In Which I Celebrate the Season

The trees are turning and the air is getting crisp and morning runs have never been lovelier. Which means it's time to begin my annual tradition of Nagging Noah About Halloween.

This is a tradition that goes back to the early days of our relationship. Every year I tell him I want to dress up as Noah and Mrs. Noah and carry around stuffed animals. Possibly we could pose the animals in an inner tube, which is about as close to an ark as we're going to get. And every year Noah celebrates his own traditions, which are Getting All Snarky About Costumes and, at the last minute, Putting on a Fedora and Calling Himself Cary Grant.  He looks darn good in a fedora, so I've never raised much complaint.

But for the record: once we have kids Cary Grant will be retired, at least on Halloween. Instead, we're going to throw on bathrobes or sheets or something Old Testamenty and dress the kids up as animals and put them in a wagon that we've gussied up as an ark and drag them around the neighborhood. It will be epic.

In the meantime I'm celebrating fall in all the usual ways. There's a snaggle-toothed jack-o'-lantern sitting on our doorstep and beginning to rot--no way that thing makes it to Halloween--and we've got a skillion apples waiting to be cooked into pies. I'm downing gallons of chai, but no orchard-fresh cider this year. It's bizarre--a gallon of cider costs $7.99 out here. This is, of course, highway robbery, so I'm staging a protest. I asked my mother to get a gallon and stick it in the freezer for me, so I'll have some when we go home at Christmas.

And the celebrate-fall plan for today? Pack away the summer clothes and sandals and get out the winter coats and sweaters and blankets. And figure out something to do with all my scarves. I have a lot, and I don't really need a lot--the winters here are pretty mild. Noah gives me lots of raised eyebrows over my collection. Maybe I'll pin them to a bedsheet and cut a hole for his head and call it a Coat of Many Colors. He can be Joseph this year instead of Cary Grant. It's probably best to work up to Noah and the Ark gradually.

In Which I Seek Connection

I've got another conference coming up next week. I'm pretty darn geeked about this one, actually. It's a children's writing conference and I get to spend the week talking about books and kids and why the very most important work in the world is bringing them together. Can you think of any better way to spend a few days in September? Any way at all?

I was at a conference with my father a few years back (and it might help you here to know that my dad is probably the most extraordinary children's writer of his generation) (and I only say this because so many other people said it first). He gave a keynote address about the importance of story, and by the end he had everyone weeping. Even me, and I'd already heard all his stories. Afterwards I asked him if his goal was to make people cry, and he said, "I want them to take this work seriously."

That's my goal at this conference, too. To teach the writers to take their calling seriously. To teach them the craft and give them the tools to become excellent. Also, I get to bring some picture books and read bedtime stories. (It would be easier to find a good selection, incidentally, if Hubby-of-my-dreams had let me take the unliftably-big-box-o'-picture-books when we moved. This was a source of some contention at the time. It's still a source of contention, actually. While I understand that our apartment is laughably small cozy and if we get more books we'll have to start stacking them underneath the pots and pans, or possibly on top of the refrigerator, I'd still feel a lot better if they were close by instead of sitting in the guest room at my parents' house.)

Another advantage of this conference: I get to actually spend time with the writers. This usually doesn't happen. Here's how it often goes:

I sit at a table in an overcrowded room with a bottle of water, pad of paper, and professional-looking pen in front of me. A woman walks in, looking like Marie Antoinette on Guillotine Day, and takes a deep, shuddery breath as she extends her hand. I introduce myself, give her a massive smile, and tell her to sit down and tell me about her work.

She speaks very quickly for thirty seconds as she gives me her memorized pitch. It sounds like she's reading marketing copy. She stops abruptly and looks at me, then glances down at her notes. (I can read these notes upside-down. At the top it says, it big letters, SMILE and at the bottom, DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT BIZ CARD.) She looks back up at me as if she's being hunted.

