On keeping my vow to never touch a dead mouse.

This is KwanYong.

He's our foreign exchange student from Korea, and we all like him a lot.

Though, I didn't know how very much I appreciated the culture he brings into our house until today.
*

This morning, as the kids were getting ready to go outside I heard Becca scream, "There's a dead mouse!"

Sure enough, lying frozen on the ground was a dead-dead-dead mouse, eyes all open and beady. Ugh.

"Andrew!" I squealed to our oldest, "You have to handle this for me! I can't do mice. Please get a shovel and scoop it up." He promptly started searching for the needed item, when I saw KwanYong standing there silently.

"Kwan Yong!" I squealed, again, "YOU should be doing this. You're closer to being a grown man than anyone else in this garage."

"What-do-you-want-me-to-do?" he asked. I rolled my eyes back sarcastically, then ran inside to get a plastic bag. While frantically searching for the trash bag, commercial-grade Lysol, and an orange Toxic Waste clean-up suit, KwanYong came into the kitchen cool as a cucumber, opened a drawer, then walked back outside.

Suddenly, cheers erupt from the garage. "Yay! Hooray! Go KwanYong!"

It seems our Korean boarder had a real break through here in America, today. He became a true man. The kind that saves a garage full of screaming damsels from dragons, disease, and mice.

*

*
I always knew we'd experience life-changing moments of culture and friendship through this exchange student thing.
*
Thanks, KwanYong. Kamsahamnida.

School Night: 11:26 p.m.

'Twas the night before Thursdayand all through the house,every body was snoozing'Cept this little mouse...

Happy Reading to All, And to All a Good Night.

Stuff

*StuffIs on my plateAnd I want itOffTime to dishwashScrub the bitsThat muck upMyHeirloom chinaTime to RinseWithWhite bubblesThat cleanseAnd causeSparkleAnd remind meWhere I came fromAndWhere I am going.*Feeling like your plate is too full, too?Oh, honey. I hear ya.What's keeping you hopping these days?

Submissions

Before I get to my notebooks, I've a stack of papers on which I've scribbled countless notes and trains of thought. This week, I'm substituing in kindergarten and teaching the kids how to make a bubble map, which is really just a simple way to teach them how to brainstorm. Looking at the scrawled writings upon these stacks of paper, I wonder if my own kindergarten teacher would be mightily unimpressed by my own lackey use of bubble mapping. Oh, woe.

There are a few notes of these notes which I can't for the life I me remember what I meant when I wrote them. But, most of my scrawled sentences and words bring back a flood of thoughts and ideas. The penciled bits and pieces on scraps of torn paper, grocery bags, napkins reinspire that original idea. The tilt of a phrase, or the way I drew arrows, or grouped a list take me back to the moment the idea came into mind in the middle of the grocery store, or as I walked to pick up kids from school, or at the end of the night just as I drift.....off.....to bed. That's so often when those pesky ideas crop up, isn't it?

So, somewhere in the middle of my super scribbly, non-bubble-mapped papers, I found this unopened, unsent envelope. It's also unstamped. Golly, I do that a lot. Write, seal, address, no stamp. Note to self--get some stamps.

Although, in this case, maybe it's a good thing. I can't for the life of me remember what I wrote. Not to mention what might make it good enough to query Writer's House, that holy edifice of New York writing agents. Good gravy, what was I thinking?!

Shall we open it?

Yes. Yes we shall.

Allright. There she is. A one page letter with a one word first sentence.

Those first sentences are such a doozy, aren't they? Everytime I send a query, I nearly pop an eye vessel trying to conjure that first sentence. It's just all too easy to imagine some gum-chewing intern glancing at that first sentence nonchalantly, and tossing it into the office incinerator.

Now, with retrospect on my side, I'm wondering if a one word first sentence is any good. I think not. At least, not the word "FRIDAY." Maybe if I'd thrown in a real clincher of a word. Like "Abominable." or "Byzantine." or "Floccinaucinhilipilification." That would have been so good.

So, with that first word out of the way, whatever was my point?

*

Oh, yes. The STOPWATCH book.

*

Oh. No. The STOPWATCH book.

*

With a pink flush settling into my cheeks, I shall share with you the hideous concept behind The Stopwatch Book. Or, save yourself and flee now while you still have your eyeballs sitting in front of your head, rather than rolling around in the back of your brain from the horror of this idea.

*

You still here?

*

Allright, then. Here we go.

*

A common string of found in all of my notebooks is this idea of time. Time baffles me. It make me horribly frustrated. It flies through my fingers, whips through my hair, taunts my children to join it upon wings and flies us all through minutes without asking my permission. And, I'm the MOM here. However did TIME get to NOT ask my permission?!

*

Anyhow. Years back I had this idea: Rather than bemoaning the end of a day, wondering where my time went, I was going to carry around a stopwatch and actually time myself and all of my activities for 365 days.

*

It lasted for all of fifteen minutes.

*

Somewhere between recording:

*

0:00-2:17:35 RETRIEVED DOLL HEAD FROM TOILET

2:17:36-6:23:07 SCOLDED BOYS FOR PUTTING DOLL HEAD IN TOILET and

6:23:08- -----GATHERED CHILDREN, NAUGHTY AND NICE, TO JOIN ME FOR A READ ON THE RED COUCH

*

I lost track of time.

*

I suppose it was the reading that did it. No, not like we got lost in a really good book (though sometimes that happens). Books are nice and all, but sitting on the couch with four rounded children tucked in my arms made it difficult to record anything at all in the STOPWATCH notebook. Then, I think someone told a knock-knock joke, which led to maniacal laughter and another knock-knock joke. Before you knew it, we were sitting there on the red couch, entirely lost in each other. Snuggling and snorting and bowing our heads together with great, racking giggles.

*

And, the envelope with book query was lost in a paper pile somewhere as the stopwatch ticked on, unnoticed.

*

Now, It's Your Turn:

What is one of the the silliest submission ideas you've cooked up?

(You're secret is safe with me.)

Where the Wild Things Wait

I was at Sophistimom's house, helping her pack for a pending move.
In her bedroom, we were making piles.
A pile for mail which needed answering.
A pile for children's books.
A pile of odds and ends for her new home's junk drawer.

"In which pile does this belong?" I asked, holding up a notebook.
She smiled a tired smile, moved to the bed and pulled back the unmade covers.
Swimming underneath their opaque sea was a pile of notebooks.
"Everytime I have a great idea, I start a notebook," she said. "These are all my notebooks full of unfinished ideas."
"Soul Sisters!" I squealed, "I have a stack of the very same!"
Notebooks began with grand intentions, scribbled in with mad fervor, then quickly forgotten, stacked in a pile with all of the other notebooks.

Above my head right now, as I type, is a leather suitcase full of those notebooks.
Stacks of paper inscribed with penciled tracks, trains of thoughts, a port to park my ideas for another day.
So, I've decided. It's time to dust off the papers of possibilties and jump into the journey.
Time to start acting on what's in those notebooks.

How about you? Do you have a pile of notebooks awaiting your attention?

Shall we get going?