The Top Ten Reasons Why I Haven't Been Blogging

 

I'm determined to start blogging again, even though I have so many excuses for why I can't. What would I start with? How can I explain an absence of over a year? So I thought I'd do a Dave Letterman-style top ten list, at least to get my brain working again.

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Haven't Been Blogging

10. The last year has seen me become the mother of two teenagers. Should I stop here?

9. Daughter has grown about 12 inches and gained 42 pounds in the last three years. Can you even imagine how much food has gone into that child to sustain that kind of growth? As far as her height, every time I look away, I look back and it's like a time-elapsed video. Suddenly she's looking me in the eye. And just in case anyone is worried - because who would want to gain 42 pounds in three years? - she now weighs 101 and stands 5'5. Still a Skinny Stick.

8. My book. I'm not going to say much about this because God forbid I promote myself, but the book takes a lot of time. It lived inside my head for so many years, and then it lived inside my computer for several more, so having it out in the world has been amazing, but it's kind of like having an extra child who doesn't live at home. I worry about it. Turns out worrying is also a full-time job. 

7. I started doing yoga last year in addition to my regular exercise. Trust me, this whole over-exercising thing takes up a lot of time. Also, not being the most bendy gal on the planet, yoga has been very interesting. Interesting in that I still can't touch my toes and, just when I'm supposed to be all spiritual and concentrating on my breathing, I'm always somehow adjusting my clothing. In summary, I've found that after a year I'm very good at one thing in yoga: corpse pose.

6. My book won an award (yea) and there have been various things associated with that, including the Writer's Digest Conference - East, and some interviews. Whenever I used to read in Writer's Digest about people who had won the award I won, I always assumed they were famous and about to get a gazillion dollar deal for their books. Just FYI, I'm still not rich and famous. 

5. Both and over achiever and under achiever, procrastinator and perfectionist, I keep taking classes to satisfy my zillions of ambitions. In just the last three months this has included an intro to Improv class, Mothers Who Write and Playwriting. Of course, I want to do everything and am fighting the knowledge that I'm just going to have to lock myself in the house to produce my second book. 

4. Meanwhile, back at my desk, I'm writing that second book, a sequel to Looking Up. Its working, and somewhat facetious, title is Jewish Girls Gone Wild. Yes, it's about my teen years.

3. I was blindsided by the elderly parents getting increasingly elderly, and, having written so many posts about their foibles, found it difficult to write once their decline became apparent. Who knew that one day I'd be looking nostalgically back to when they were their spry 79 and 84-year-old selves? Yet, that is true. It was increasingly hard to be humorous.   

2. Did I mention the teenagers?

And the number one reason I haven't been blogging is...

1. Bat Mitzvahzilla. It's taken me six months to recover, but Daughter had her Bat Mitzvah this past October. During it she wanted me to change the name of the blog to Bat Mitzvahzilla, to which I said no; she wanted to have the kids tables set up to form an "R" for her first name, to which I said no; and wanted to have giant cut-outs of herself for people to pose with at the photo booth, to which I said... well, see for yourself.

Husband, me and our two cut-out Bat Mitzvahzillas

Anything keeping you from doing what you want to be doing? Any high-maintenance children in your life? Aging parents? Forty-two pound weight gains?

Time Management

I sit down to write.

This takes a while. I wander throughout the house. I clean, I fuss, I do laundry, I make phone calls. I wander and wander, give myself imaginary tasks and then, when I absolutely can't avoid it any longer, I get in my office. Since I'm pretty good at avoidance, some days I don't make it in there at all.

Then I land in front of my computer. The blank screen. Well, I can't be expected to just jump into writing, can I? I need to relax into it. Mosey into it. Maybe flow into it, right?

So I check the news of the day on MSN, my homepage. Watch some video news, fume at the commercial spots as I watch the seconds count down. Ready to write now for sure. Oh, but I really need to check Facebook. And look, someone's posted some new photos. Then I look at a video they posted. Then I remember I'm supposed to be writing. Then I notice that there's a window I left up from another day of procrastination with some editor jobs in Phoenix. I look at those. Then I mull over whether I should I get a real job, like with pay? One is quite prestigious. What are the requirements? Wow, I'd barely have to lie to get it. Maybe this is what I'm meant to do with my life, not this interminable writing. Maybe I should put in for it. But I need my resume updated with my editor experience. So I pull up my last resume and I start sprucing it up to reflect the editor job I've been working for nearly two years.

