Quick video: Ella's Birthday of the Day memorization

Yesterday's Birthday of the Day was Gustav Stickley. This is the way Ella chose to memorize her facts. Chock full of personality, that Ella.

Finally, the Penn degree means something

Over the weekend I was doing some research on the literary agent who had just requested the full MS of The Frontier Team, and found out that he went to Penn at the same time I did. I went back and forth over whether I should contact him again and tell him that. I finally decided to do it, and 10 minutes after I sent that email I got this back:

Wow, I wonder if we were in any classes together--­I was English/creative writing and took 19 classes, and grew to have a pretty intense love/hate relationship with Bennett Hall (which I understand has been completely renovated and even has air conditioning now!)…

I look forward to reading your book.

Best,

Josh

To some people, though not to me (wouldn't do it again), it means a lot to have gone to Penn. That's what made me come down on the side of sending the agent a short email to that effect, even at the risk of it seeming that I was bugging him (agents hate to be bugged). So, it was the right decision! My fingers are crossed, although not too tightly because then I couldn't type.

Then something went... BUMP

I have been so busy working on the latest release of KidsOutAndAbout.com, and keeping up the current KOA, and homeschooling, and whatnot, that it would have been tempting to lay aside my fiction projects, both the writing of the new book called Food Fights, and the marketing of my Frontier Team manuscript to agents.

I had been discouraged by the Summer of Rejection 2009, and had done what I thought was the sensible thing (and it was): I essentially laid aside the Frontier Team, stopped working on Book 2 because the agents who had seen the project hadn't been interested, and turned my energy to a new book, a project I love. Here is the one-line summary of that book: Food Fights: An Organic Revolution, about a girl’s War for Dietary Independence from her father’s food fad obsessions. The book is much more hip than the Frontier Team. I had been told by the Hip Agents I talked with that the Frontier Team was "too wholesome" for their lists. Well, this one is anything but wholesome... it actually promotes rebellion. I am enjoying the writing immensely, when I can get to it.

Anyhow, when the New Year turned, I realized that just because I wasn't working on the Frontier Team any more, and just because my new project would be so much more appealing to agents, didn't mean that I shouldn't keep, at least casually, trying to pursue agents for the Frontier Team. So I had lackadaisically been sending out queries, a couple every few weeks.

Well, a query that I sent out the second week of February just paid off: An agent from an old New York firm had read the first five pages and was interested in reading the full manuscript! Now, I had had fulls requested before, but only from agents I'd met in person, none from someone who had actually read the beginning and wanted more. So it looks promising, at least more promising than the rest. The agent's turnaround time is 8 weeks. If it takes that long for him to get back to me, it's likely that I'll have the Food Fights first draft ready by the time he is done.

This means that if life weren't busy enough, I'm now working head-down full-speed-ahead on the Food Fights manuscript... there is a conference in May that I want to attend in Boston if I don't hear back from this agent soon, and it would need to be ready by then. Last night I worked really hard and finished the outline, which is kind of complicated because each chapter title is an event in or aspect of the American Revolution, and metaphorically corresponds to the events in that chapter in the book. (Examples of chapter titles: 1. Lexington 2. Concord 3. The Olive Branch Petition 4. Common Sense 5. Declaration of Independence 6. Battle of Brooklyn 7. Crossing the Delaware ... all the way through Chapter 16, Treaty of Paris.)

So, I'll try to keep up here, especially about stuff the girls are doing, but I'm likely to be in Push Through and Ahead mode for the next couple of months.

And, frankly, any encouraging words would be welcome. What I'm trying to accomplish in the Food Fights book is kind of daunting. It's really ambitious. All kinds of themes and messages are being woven together while I'm keeping the pace and plot fast and the characters engaging... it's the kind of book that I hope kids will find something different in each time they read it. The kind that I'd like sixth grade teachers to assign as book report books because there's just so many nuggets of gold in there. The kind that speaks to both kids and adults and makes them think at the same time as enjoying the characters. The kind that wins the Newbery.

