Cookies. Really, really good cookies

One of my clients is the Carolina Cookie company. They sell cookies through the mail, as you might guess, given my real job.

The owner, Gary, is the nicest guy in the world, and he owes me big because I found a way to extract data that saved him hours and days of headache with the North Carolina Dept of Revenue, who decided to audit him.

It's also That Time of Year again when I'm in the midst of getting donations for the Bach Children's Chorus silent auction. And, this year, I convinced the BCC that they should put the auction online, gradually, instead of cramming all of the items into one space for the Gala, for people to bid on one night only. This way, we spread it out throughout the community (and beyond, for the things that are THINGS rather than being Rochester-specific) rather than pumping only the people who attend the Gala for that much more cash. So, we're now using MissionFish, the arm of eBay that's for nonprofits.

That's a long way of saying that I convinced my North Carolina guy to donate a YEAR'S WORTH of Carolina Cookies -- his Cookie of the Month club, for 12 months. He was happy to. These are really fantastic cookies, and we just put up the auction yesterday, and NO ONE has bid on it yet. It's worth over $200, and makes a great gift. In case anyone is hankering for cookies once per month for a year, or wants to impress someone for not much money, I thought I would make the few of you who read this blog aware of it. You can click here to read more about it, and bid.

The Frontier Team web site

Hi, folks. I'm taking a big leap here and posting a link to my new web site,

The-Frontier-Team.com

I created this web site in the last several weeks, from an idea I got while attending the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators conference. As I practically think in HTML, it made sense to create a web site to sell the book series to a publisher or agent. This is unusual, I haven't seen any other sites like this, so I hope it gets some attention.

I won't say anything here about the series, I'll just let the site tell it to those of you curious enough to give your comments, about either the site or the book series. The site needs to be simple, navigable, and tell you exactly what you need to know if you were someone looking to take on the author of the next hot series for 8-to-12-year-olds.

I found a fabulous illustrator to draw my 10 kids and their cabin; she sent me the rest of the drawings today, and of course I put them right up. See what you think!

Criticism is VERY welcome. I know you'll be nice.

Deep breath and I'm hitting the Publish button.

Update: Does anyone see any font size issues? The quotes from the book are Times New Roman, everything else should be Arial. I can't tell any font size problems here on my computer, but David swears he saw differences between the pages from work. Thanks.

Madison's new Japanese room

Amid all of the busy-ness this past week was one thing I really wanted to take care of immediately: The previous weekend, David(!) had helped the girls undertake a complete and thorough cleaning of their rooms. Part of what that meant for Madison's room was to move her bunk bed to a different position. Madison has an extremely small room, with two built-out ineffective narrow closets surrounding a window on the short wall. Someday, we hope to bash out those closets, and reconvert what *used* to be a closet for that room but is now a sauna which we never use, attached to the bathroom, back into a good-sized closet. But for now, we're stuck with the closets.

All week, Madison has been absolutely scrupulous about keeping that room spotless. And, she wanted it to be a Japanese-themed room. So, on Friday, we went to Jo-Ann Fabrics, she picked out some gorgeous bright-red-with-gold silky fabric (on sale for $7/yard), and some very classy brass curtain rods, and I made her curtains. Interestingly, she decided that instead of two curtains per window, she wanted just one, and she wanted it to be flat, spread out across, like a shade ("more Japanese-y") rather than bunched up and drawn to the side. Honestly, it looks great.

And then on Saturday morning, for a surprise I went back to Jo-Ann and bought these two beautiful red decorative gauze lanterns (no lights in them) to hang between the windows. And, the piece de resistance, I got one of those little boxy shade lights and a silk red orchid plant for her nightstand.

I have promised to paint a Japanese pagoda at some point for the wall, but that's going to have to wait a while. But I did want to get that room a little transformed, so that was part of my burst of activity Friday and Saturday.

Presenting: Madison's Japanese Room:

Is tonight "restaurant night"?

For about the last four months, Ella every night asks me if "tonight we can have a restaurant." By this, she means that I am the chef, she sets the dining room table nicely, and writes out a menu for each customer (David and Madison). She dresses all in black, and takes a white long-sleeved tee shirt and ties it around her waist like an apron, tucking a pad into the "belt" of the "apron" and a pen behind her ear. I sit down at the table, and she takes our orders with that official, friendly, authoritative, and slightly detached air that waitresses have. Then, I race back into the kitchen and prepare drinks while Ella brings out all of the food that I have set out in order in the kitchen.

She names the restaurant something different each night, names like "The Pine Cone." Often, there is entertainment, too, usually a pianist (Madison) and dancing (Ella).

I love this age.

So busy

It's so true that everything takes longer than you think it's going to, especially when there is REALLY COOL work that you just can't help doing, and little-tiny-detail work that clients clamor for RIGHT NOW and will only take 10 minutes, and these darned cute little critters who really do need to be educated.