I almost finish before doubt assails me. Do I want this job? What if I actually got this job? Could I handle a full-time job with my husband working 60 hours a week at our store? How would I go to exercise and my meetings? Who would pick up my kids? And take them to their myriad appointments? How would both kids participate in sports? And why did I quit my job six years ago where I made $35,000 for 18 hours of work only to sit here applying for a job that pays $40,000 for 40 hours of work? I'd better think about this. So I think about this for awhile. And then I think, look what time it is! I'd better hurry up and write. I have to pick up Daughter in ten minutes.

Pick up Daughter.

Get home with Daughter. Feed Daughter. Read mail. Clean kitchen. Help with homework. Get back in office. Whoa, I am really behind on blogging. Should I write a blog? Maybe I should read all my friend's blogs. Maybe I need to comment on my commenters? Wait a minute. I'm supposed to be writing. I pull up my book. I am now going to write for sure. The phone rings. Bar Mitzvahzilla's football practice is done. Done writing.

Pick up Bar Mitzvahzilla. Feed him. Feed Daughter again. Drive Bar Mitzvahzilla somewhere. I walk back in the house. I look right - my bed looms with comfy pillows on it and the remote controls for the TV set nearby. I look left, towards the long stark hallway to my office and the book I've forgotten how to write.

I turn right.

And the clock just keeps ticking.

Have any problems with procrastination? Is the Internet a big distraction? Does anyone else have this problem with not knowing what to do first? How hard is it to stick to a schedule when you're in charge of it?

A Commercial Break

I'm not proud of the amount of time I've spent watching TV lately. Well, not just lately. I can pinpoint exactly when it started: it was late June, when we went on our first summer vacation to Flagstaff. Our hotel room didn't have HGTV, my favorite TV narcotic at the time, and so I started watching Daughter's favorite, Food Network. And that was it. Cupcake Wars. Iron Chef. Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Chopped.

I'm not going to discuss why I suddenly became fascinated with wasting my time and wasting my life away at that exact moment in time. Let's just say that it was right then that I had gotten very depressed about my writing. Coincidence? Probably not. I'll leave that issue to professionals, or to psychogenic drugs, or to the straitjacket that I'm destined for once the masking tape I've stuck myself together with comes undone.

But here's the idea that's dawned on me in this 3-4 month time period that I've been watching television with my kids: they watch commercials and I don't. And I don't mean just that. I mean, they really watch commercials, like they are rapt with attention for the commercials, paying more attention to them than to the actual show we're watching. And I, the polar opposite, do the exact opposite. I really don't watch commercials. I'm hostile to commercials. Commercials are my break time from television. I read, I run out of the room, I change loads of laundry. 

Is it because I was raised in the 60s and 70s, when commercials consisted of Mr. Clean staring at himself in a see-through floor? Or station identification breaks? Or is it a combination of that and the fact that my kids have been raised in a world of Superbowl Sunday commercials, commercials as art forms, commercials with ongoing plots?

I thought I'd beat them at their own game so one day during the commercials I muted the sound, sure that the kids would join me in talking, mulling things over, or even in getting three minutes of chores done. Instead here's what I had: two zombies staring at the soundless TV and trying to read the lips of the actors. Turns out it wasn't really a problem anyway. They'd memorized the scripts long ago.

Been avoiding anything by vegging out lately? Do you watch commercials? Do your kids? Any Food Network aficionados?

Midlife, Bad Wife

As Husband and I have aged, I've been waiting for him to have a midlife crisis. Fully expecting it, really. I've been on red alert for convertibles, for blondes, for suspicious behavior, for coming home with a gigantic toupee. Anything.

What I didn't expect - what completely caught me off guard - is that the only one in this family having a midlife crisis is me.

He turned fifty. Then he turned fifty-five. Not a blip on the radar screen. He's steady, he's loving, he's home every night. No convertibles, no blondes. Devoted to his family. Gets up everyday like a robot to work at our store. Impulsive purchase of the year? A spiffy new box truck for the store. Not really a midlife crisis vehicle.

But I am a different story. Through a combination of hormones draining out of my body and, apparently, pooling on the ground, and having a recent disappointment with my book, I found myself falling into a gloom of midlife despair. What was the answer? Maybe I needed to disappear to a deserted island for six months to work on my book. After all, all marriages involve compromise and maybe I'd been compromising my writing too much. Did I need to put my writing before my marriage?