While I am hoping that the plan works, I am not positive it will. So I'm just focused on getting that Perfect First Draft done. (As Anne LaMott says, "Every first draft is a Perfect First Draft.) I have discovered that it's really easy to have my fiction writing enthusiasm squashed, especially when there are all kinds of other things I have to work on. Right now I need cheerleaders rather than skeptics. I love to edit, and I'm sure the second draft will be very different from the first draft, once I see how it all hangs together. But if I lose momentum, I won't have the first draft at all.

Momentum = mass times velocity

Hmmmm. Well, that gives me no insight at all. I'd hoped it would, but it didn't. I had to type it out first and see it there, and then know that I must edit it out.

Momentum = mass times velocity

See? The first draft is a Perfect First Draft. I'll never know how to edit if I don't get it on the page first.

Wish me luck.

Play -- the verb -- in The Balance

It's all a balance, and sometimes I wonder if I'm teetering.

Yesterday, I played in the snow with the girls for over two hours, building a fort/snowslide:



It was tremendously fun. The snow cooperated like no other snow I've seen: It was perfectly sticky, but not slushy. If you needed to scoop up some snow to reinforce up one of your "blocks," well, it behaved like clean, white clay. It wasn't too cold. No one got bored. We all got lots of exercise.

Here's the thing: When was the last time I went out and played with the girls? I can't remember.

We go on hikes, sure. We do projects. We get Out and About as few others do. But we don't play together that much. No, their play time is my work time. And I guard that work time carefully.

I tell myself that this is good, that they have to learn to play together independently, without me. All true. But still, I realize that I have turned away from play. I'm really poor at pretend games, for instance, whereas they are masterful. They have a new fantasy game they play in the car, which they call the Phone Game. They have two of our old, broken cell phones. Madison plays the role of Mission Control giving verbal directions and clues to Ella, who is out in the field in some mystery adventure in a fairyland world. They describe to each other what is happening, as if they were on the phone.

It's an incredible thing to listen to from the front seat. They have such imagination, such mental agility... a facility with making up stuff on the fly that I can't come close to replicating. I even find it arduous to play with them, walking their dollhouse people through an adventure. I remember doing this with ease as a child, but now I think my inhibitions are totally in the way.

I never want them to lose this.

Almost three years ago, I wrote on this blog about how grateful I was that the girls still played "chirp and peep" with me. It's the one pretend game I'm still good at... I'm the Mommy Birdie and they're the Baby Birdies. The mommy birdie says "chirp" and the baby birdies say "peep." And do you know, we STILL do it. Sometimes we have an entire game of it when I'm snuggling them into bed, but sometimes it's just a quick chirp-and-peep check-in when we're out and about. It's our special language. When I want to say "I love you," I whisper to one of them, "chirp" and she whispers back, "peep."

I feel as though I've been too busy to incorporate enough play into what I do with them. Maybe we play "at school" -- and I guess we sort of do, I try to make it fun, and we usually have a good connection. But it's not the same as play-without-a-particular-point, which we did yesterday. I will admit that my mind kept drifting off into "shoulds" -- I should be doing my taxes, I should be reconciling my accounts, I should be writing reports, I should be doing laundry, I should be making dinner -- and I kept having to yank myself back to just BE.

Unscheduled time to just PLAY -- with the girls. It's a radical concept, and I'm not sure where it comes into The Balance.

Really looking forward to this

I played cello from age 8-20. I wasn't very good, but I wasn't bad, either. I certainly was no soloist. It wasn't even that I liked the music I made as an individual cellist; I could see where I lacked in ability and technique even back then. But I loved playing in orchestras. It is one of the few childhood/teen memories I have that remains completely unsullied by crap. I don't think I met one single crappy person who played in orchestras with me. And, I loved, truly loved, what we were able to create by working together. I think I felt this first when I was about 14 and playing Beethoven's "Mount of Olives." When I first read James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and my teacher taught us the concept of "epiphany," that was the experience to which I related the word.

