride, she'd also turned down an offer from my 13-year-old autistic niece to "come pick her up if she needed a ride." I'm not sure whether my niece was planning to come on her scooter or her bicycle, but it couldn't have been good, either way. At any rate, we all sat around for a while, listening to my dad crack jokes about his heart monitor. He was surprisingly jovial for someone who had just walked around for four days after a heart attack. When we headed for the motel that night, everyone felt a lot better, now that we were together.

The next morning, I woke with a fever, and so much congestion that I couldn't talk. If I did manage to force my voice past the blockage in my throat, it came out sounding like a kazoo. I daffy-ducked my way through the morning before heading home. By this point, I was completely unable to drive, a fact which caused my partner's anxiety to raise markedly. I called the school and let them know I would not be back this week. We took it slow and grabbed a $30 motel room halfway home.

Fortunately, our pepto-bismol-colored motel room happened to be directly across from a haunted seafood restaurant, so the evening was not a total loss.

That brings us to this morning -- I still sound like a kazoo, and I'm about to embark on the rest of my road trip -- but Dad made it home from the hospital safe and my partner is feeling a lot better about driving this morning, so I guess we're doing all right. Plus, who would have thought a 30-dollar, pepto-bismol-colored room would have free wireless?

Careless Driving

It's Derby Day. I love Derby Day. When I was 17, I skipped the prom because I wanted to stay home and watch Derby coverage. My friends and I used to bet dirty socks on the race when we were in junior high. When I was eight, I had a pink stick-horse named Unbridled. I have always loved Derby Day.

As part of the Derby Day festivities, I was going to go see my horse, Marvin, but it's pouring rain and he lives in a mud pit, so I decided to wait till tomorrow. Instead, I went to see a horse show at the ag center.

When I arrived, the English classes had just ended (darn!) and the arena was full of ten-to-twelve-year-olds warming up for Youth Western Pleasure. They wore sparkling vests that matched their hair bows, and their saddle cloths, and their ... cell phones?

Sure enough. A twelve-year-old girl was cantering her Appaloosa gelding along the railing at a fast clip, completing loops and figures of eight, all the while talking on a cell phone she held to her ear. Twice, I watched her almost run into other horses. Twice, the other riders high-tailed it out of the way with their mounts. She chattered happily through her entire warm-up pattern and rode out of the arena, still gabbing.

I want to comment on this occurrence, but I'm just not sure what to say.

I didn't get my spaghetti and meatballs.

Field trip day! I love field trip day. I love taking seven kids who I'm not sure I have any control over in the classroom, and moving the whole shebang outside.

Walking to the bus -- "walking" being relative, of course -- is an adventure. My tallest student is in the lead, at a run. A few feet back is student #2, who has been out sick all week. He helpfully volunteers information about his mucus to a passing teacher. Meanwhile students #3 and #4 have veered off from the group because there is a) a cool reflection on a windshield, and, b) a dropped piece of bubble gum.
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I am rushing to catch up, so students #5 and #6 have decided it is the perfect time to lag behind. They rattle the doorknobs to classrooms and shuffle their feet. And student #7? Holding my hand and being sweet as pie, of course. I think they must consult one another before major outings. "It's your turn to be the good one today! If we're all bad, she'll make us skip movie day!"

Remarkably, we make it onto the bus and get seated. One student grabs another and chucks him like a Frisbee out of her favorite seat. I have to sit with her and have a conversation about bus manners. For the third time. This week. By the time she utters a grudging apology to her stand-in Frisbee, Mrs. J has the bus moving and we're pulling out of the parking lot.

A truckload of teenagers careens around the building and almost takes us out, eliciting a scream from the half of my kids who notice. The other half continue to enjoy their own personal worlds, much safer and calmer than the bus.

At the restaurant, one student who is being allowed off her diet for today launches herself at the complimentary chips and salsa, polishing off four before I can stop her. She takes a bite of one chip, then dips it again into the salsa, immediately claiming one whole basket for herself. When her chip supply runs out -- as far as she knows, although I have sereptitiously slid about half the chips from the basket and whisked them into my napkin -- she grabs the salsa bowl and upends it, gulping the salsa like spring water. Beside her, her classmate grabs the lemon from my sweet tea and takes a bite, then begins to cry.

We order using pictures. This is to say, the students order using pictures, and I am so busy helping them choose and articulate their choices that I nearly forget to order for myself. When the food comes, Salsa Girl takes one sweet bite and smiles at me, as though to remind me that she does, in fact, possess table manners. I turn to help Lemon Boy, who has taken a huge bite of sour cream because he isn't sure how to mix the ingredients of his Taco Salad. Together we break the shell into manageable bites and stir them into the lettuce, sour cream, and guacamole. I turn back to find that Salsa Girl has completely finished her enchilada and rice. She is on the last bite of beans. In amazement, I glance back at Lemon Boy, who has taken the tomatoes from his taco salad and dropped them square on my quesadilla.

Across the table, one of my verbal students is attempting to order a side of spaghetti and meatballs. All week, she has been singing a song about this particular dish, and now she is determined that this restaurant will serve it. In front of her, a perfectly good enchilada grows cold. She is near tears. I rescue the poor server, who appears near tears himself, and talk her into trying the food on her plate. She lifts one tiny forkful to her lips. Then prompty takes three bites and forgets all about spaghetti.

When dinner has been eaten and spills mopped up, each student takes a turn visiting the cashier with her changepurse, counting out the bills and coins for her meal. No one can remember the name of what they ate. They tell the cashier, "I had that thing. The one that was wrapped up." Or "I ate something that was green and yellow." Or "I didn't get my spaghetti and meatballs."

Outside, we pile onto the bus again. I run interference with the student who likes to play Frisbee with her classmates. By the time we reach the school, I have burned off every calorie I packed in, and then some.

The minute we reach the classroom, Salsa Girl turns to me and beams. "Want cookie," she signs.

We are never leaving the building again.

(Till next week, of course.)