When I was a kid in Chicago I had a lot of aunts, but there was one in particular who was a handful. If something popped in her head, she said it, no matter what, even if she thought one of us was fat or ugly or stupid, she'd say it. She was mean and scary. With my midlife menopause upon me, that's how I felt. Mean and scary. If I thought it, I said it. I suddenly understood what it must have been like to be this aunt of mine; to have almost no control over what was coming out of her mouth. Was it just reflecting the negativity that was playing in her brain?

Just in the nick of time my new bio-identical hormone pellets started working. I don't feel like I'm twenty again but I do feel a little more human. And I did some thinking about that agent and the fact that it's not really her fault that I imbued her with so much magic. She's no more magical than a hundred other agents.  The success or failure of my writing still depends on me. 

Now hopefully I can get back to normal. Watching out for blondes and convertibles.

Hormones acting up lately? Midlife, early life or late-in-life crisis? Do you ever find yourself blaming every thing you've never done on someone else?

Falling Down, Getting Back Up

My kids and I went to see the Karate Kid today. I liked it a lot, even better than the original. Now that I've spent so much of my life writing, however, I can normally notice the writing that goes into the movie I'm watching, see the complications pile on complications, watch the climax being stretched out by the writers so the audience gets the maximum anxiety and the maximum heave of relief at the ending. Knowing all this, of course, ruins it a bit. But guess who doesn't know all this? Daughter. So she was totally affected by the movie.

She walked out floating on air, talking about the life lesson of the movie, that when you fall down you can get up again - changing your life and the outcomes - and did I feel the same way? I thought about my life and how much I've fought back from, how much I have certainly applied that principle to my life. Then I thought about my writing.

My book, in manuscript form, just got turned down by an agent. I've had a long history with my book, including time during which it was represented previously but which representation I severed. I recently did a pretty big rewrite. I thought that it might be a good time to journey again into the publishing world, to send it out to one special agent. Not a whole bunch of agents; I didn't want to paper the world with queries. I thought, I'll just try it and see what happens.

She asked for the manuscript to read. And then a month went by. And then I got the turn down, a very lovely, personal note explaining exactly why she wasn't in love with the project enough to represent it.

And so what was I thinking while I was watching the Karate Kid?

I was looking at the scenes of China and I was thinking that I am fifty damn years old and I haven't been to China. Not that I ever wanted to go, but still, that's what I was thinking.

I was thinking that maybe it's time for me to give up writing and go teach at a community college again.

I was thinking that when I least expect it, a new rock bottom shows up to teach me some kind of lesson but I'm not always smart enough to figure out what the lesson is. Does this mean "try harder" or does it mean "work on something else?" Or does it mean "patience?"

And finally - totally ruining my enjoyment of the movie - I was thinking that I'm going to have to pack my book away - the book I have loved, the book that is like my heart beating in my chest - and work on something else. Or not work on something else.

But that's not what I said to my daughter. I said, "I totally believe you can do that."

Have you seen the new Karate Kid? Did you like this message about picking yourself back up again? Do you believe it? Do you believe that sometimes you just have to give up and move on to something else? 

The Merchant of Phoenix

I come from a long line of merchant Jews. We're kind of the middle class type Jews, not the rich ones and not the Torah scholars. We're the ones who own stores and laundries. As a matter of fact, my father owned a laundry in Chicago. My grandfather? A shoemaker. My great-uncle? A tailor. My great-grandfather? A woodcutter. Like in Little Red Riding Hood.

Once my relatives came to the United States, they were a little pushy about their occupations. They knew that the riches of America were theirs for the taking, but first they had to take them. That meant that they had to let people know what they did for a living, how their product or services could change the customers' lives, how things could be so much better with clean laundry, a well-made pair of shoes, or a finely tailored suit. 

Of course, I was mortified by my relatives. I felt if they had just been American-born, they would not have been so pushy. They'd have been more polished, more reticent, maybe less embarassing. To me.

Since I'm a little slow, I want to tell you what I figured out today that made me think that maybe I have to be a little pushy today on my blog. On Poetica Magazine's website where I'm the Blog Editor, I'm hosting a writer this week who writes quite movingly about interviewing children of Holocaust Survivors and how she's spent some time reading the literature they've been producing. So all day long I've thought, "Oh, that's me, right? Children of Survivors and the literature they're producing. Me." Gulp.