This week, I was busy, seriously busy, POWERHOUSE busy, but sometimes it seemed as though I was slogging through mud when I looked back at the end of the day and wonder where the hours went, and could it be true that I only got done 1/3 of what I had intended to do?

I will admit that it was kind of a Bad Educator Mommy week. The kids were essentially unschooled, I was that busy with client work, and a science project review for KidsOutAndAbout.com plus my typical work for that, and finishing up the web site so I can sell The Frontier Team to a publisher (the illustrator is supposed to get me the remaining 10 illustrations tomorrow, when she can scan them at work and email them to me, and I am THAT excited about it, I tell you). The girls watched a David Attenborough series, and The Price is Right every day. It was Break Week here for official schoolkids, so they went to a karate camp all day on Thursday. They read, they did computers, they listened to history, they practiced piano. And, all week we played a really great Go-Fish card game that I made up for Ella to get her past the last 12 problems that she has to learn to get her multiplication tables finished. I KNOW if I had pushed her, she could have finished them before Christmas.

Which brings me to what I've been feeling lately...

I KNOW if I just were more organized, and could focus exclusively on the girls' education during the morning rather than my mind being pulled in a hundred thou-must-accomplish-this-NOW directions, these lovely girls of mine would be learning at light speed. As it is, they're still ahead of the curve by a large margin, and are very, very happy kids. I comfort myself with this. And with the fact that we're all happier with this life we've chosen. And with the fact that I'm much happier creating things constantly, and making money, and serving on their Chorus board of directors (which is practically a part-time job) and working for a different career life (one which, I would love to think, will send the three Ross Women around the country on book tours), than I would be "just" home schooling. So, I know it all works out in the end, but I would still love to be more "super" than I am.

Take my quarterly reports. I like pushing my luck on quarterly reports, I resent how intense the reporting is for New York State, and so I don't do them until the district reminds me. That's my personal little push against authority. But, the district reminded me on Thursday afternoon. And, as easy as these are for me relative to others who can't write nearly as fast as I can, it was still something that was going to take me an hour and a half to do -- one quarterly report for each kid, for two quarters, November and February. So I didn't do them, and I didn't do them, and I finally finished them today and will email them to the district tomorrow.

I need to plan more curriculum, and I need to look at what the programmers have done on my site in India (they say it's ready), and I need to gather materials and enter things in Quickbooks so my accountant can do my taxes. I estimate that these projects will take me, respectively, 2, 3, and 6 hours. Do I have this time, unbroken in the way I need it to be? No. I will have to steal it, either from the girls' school, regular work, sleep, or time with David. And, for each of these projects, there is always the temptation to "just look at email" or other blogs, or local online news, or what have you.

I just looked over this post and it looks like one long complaint. I don't mean it to be. I'm actually very happy. Just very busy. And it sometimes feels as though I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Goodness, it's 7:20 and The Chef (moi) had better get some food on the table.

The Price is Right!

By "The Price Is Right" I am not being colloquial. I really do mean the TV show.

My kids, particularly Madison, have been very interested lately in the prices of things. So, today I thought to myself that it would be fun to watch The Price Is Right with them. And it would kind of count as school.

They LOVED it. They want to watch it every day.

In a way, Madison was over-involved. She wanted everyone to win, and was extraordinarily happy when they did, and quite upset when they didn't. I think she'll settle down after a few times, but it was kind of funny to watch her jumping around.

Actually, they also wanted "me" to win, because I have a much wider frame of reference for guessing prices than they do. They were happy when I guessed correctly.

Incidentally, Drew Carey is now the host. One of our guys! So we even had the benefit of a couple of subtle free-market jokes thrown in for kicks.

It's now on the "To be recorded" list. Yay Time Warner.

A web site, and an illustrator

One of the other insights I gained during my trip to NYC a few weeks ago to attend the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference is that I should make a web site in order to sell my Frontier Team book series to the publishers or agents. That is, this will not be the web site that is ultimately published for the series, which will be used by kids; this is for the publishing industry.

One of the things that I think will make me attractive to agents and publishers is the fact that I already have a compelling web presence and audience, and that I can augment this as I become published. I practically think in HTML anyway. A web presence is, to put it mildly, not an obstacle to me. So I immediately started making the site when I got home.

I realized immediately that even if I'll be selling only the text to a publisher, not any artwork (it isn't a picture book, anyway), my web site would require graphics. You simply can't stick a bunch of words on a web page and expect them to be read; I've learned that with KidsOutAndAbout.com.

So I needed some pictures.