Yesterday, I found out about a "string camp for adults" at Roberts Wesleyan College for four days in the summer. SCOR is meant not for performance professionals, but for people exactly like me: Those who either played a stringed instrument as a child but not as an adult, or who play for their own enjoyment as an adult. What a great concept! I love that there is a market for this kind of thing, and I just. can't. wait. Before I checked out the registration form, I thought to myself that I didn't care how expensive it was, I still wanted to do it. Yes, it's pricey, but what is the point of being middle-aged and having purchasing power if you can't put it toward something that makes you count the days between February and July, right? People travel from all over to come to it, and here it is, 20 minutes away.

And, it will make a great article, because, after all, the mission of KidsOutAndAbout.com is partly to inspire parents to demonstrate to their kids that learning and self improvement never stop. Tax deduction, here I come!

TRM Results

The area under the overhang used to contain the futon. Or, the futon FRAME to be exact; the futon made its way upstairs to the new mission-style futon because we weren't using this room down here much. I'm getting another futon mattress. Soon. Anyway, I kept whacking my head against that overhang. I hated that overhang. But now, we have a workspace there. The table top looks yellow-beige because it's reflecting the lights, but it's really white. Don't you just want to come over and work here?



My first thought had been that we should try to enclose the entire area, floor to overhang, with back-to-back tall cabinets. But the quotations I had gotten for custom-building cabinets were expensive, and to my mind not worth it. Then I had Mike the Ukrainian in, and he suggested that to save money I could *buy* tall cabinets, put them under the overhang, and he'd trim them in. That sounded good, but I couldn't find anything to fit, either online or locally. Then it hit me: I could use those Closet-Maid 31.5" cabinets (I already had a couple) and put a table on top of them for a workspace! So I just had to purchase four more and arrange them back-to-back.

Then, I visited ReHouse -- an architectural salvage store -- in Rochester, and found a perfect-sized flat door for $10. I went to the Home Depot on Saturday night, and lucked into Brian. Brian, whom I never met before, but whom I now know intimately -- I know all about how a customer banged a door into his left hand in November and broke two of his left knuckles, I know the name of his PA who is helping him get over the injury, I know what radio stations he listens to. Oh, yes, it's good to be female when one has a project in the Home Depot.

Anyway, Brian suggested that to cover the table, instead of using the countertop laminate I was planning ($45 per 4 x 8 sheet and hard to cut), I use the same dry-erase whiteboard that I was purchasing to replace the current dry-erase boards in the frames that the kids had written on long ago with permanent marker (only $12 for a 4' x 8' piece) to cover the table. Brian expertly measured and sliced everything for me. He spent an hour mitering corners for me in two kinds of trim. I expertly admired his work.

And these photos are the result! I still have to find a way to anchor the countertop to the wall, and I still have to find the oomph to take apart the whiteboard frames (not in the photo) so the kids can have dry-erase boards.

And I still have to do my taxes. Maybe I'll use the Cool New Workspace.

P.S. The ultimate triumph: One of those cabinets underneath is EMPTY! That's right... I was able to purge and organize enough that we have room to spare! And everyone knows where everything goes! I keep looking around doing the Happy Dance.

Jazz and toleration

Yesterday afternoon, we took the girls to see a jazz quintet called the Jeremy Pelt Quintet. The group was brought to Rochester by a local small company called Exodus to Jazz, and they packed one of the ballrooms at the downtown Radisson. We went as David's birthday gift.

The group was really good, for what it was, which was more bee-bop than traditional jazz. You could hear the bee-bop end of Miles Davis in there. The thing is, bee-bop isn't particularly our thing, but the Quintet was technically very good and transmitted the sense of fun they had playing it to the audience. I loved their slower ballads.

I had mentioned the show on the radio on Friday morning, and the producer sent me an email telling me that he had reserved us a table, which was nice of him. In one of those common-in-Rochester coincidences, it turns out that the producer's wife works down the hall from David, so they recognized each other.