And since I realize that Holocaust Survivors like my mother are becoming rare and soon all the world will have are the children of survivors and the stories we have of growing up with our parents, I wanted to do something I would normally shy away from doing: direct you to two venues where my writing is appearing in March. Even though that's, um, pushy.

I haven't written too much on this blog about how crazy it was growing up one of seven sisters in Skokie, where it was assumed that my mother was deranged for not stopping at two children. After all, what was she trying to do? Repopulate the world after the Holocaust? One of my stories, called "Seven Sisters," an excerpt from my (unpublished) book Seven Sisters is appearing on my friend, Sandra Hurtes', website for the month of March. Spend some time while you're there looking at Sandra's work. She's a brilliant essayist and child of Holocaust Survivors whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and is forthcoming in Poets and Writers. I highly recommend her collection of essays, On My Way to Someplace Else, which can be purchased on her website.

If you can imagine what it was like having parents whose greatest thrill was going on vacations to visit other Holocaust Survivors all across the country so they could sit and cry for hours over all the misery in the world while their children stuck to plastic-covered sofas, then you can imagine what my childhood was like. A story of mine about vacations with my parents, called "Holocaust Vacation," is being published in an anthology of the work of Children of Holocaust Survivors coming out in March, called Mizmor L'David (Psalms of David). Even ignoring my own work, the Anthology is filled with some fascinating cutting edge work from writers who are children of survivors.

 

There, I did it. Now we'll get back to our regular programming.

Do you come from a long line of merchants, like me? What are you doing with your writing life? Any ambitions? Does anyone know a great literary agent?

Writing Anyway

I happened to be enrolled in my very first Creative Writing class ever on September 11, 2001. It was the fourth class of the semester, a Tuesday, and my day off from work. I had dropped my kids off at school that morning - one at a Jewish Day school and the other at a Jewish preschool. In my car on the way home I had my radio on and the news alerted me to the fact that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York.

The day got worse and worse. By noon Arizona time it was obvious, to me at least, that there was the distinct possibility that terrorists were fanning out across the country, attacking various targets. Were the Jewish schools next? I did a U-turn in the road on my way somewhere to go pick up my kids as a precaution, just as my phone rang with the first of the two schools telling me they were closing for the day.

For a bunch of really stupid reasons I had waited until I was forty-one-years-old to ever take a writing class. So, even though as the day was unfolding, writing was looking like the most stupid occupation in the world, I asked my mother to watch my kids so I could go.

I walked into the class and, surprisingly enough, so did all my other classmates. By then, we knew the devastation that had taken place in New York. We all felt embarassed of our writing, of even thinking of writing ever in our entire lives. How could we have ever been involved in something so stupid and self-centered as writing, we asked our professor? People were dying, jumping out of buildings, planes were crashing, and we were sitting there writing.

And she said, don't ever believe that the work you do is unimportant. It's the writers who will define what happened today for generations to come. It's the writers who will write the books and the articles and explain what life was like on this day so historians can write the history of what this day was like. Without writers, we'd know nothing about the Vietnam War, nothing about the entire history of the human people. It's the writers in a society who put form to experience. Never feel bad about writing. Writing is an important job.

I've thought of those words of hers a lot in these quiet days in the blogosphere following the earthquake in Haiti. I've thought, none of us wants to be funny, or write about our kids, or about our exercise or weight loss efforts. None of us want to be trivial because we're worried about trivializing the lives that are, even now, being lost.

But then I think of her words and that creating relationships is no small task, and that making people laugh is not a job for the weak-willed. That writing about the world, even in a tiny corner of it, is a noble task, and carrying on in the untouched world while being touched by the tragedy is not a contradiction in terms.

So I'll keep blogging, and I'll write my humor, and you'll know that, even though I'm doing that, I'm thinking of Haiti.

Rained Out

Last night seemed to be a typical night around here.  At first. 

I was working in my office, which is really our living room.  This means that, in addition to my desk and computer and about a thousand books, my so-called office has two couches in it.

Then Husband decided that he'd come and join me since occasionally he likes to see me and I tend to write late at night.  So there goes one couch with Husband stretched out from end to end.

And then it started raining.