A couple of weeks ago, at the monthly meeting of the Rochester Area Children's Writers & Illustrators, I made an announcement that I was looking for an illustrator. And, as you can tell from the drawing of Max at the top of this post, I've found one! For a few hundred dollars, Mary Warth, who is an art teacher at Brockport High School, will be supplying me with 10 charcoal illustrations of my kids, and one of their cabin.

Isn't Max awesome? When Mary sent him to me as a sample, I was beside myself with delight. Max, who is 13, was adopted from Guatemala, and this picture is just like my mental image of him.

Madison, despite knowing in some peripheral way that Max was adopted from Guatemala, put him with blond hair in her mind just like her good real-life friend Max, so she had to get used to it.

Perfect birthday day

David's birthday was yesterday. The last thing he needs is more stuff, so the girls and I planned a terrific day out yesterday for the whole family.

First, we drove 1 1/2 hours west and south to East Aurora, NY, home of the Roycroft Campus. We had a wonderful delicious, long brunch at the Roycroft Inn. After we ate, we skipped across the street to the Roycroft Campus, where as good luck would have it, they were having a terrific sale on past-few-years issues of arts & crafts home restoration magazines such as Style 1900, Arts & Crafts Homes and the Revival, and American Bungalow. I bought a bunch.

Then, we drove 1/2 hour up to Buffalo, to Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House. The docent on the hour-long tour was knowledgeable and thorough, and even the girls understood everything and enjoyed themselves. This was easily the best-preserved Wright house tour that we've been on, including the Robie House and Taliesin.

Next, at about 3pm, we drove 4 minutes over to the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, a museum that is housed in the only permanent building built for the Pan American Exposition, a World's Fair held from May through October, 1901 in Buffalo. Very good, at least for what it was. They have, in their collection, the original Red Jacket Medal given to the Seneca orator Red Jacket by George Washington in 1792. But it wasn't out yesterday. I'm using this medal as the basis for Book #2 in my series for 8-12-year-olds that I'm writing, and I'll need to make a separate appointment with the curator in order to see it. That's okay, I need to talk with him anyway.

At the Historical Society, they had a model train set that included lots of historic buildings in and around the Buffalo area. One of those was the Eagle House, an 1827 Inn that is still a restaurant. We decided to go there for dinner, especially as it was practically on the way home. Immediately behind it, on Ellicott Creek, was the 1811 Williamsville Water Mill. We didn't get to go in the mill, but we had a terrific dinner in Eagle House.

We got home about 7:30 and all of us snuggled into our bed for an hour. David and I read the magazines, Madison read Harry Potter, and Ella read Calvin & Hobbes.

I don't think I could plan a better day. And, unusual for western New York in February, the weather was perfect: SUNNY! And about 30 degrees. Amazing.

After toasting Abe

At dinner, we toasted Abe Lincoln. Ella, critically examining a glass of red wine and a glass of grape juice side-by-side, asked me whether, if I didn't know which was which, I could tell the difference.

"In this case, no," I said.

"Because, after all," David said, looking at Ella. "What is wine made from?"

Without missing a beat, she replied, with a smile, "Jesus's blood."

We all high-fived her.

Abe, and heroes, and us

From this morning's KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter, for which I just hit the "Send" button:

Many of us, myself included, regard Abraham Lincoln as one of our nation's greatest heroes. I have been reading a lot about him, lately, most recently Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. We Americans love to amass legends about our historical figures, but from everything I have been able to read, Lincoln really was Honest Abe. His unflinching integrity, his amazing ability to keep always focused on the end goal while working through the challenges that got in his way (and there were many), and his dedication to achieving freedom for all Americans are what attract me most. He had confidence that he was doing what was right, to the best of his ability.

Reading about Lincoln helps me keep these qualities in mind as I go about life from day to day. I strive to be as mindful of the realities of our lives, as able to determine what is important. Lincoln knew that it was above all important to think, about everything, before acting, and to change one's mind when one comes to understand new facts. It is this quality that I try to instill in my children: the ability to think for themselves, and to be confident that this is the right thing to do.

...and more death

Life is full of ironies. Sometimes, you have to hunt for them. But not today. As if to put an exclamation point on last night's death-rumination festivities, this morning's Science Club field trip was to a

Pathologists's Lab!

We saw diseased and normal examples of lungs, hearts, digestive systems, kidneys, bones, and reproductive organs. Seeing all the bright yellow fat buildup around the typical person's intestines made me want to go to the gym and eat salad for the rest of my life. But I loved it. I love that kind of stuff. Anatomy is my thing. Feed me some tidbits about the inner workings of the human body (okay, I guess that metaphor was in bad taste [get it? bad taste]) and I'm happy for the rest of the day. E.g., you wouldn't believe the difference lung cancer feels like compared with normal lungs -- really hard versus floppy and squishy. And did you know that if you have three or four alcoholic drinks one night, your liver is yellow the next morning with all of its processing, but that fades pretty quickly? We explored the hows and whys of an enlarged heart, and saw the heart/lung system of an individual who'd had Down's Syndrome.