The girls were the only kids in the audience. (I guess that's usual for these things, but I'm trying to change it!) They tolerated it well. Ella didn't need to tolerate it, actually, she positively liked it. She's a jazz-Latin-rock-and-roll girl, while Madison is emerging as a classical aficionado. But Madison was very polite, and I was proud of them. Now I know we can take them anywhere. I wish I could take Ella to their next show, which is called "Gabriel Alegria and the Afro-Peruvian Sextet," but it starts at 8pm on a Friday night and she'd never make it through.

I am *mostly* finished with TRM. I still need to find an inexpensive futon mattress for the futon, but we showed David our new schoolroom last night. He was impressed. Will post photos soon.

The TRM Wall

I am finding I have hit an unexpected wall during TRM (Total Reorganization Mode).

The schoolroom looks great. So great that all I want to do is sit in it and USE it. But I'm not done. That's the problem. I have stuff in OTHER rooms of the house that need to be sorted and put away or thrown away. I have 600 books that need to be sorted and distributed to the six charities for which Schoolhouse Rock sponsored the book drive. I have a huge stack of my own stuff to be filed -- oh, sure, it LOOKS fairly neat sitting in a high-sided black basked under my desk, but it will take some work to get it done. And I have to find some way to anchor to the wall the door-covered-in-dry-erase-board-with-fancy-trim-on-top-of-six-short-cabinets that has become an awesome new workspace for me and the girls.

And then there will be taxes.

Sigh.

Better get to it. I think I'll have some John Rutter playing on YouTube to get me in a serene and mellow mood.

This afternoon, the four of us are going to see the Jeremy Pelt Quintet (jazz, featuring trumpeter Jeremy Pelt) downtown. My goal is to have it all done by 3:30, before we leave.

Bootstraps

When you hit a slump, you have to put your head down and plow through it.

And then, if possible, you mix it up a little.

We've been so busy what with Schoolhouse Rock and all of the activities, and I've been so busy getting the new version of KidsOutAndAbout.com going (release date of April. April, damn it. It's going to be April) that we hit a kind of slump.

As I said, first thing was head down and try to plow through it.

But now I'm in Total Reorganization Mode. Specifically, the basement (school room that we haven't spent time in because it's been too cold and it's just become a dumping ground) and Ella's bedroom. And the books.

It's Winter Break here in Rochester, and the girls don't want to "do school." We WILL do school later this week, but right now all of the printers are disconnected because of Total Reorganization Mode so I can't print out their to-do sheets. Good excuse. So this morning they'll help me organize and then we'll go see The Lightning Thief movie. Tomorrow we're doing something called the Challenger Mission at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, which has the kids (and two parents, including myself) run a simulated space shuttle mission. And then Thursday afternoon we'll go play laser tag and roller skate at Horizon Fun FX.

But back to reorganization.

Oh, and hey, I was on the local news last night. Here's the link.

I am practicing. No no no no no.

I mean: No thank you. I am flattered to have been asked, it really is an honor. I am always glad to help in a limited capacity. But no.

No, I can't serve on another nonprofit arts organization board of directors.

Make sure I don't give in, people. Help me be strong.

Racing

I think you could describe the pace of our life lately as "racing" -- fulfilling, yes, but definitely racing.

I've been doing okay on making sure the girls get enough academic practice at things. They're both making some progress on math. I'm in a period where we're practicing some more basic skills there so that they'll be able to make some bigger leaps soon. (Madison is practicing the mechanics of isolating a single variable in equations like (1/4x - 28)/3 = 4. Ella is working on borrowing with unlike fractions, as in 7 1/6 - 1 4/5.)