I don't know what it is about the desert but rain is never normal here.  This is what it's like:  first it never rains, like for six months.  It's so dry that, just like in the old Westerns where there are tumbleweeds rolling down the street, we actually have tumbleweeds rolling down our street.  It's so dry that even the cactus are thirsty. 

Then suddenly it rains.  And it doesn't rain just a  little bit, like a splash to give everything a nourishing sip of water, turn the desert green and move on.  No, it's a torrential torrent.  Like all the trees break off like twigs in our neighborhood.  We wake up to a scene from a nuclear holocaust - debris everywhere, tree strewn across roads, powerlines down, houses crushed.  From a rainstorm.  What if we really had weather?

So I was sitting at my desk listening to the thunder cracking overhead, the rain sluicing down, and the wind shaking the house and I thought it didn't sound good.  Best case scenario would be that the power would go out.  The worst case scenario would be that the house would crack a million tiny shards, I would search for Husband, Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter in the shards, and we'd float away to safety on the river of our street.

None of this happened.  Though I looked up and who was there?  Daughter.  Of course.  Because who would you want to be with in a torrential rain but a mom who needs a snorkel and mask just to swim in a pool?  I got her settled in on the empty couch and she began to drift off.

The, after a particularly loud crack of thunder, Bar Mitzvahzilla showed up.  And now we had a math problem:  two couches, three people.  So I decided to let the kids share, one head at each end. 

Turned out this didn't work too well.  Of course, there was a certain amount of entertainment value to Bar Mitzvahzilla in having his feet splayed out in Daughter's face - now this was a comedy routine he could enjoy endlessly. He could also pretend to stretch and smash her nose, over and over again.  Daughter fought back in her own way, laying like a piece of beef on the couch, immobile.  Both kids wide awake.

My writing for the night?  Rained out.

Missing Persons

My mother's decided she wants to write a blog.

Ignoring the fact that she has no idea how to even turn on a computer and still refers to emails as "faxes," she tells me she wants to do this. I don't know why, but I always treat these type of pronouncements as if they're really going to happen. I start trying to problem solve.

I ask her, "What do you want the blog to be about?"

She says, "I want to find my missing cousin." She nods. "That's what I'm going to write about. My missing cousin."

I've been down a few roads on this missing cousin issue. Basically, before the war, one of her cousins went off into Russia, adopted by a childless aunt, and was never heard from again. I've worked on this for my mom before. I've gotten so tangled up in Survivor websites that I thought I'd never get out. I've researched genealogy, I've written to the Holocaust Museum. She's not going to trick me this time. I'm not going to get into a big discussion about the missing cousin. I stick to the topic: the alleged blog.

"Ma, a blog can't be too narrow. You can't just write about your missing cousin over and over. Your topic should be a little bigger."

She mulls this over.

"Then it'll be about the Holocaust."

Okay then. That's a bigger topic.

Of course I know exactly what will happen. Each time I take my mother seriously about this writing thing, she sits down at her desk, ready to write. It's going to be the worlds greatest book. It will be better than anything I've ever written. This is because she's already written the book in her mind, she knows exactly how it will start and how it will end; she knows all the dialogue she'll put in it. All the sons-in-law spend weeks at her house setting up top-notch computer equipment, clearing out memories, setting up a printer, and making everything easy to use. She's officially ready to write. She sits down and puts her hands on the keyboard.

Then she writes one sentence.

Unfortunately, it turns out she doesn't like the sentence. It doesn't sound the way that she imagined it would in her head. Then she gets frustrated because of that sentence and because she doesn't know how to erase it - apparently, she's looking for some White Out to dab on the computer screen. She doesn't want that sentence sitting there forever.

Finally she turns the computer off - by unplugging it.

If she seems serious again, I'll probably do the same thing all over again. We'll get her set up with a computer. I'll buy her some books, like "Blogging for Dummies." Then she'll start writing.

This time I'll teach her how to delete.

The Self Saboteur

I don't think I ever wrote in here how I sabotaged my own book so let me tell this miserable tale now.

I wrote my book, Seven Sisters, a kind of funny and tragic memoir about growing up one of seven sisters with Holocaust Survivor parents in Skokie, Illinois, and then I sent out query letters to literary agents. Four ended up interested in reading the manuscript, which was unbelievable. One of them was a big agent and very reputable, and, little did I know, the top agent for 6-figure deals on Publisher's Weekly.