My kids were not so happy about the whole floppy-squishy aspect of the morning.

Ella was interested. Ella was minorly squeamish at the beginning, and wouldn't touch anything, but didn't actively turn her face away as a matter of principle. She stood close to the demonstration table, though she did kind of back off when the pathologist was gleefully flipping around the different chambers of the heart to show us the valves that had become blocked.

Madison pretty much sat in the back and averted her eyes--although not rudely--and only glanced up from time to time. She reported she really does like the theory of anatomy, but it belongs in books.

The death issue

Every kid cycles through despair at the idea of death, it seems. Madison first asked me, "Am I going to die?" when she was three years old, in the car, after she had first grasped that animals die. My answer, "Yes. When you're very, very old," took her breath away at the time. She had not been expecting that to be my answer.

I think she has cycled through an evening of death rumination about every two years since then, and last night was the 9-year-old version.

"I don't care if I die," she wailed (while my heart twisted). "I won't even know about it. I just don't want you to die."

Again, I reassured her that I wouldn't be dying until she herself was very old, a grandmother. It wouldn't be while she needed me to take care of her. It didn't help, last night. "If I'm 70 and you're 100 when you die," she sobbed, "I'm already about 1/8 of the way there. And 1/7 of the way until Dad dies." She cried and cried at the unfairness of it all. She cried herself to sleep, with me snuggled next to her.

I don't like the whole death thing, either. What I didn't say to Madison was that I'm going to do my very best that, unlike with my parents, she'll actually miss me when I'm gone. (I mean: I don't miss my parents, and, at least as far as I know, they're not even dead yet.) I did feel grateful that I'm not sending her to school, that the times when we're apart is not one wasted minute.

I'm not sure what triggered last night's episode. Could it be that we'd just been playing Clue by the fire? (All that murder, you know...last night it was Professor Plum in the Lounge with the lead pipe.) Could it have been that we took them to see the movie Hotel for Dogs and the two kids in it were orphans? Maybe a combination of the two? Or maybe it was just that 2-year point. I don't exactly know.

It's not fair to compare, but I'm still proud

On Friday, my daughters got up, had their piano lesson, did schoolwork, and went to karate class.

On Friday, my colleague Steve's son Dan got up and saved a man's life.

It was his first rescue as a New York City firefighter.

I'm glad there are people in the world like Dan, who make being a hero their profession.

And it reminds me that it's my job as a parent to raise children who, if the time called for it, would rise to the occasion to be a hero if necessary.

Artwork in the first observation

Notice how Henri Sorensen, for Robert Frost's Poetry for Young People, paints almost exactly the same scene as Betsey Lewin does in Doreen Cronin's Click Clack Moo. Both use watercolors, but to VERY different effect!

First observation

I was at the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators annual conference in NYC this past weekend, and when I tell you I haven't had a real moment to come up for air since then, due both to catching up on "real work" and starting the writing/publicizing/selling work I was energized to do by the conference, I am not kidding. I also slept very little during the weekend (head cold plus unfamiliar bed plus all the ideas running around in my head) so I have been doing my best to catch up with about 9 hours per night the last few nights.

I have a lot to say about the ideas from the conference.

The first one is, I think, the most profound one for me, and it has nothing to do with my own writing or the selling of my series. I realized something about my own didactic style with my kids, a place where I have been remiss:

I have been rushing them out of picture books. To their detriment.

As someone who is profoundly interested in my kids being conceptual and using their imaginations, as someone who is not particularly visual, as someone who adores the places a "real book" can take her...I have viewed my children's emergence from picture books toward "real books" with pleasure and triumph.

You know what? That was pretty dumb.

For one of the breakout sessions at the conference, I mistakenly got placed in an illustrator's seminar instead of a writer's seminar. Not wanting to make things difficult for the organizers (having been the right-hand man at conferences myself), I went to that seminar instead of trying to switch. What a fortunate mistake! I got to see up-close-and-personal the life of an art director making decisions about how to match the text of an author with the art of an illustrator in her portfolio. And I saw how truly, deeply, these people care about art, about having text come to life through art, about how the art is not somehow a second-class citizen beside the words. I realized how quickly I have turned the pages in my kids' picture books: Just as soon as I stopped reading the text, I flipped the page. Did I ever give them time really to absorb the pictures? Did I ever really absorb the pictures? No, to both questions. Often, Ella would point out some visual detail of a book that I had read dozens of times, and it would startle me.

So, this week, it's picture book week here at Mariposario. Today and tomorrow, most regular lessons are suspended so that we can make our way through the art in our picture books and really see it. For me, it will be as if for the first time. I bet Ella will be able to tell me a lot.