I guess the biggest academic news, one that is a real relief to me, is that Madison can suddenly just spell, well and accurately. I am positive that this is not because I've been diligent about the word lists in Romalda Spaulding's The Writing Road to Reading (although indeed I've been more diligent this year than I have in years past). No, I'm positive that it's because of all of the writing she has been doing. She hates the little red squiggly underlining that Word does when one misspells a word, and she's taken pains to correct it, and to notice the good spelling, each time. The beauty of this is that it happened completely naturally, and without much effort on her part. YAY YAY YAY. I'd been questioning my decision, for the past while, to leave her be on spelling. While it's true that she would have spelled better much sooner had I forced the issue, WHO CARES? She is there now. The girl is 10, can spell, can write, and is HAPPY.

The lesson is learned.

Tonight, Ella cried because she had to put away her chapter book (yes, another one of those blasted fairy books) before she finished it. Yes! She cared! She wanted to keep reading! I will take these baby steps where I can get them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if by the age of 10 Ella is a voracious reader? Maybe it can just happen naturally, as Madison's spelling did.

But back to racing. Madison's Schoolhouse Rock performances went great this past weekend, and we have one more weekend to go. Due to my sending out last-minute press releases on Sunday morning, which basically read, "If it's a slow news day here in Rochester, please consider sending a videographer over to the Auditorium Center, especially if he or she is a child of the 70s," we got both News 8 and News 10 to film the kids and put the show on the nightly news. That should finish up bringing them in for next weekend. (At least I hope.) Here is a photo of the cast doing "Circulation." Madison is in green.


This week, we're still racing. I am on the Fickle 93.3 bowling team for "Bowl for the Cure" next Friday evening, and this morning Marti (the DJ) and I practiced at Bowl-a-Roll. Then we raced over to bring Ella to another of Adrienne's fabulous "Picturing America for Homeschoolers" sessions at the Webster Library (this one was on the Brooklyn Bridge). I would have raced to bring Madison to writing class in between, but she is quite congested from a cold that developed this weekend, and I figured that the rest of the parents would prefer that my kid not be blowing her nose in close quarters next to the 6 other kids in the class, sharing pencils and the like. So we raced to BJs and other errands instead, and raced home and finished our academic work for the day.

Tomorrow, a school concert with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in the morning, then back home for schoolwork/my work and instrument practice, then flute lessons, dance lessons, and a final run-through rehearsal for Schoolhouse Rock.

My fingers are too tired to type out the rest of the week's schedule, but suffice it to say that a large part of my mental energy is avoiding burnout. Really looking forward to next week when things slow down just a little!

I've been working really, really hard on the development of the new KidsOutAndAbout.com web site so I can expand this year and achieve World Domination next year. Can I give you the coolest sneak peek into the new design? Here it is:

Don't do this

If out of the blue you have a weird dream about a casual friend of yours... you know, the nice lady with the cute kids and sweet husband... to the effect that she's suddenly divorced and at a play with her new boyfriend... don't send her a Facebook message saying, "Hahahaha, I had this crazy dream last night, you'll never believe it..."

Don't do it. Take it from me. Just. keep. quiet.

If I had bet on this, I would have lost

"We're not in a big rush. We'll pause," Pelosi said. "We have to know what our possibilities are."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/21/pelosi-votes-pass-senate-health-house/

Juggling two shows as of this week

Ella is now Jellyfish #1 in a show The Little Mermaid, for ages 4-9.

Rehearsals start Thursday and are every Thursday evening through the end of March.

I'm having her do this partly because she wants to, and partly to see for myself what this program is like.

Hope she gets a decent costume. She's all about the costumes, that girl.

Pre-puberty

I think we can count pre-puberty as officially hitting our household last week. If this is PRE-puberty, well, let's just say that while I think I know how I'm going to handle puberty with the girls, this will be a good study-and-plan period with plenty of material.

She's 10.36 years old, just for the record.

Hold on to your hats, it's going to be a wild 6-or-7-year ride!