After she became my agent - she did not require a written contract - I forwarded the revision she wanted, but then she appeared to cool off and I got very worried. She had seemed very excited about the book, calling and emailing all the time, and suddenly I wasn't getting responses to my emails and no call back to the one phone call I had made. Still, to be professional, I withdrew the manuscript from consideration with the other agents. Suddenly one of those other agents, with a very big agency, solicited me in response to my withdrawal email, saying that she had just finished reading the manuscript and was very disappointed that I was represented and if my situation changed I should contact her. 1st agent appeared to be cooling off, the next agent was interested, but for how long? And I didn't have a formal, written contract. I thought it'd be my last chance. So I jumped. Big mistake.

1st agent was livid. She had been working on revisions with her staff on her end. Second agent had me sign a written contact and ended up so cold, so frigidly professional, and kept so many walls up that I never knew what was going on. Outcome: 25 turn downs from 25 publishers.

I'm not proud to admit that I showed a lot of character flaws when things went so well so quickly. I thought I was going to be instantly famous and rich, certainly super rich. I thought to myself, hmmm - do I look for a house that costs two million dollars, or more? I thought about talk shows and that husband would have to get used to someone else bringing in an income around here, that I'd finally have some monetary value - a big deal for a person who quit her job in insurance 5 years ago, is part-time administrator for our store, and taught one college English class at a Community College, which paid $2200, once I got my Master's degree. Needless to say, the fame and wealth never materialized. All that materialized for me was something that turns out to have been more valuable: a badly needed lesson in humility.

It's quite a struggle to feel that sure, I'm a pretty good mom, and yes, thank goodness I've got a great marriage, and yes, I'm thankful for everything - my best friend, my sisters, my home, our business, my mother. But, without diminishing any of that, what I really am is a writer and I was put on this earth to write that book. And the darn thing is written. It's not like I have writer's block! Here it sits in my computer, unpublished.

After I severed the contract with the second agent, I felt like I'd been in a war and a tank had driven over me. I've written every day for years, but for awhile there the well was so dry, I was so forlorn, that I could only write one haiku a day, 17 syllables. And I'm very verbose. But then I decided to go at it a different way. They can't sell a book by an unknown writer? Fine, I'll become a known writer. I'll take first a Nonfiction writing class to learn how to write feature articles, and then a Freelancing class and I'll make a name for myself.

It's okay that I wasn't meant to cut to the head of the line - I'm okay with things not being easy. I'm okay with having to work hard, even really hard. I'm even okay with the fact that for some miserable reason I was actually meant to hit rock bottom on this thing, to have crowed about this to the entire world when things went well and then be forced to stand up, face everyone, and tell the truth about the outcome. I'm okay with being brought down to the size of just one ordinary human being who learned a very hard lesson indeed. I'm just not okay with it being impossible.

Formerly Fat Me

So the kids are off for their very late Spring Break this year which, because they go to a Jewish Day School, coincides with Passover, and I should be going nuts because I'm getting NOTHING done, right? I mean, my days normally have a structure which involves writing and chores and Jazzercise and my meetings and lunch with friends and then picking them up and taking my son to tutoring, and so this week everything is backwards. Writing? Still waiting to do that today and it's 11 PM. Jazzercise I do every morning at 9:15 like a robot. Chores? My children actually sorted their own laundry today and put it away. Whether it actually made it into their drawers I guess I'll have to go and find out. My meetings I'm attending at night and I'm going to lunch with the kids.

But I guess what's so weird is that I'm kind of happy in a goofy kind of way. I know I had that horrible health scare last week and maybe that's what did it but I just feel so happy this week. I've just been so happy that things are kind of falling into place. The house is getting back together and I have this breathtakingly lovely new office space with wood floors and a great desk and privacy, which is still, somehow, a living room too. I get to write, which is amazing and I'm finishing up my second Gotham on-line class and feel that I've learned a lot about freelancing and am ready to start submitting queries to magazines.

But most of all I feel like I finally, at age 49, look exactly the way I'm supposed to look, like the inside of me is perfectly reflected on the outside. And I know that because I'm a compulsive overeater, that because I found my 12-step program nearly 9 years ago, I dodged a high speed train. Every day that I wake up a normal-sized person, a thin person, is an amazing miracle. I was a 211 pound person; overweight for 25 years, from 15 to 40. I can't believe how lucky I am that I was touched in such a way by such an amazing program; that I didn't have to keep gaining and gaining until - who knows how heavy I would have been by now?