Weird finger thing

Okay, so this really weird thing has started happening with two of the fingers on my left hand: At odd moments whose similarity I can't determine, the top half of the either my index finger or my middle finger will go all yellowish and whitish and become numb. When this happens, I of course focus on the finger and try to get more blood to circulate into it. I can't tell whether that works, or if I had just waited the five minutes that it takes to force more blood into my finger that would work just as well. It doesn't just happen out in the cold, although the first time it happened, it was when I was hanging Christmas ornaments outside in Nature's Refrigerator (a.k.a. Rochester). It also doesn't happen just when I'm typing, although it DOES happen when I'm typing sometimes.

It's quite annoying.

So if someone knows that this is a sign of...well...something, please let me know. I've never heard of it happening.

I'm going to start exercising more. At least, if I have some kind of circulation problem, that can only help, right?

The bug has bitten Ella

Ella went over to watch Madison's rehearsal for Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday. She loved watching the rehearsal, she knows every song, and is fascinated by the whole process.

She came along with us tonight. Two-and-a-half hours. She has charmed the music director, who had her sitting next to the piano turning pages and singing. She wishes she had auditioned (even though it's for ages 10-16, technically she could have because there is another 8-year-old in the play), but she has the whole thing in perspective. She just likes breathing the atmosphere, I think. She has informed me that she'd like to go to every single rehearsal, just to watch, and be a part of it in that way.

Guess we know what I'll be doing for the next 9 or 10 years. "Theater mom" suits me just fine, especially if we stick with theater companies that have people running them who are as nice and capable as these folks.

10-year-old's bio

I had to write a little "bio" for the program for Madison's upcoming performance of Schoolhouse Rock Live at Stages.

It was due yesterday, so of course I wrote it at 11:00 last night. You know those little program blurbs, right? They always start off like this: "Jane Jones is thrilled to be back at Stages once again after having taken a brief sabbatical to appear on Broadway as Annie..." I decided that no bio of a child of MINE is starting "Madison Ross is thrilled" or "Madison Ross is delighted." But it's not as though she has lots of acting credits worth mentioning. So what to say?

Here's what I came up with:

Madison Ross (Ensemble) is a home-schooled fifth grader from Brighton. Schoolhouse Rock is Madison's first Stages show, and she describes the experience with lots of adjectives: Exciting, energizing, electric, thrilling, challenging, and fun. She studies musical theater with John Barthelmes at Spotlight Theatre Arts in Fairport, and plays piano, flute, and viola. Madison loves writing, reading, and computer programming, and hopes someday to be a science fiction writer.

Two potential issues made me hesitate before hitting the Send button:

1) I have technically never heard Madison Ross tell anyone that she wants to be a science fiction writer.

2) Madison Ross is currently in an argumentative phase. Granted, this is about a 10-year-and-counting phase, but it's gotten to where if you say there is about a foot of snow on the ground she'll be outside with a ruler trying to prove you wrong before you can say "six curse word degrees."

I hit the Send button. I figured that the volunteer doing the program wasn't going to send it to press at 9am today, and that it was fixable if suddenly the child told me that she was planning on a career as a televangelist or something.

I read it to her this morning. She listened without interrupting to object (!), blinked twice, said reflectively, "Science fiction writer. Huh. That sounds about right," and went back to what she was doing.

Okay then.

Speech at 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

If you take a worthwhile 42 minutes to watch Alan Charles Kors' speech to the Atlas Network at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall last year, you can imagine what it was like to be a student in his class 20 years ago, or, I imagine, now. In the classroom, though, he only spoke of the history of others' ideas and their importance to political and social development, not of his own ideology. It was over sandwiches at the deli on 38th Street that students could appreciate Kors the Man.

Alan Charles Kors - Freedom Dinner 2009 Keynote from Atlas Network on Vimeo.

Give it a rest

The whole family wants Madison to give "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" a rest. Even Eastern Orthodox Christmas is past, for pity's sake. We hear it on the flute, piano, viola. She sings it in the car. Thank goodness she doesn't play any other instruments.

Of course, it's playing on a continuous loop in all of our minds as a result.