So happy? Yeah. Up alone and writing at 11:20? Yeah. Hopeful? Yeah. And abstinent? One day at a time, for 8 years 37 weeks and 4 days today.

The Archeological Dig in my Living Room

Last week, my husband told me that he was ready to have the wood floor installed that I've been waiting for in my office/living room. He's kind of in charge of this since we own a flooring store and has to schedule the installers, etc. So I've spent the last week cleaning this room out and it's been like an archeological dig.

Up until 33 days ago, I was a compulsive spender (who's counting?) so, of course, the wreckage of my shopping past was in there. I found so many beautiful, new picture frames in there that I'm ashamed of myself. What could a person be thinking when she buys so many? They're on sale so I'll buy 20? There are art prints of every size, both ones I love and ones that are just masterpieces because one time I was going to teach Art Masterpiece and bought everything ahead of time but then the school decided not to go with it. This is what you're like when you're a compulsive spender. There are gorgeous, wood carved wall hangings. There are two clock collections from the 1940s and 1950s, one of starburst clocks, and the other of hanging rope clocks. Was I trying to buy time? There is more furniture than can reasonably be squeezed into a room: my piano, my desk, two couches, a coffee table, two end tables. There are wall-to-wall ceiling-height built-in bookshelves and two free-standing ones, all of which have books piled on them.

Now the room's empty. Of course the rest of the house looks like a bomb hit it. And tomorrow the guys will show up and start working: pull up the carpeting, repair the drywall, paint the room, and put down the wood. But this week sometime, I'm going to have to answer the question of what, exactly, I'm supposed to put back in there when they're done? This is actually supposed to be a house, not a warehouse. I am committed to really making each room usable. Outside it may be HOA-hell with annoying gates and identical houses, but inside it's mine.

My mother, who, besides being a Holocaust survivor, was also once a Skokie housewife, weighs in with her opinion. She says, "Move your stuff out of there! Leave only the couches! It's a living room - don't let the kids in there!" She'd probably like me to get the couches wrapped in plastic and rope it off.

But I know that in there, somewhere, is my book - all my books, the ones I've written and the ones I haven't. The one about growing up one of seven sisters with Holocaust survivor parents; the one about being fat for 25 years; the one about how hard it is to leave a marriage, even when you know it's the wrong guy; and the one about being a teenager in the only Jewish family in Scottsdale in the 1970s on food stamps. Those books are in that room so I guess I'll keep that in mind when I'm rearranging. I need to make them easy to find.

Time's Up

Well, I just wasted the first hour of my birthday on the Internet. What's new? I also wasted my last half-hour of being a 48-year-old on the Internet. I guess I should have somehow savored that last little bit of 48-year-oldness -how do I stop time again? - but I just kept clicking on this link and that link, and when I looked down at the computer clock it was, oh yeah, Happy Birthday.

Here's the exciting life of an unsuccessful writer. It's one o'clock in the morning. My husband is asleep, but dressed, on top of our bed. He has this convoluted idea that his wife (that's me, I'm the wife-thing) should actually go to sleep with him each night. Since I don't actually sleep this causes some problems. My kids, however, are asleep, in pajamas, in bed (I can't actually swear to what the 13-year-old wears to bed anymore and I'm not checking). And I am sitting up, working on an assignment for my on-line nonfiction writing class, worrying about the assignment for my in-person class, and wondering, what am I supposed to do again about the book I wrote? My opus? You know, the thing I was born to write?

Yesterday I woke up a little sick. I lurched out of bed and made my way to my medicine cabinet. The house was very quiet and suddenly I heard these words in my head, and I'm not schizophrenic. The words were, "Time's up." Now I'd like to think that's divine intervention, like the name of a book I should write, but, I don't know. It sounded a little like a death knell. I give a lot a weight to the little thought that pops into my head without me thinking it in the middle of the quiet, sleeping house.

So, since I'm not dead yet and it's been eighteen hours, I'm going to give Mr. Time's Up a positive spin. Time's up on the training to write. It's been eight years - I think I know how to write. Time's up on the preparing and the over preparing, on the proceeding gingerly. Time's up on all that. And if it's the other Time's up, what better reason to get my stuff out there than immortality?