"Tell me when you first felt that you needed to write this book," I say. My whole goal here is to calm this person down. I know it's nerve-wracking to meet a publisher. I know she's been preparing for this fifteen-minute interview for weeks. But I also know that I'm not as big a deal as she thinks I am. (A few months ago I told a friend that I was teaching a class at a conference, and her jaw just dropped. "You?" she said. "Why would they ask you?" All I could think to say was, "I'm extremely important, you know," and then she just bust out laughing. Lord, grant me more friends like this.)

So this woman and I chat about her work. Sometimes she tells me a story--a sickening, heart-wrenching story--about an event that changed her outlook on life. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes she laughs. Sometimes she takes my hands and prays with me. And then the fifteen minutes are up, and another writer is waiting in the wings, and we shake hands and say goodbye. And the part that I hate about conferences is that I have sixty appointments like this in the space of two or three days, and I don't always recognize the writers when I see them again. I hate that. I hate making a connection with a person that I know is going to be so temporary. I hate that my next communication with this person will probably be a rejection letter.

But the connection's important, brief though it may be. That's why we're here, after all. To look another person in the eye and make them understand that they matter. Their work matters. Their passion matters. Their pain and their joy both matter.

And that connection is even more important when it's made with children. When you take the time to give a kid a hug, to ask about their hopes and dreams and the mundane little details of their lives. When you dig a little deeper than "What grade are you in?" or "So, do you like school?" Writers for children have the enormous joy--and enormous responsibility--of connecting with more kids than they could ever reach individually. Of teaching them that they matter and their stories matter.

That's what I'm going to be saying, in one way or another, at the conference next week. I'll be making connections with writers and hoping that they, in turn, pass that connection on to a whole generation of kids.

I absolutely love what I do.

In Which I Wonder How Things Got This Bad in the First Place

The hubby and I are moving again. Not too far--just to a new apartment across town. And as with every move, we're standing back, hands on hips, staring at our possessions with a critical eye and thinking "Now, what can we throw out so we don't have to put it in a box?"

I suppose this purging is good for the soul. I don't need six pairs of black dress sandals and I never wore that swimsuit and I have always hated that sweater. But today that critical eye has turned toward the bookshelves. Our ever-growing pile of Donate-or-Sell includes the following:

• Two copies of To Kill a Mockingbird. One has my ninth-grade scribbles all through, with every third paragraph underlined and highlighted. There's even an occasional post-it with words like "IRONY" and "FORESHADOWING." The other has a mangled cover. We're just keeping the nicer hardcover edition.
• The Book of Vice, by Peter Sagal. I've got the same crush on Mr. Sagal that every girl has, and I liked the book, but I don't see myself cracking the cover to learn about the porn and gambling industries ever again. 
• Time Enough for Drums, by Ann Rinaldi. Discovered I had two copies of this. Not sure where the second copy came from. Are the books breeding?
• Two copies of The Little Prince. (I still have three, two in French and one in English.) The two on the donate pile appear to be encrusted in yogurt. 
• Sense and Sensibility: The Barnes & Noble Cheap Paperback Edition.
• L'Etranger. This was another duplicate book, but it has footnotes with English translations throughout. Evidently this is the "For Students Too Lazy to Pick up a Dictionary" edition. 
• Stiff, by Mary Roach, because it was good and probably important but also pretty gross. 
• My Life as an Experiment, by A.J. Jacobs. After The Know-it-All and The Year of Living Biblically I was pretty sure this guy had a screw loose, but My Life confirmed it. I don't deny the guy can write, but he's just a little too abnormal for me. 
• The Romanovs, by Robert Massie. He's a great author but it's not his strongest book. He spends an extraordinary amount of time documenting the assassination. It's some of the most detailed gore I've ever seen in print. 

Happily, however, I have persuaded the hubby to leave my Bill Bryson and Agatha Christie collections intact. (There was only mild grumbling about Agatha Christie.) And he didn't grumble at all when I said I wanted to keep both copies of Jamaica Inn. See, here's my dilemma. The older copy is beat up but I love love love the elegant sleaze look to the cover, while the newer copy is in great shape but has a deeply embarrassing cover. Would you want to be seen in public with that thing?

No. Of course you wouldn't. That's the sort of cover you stash under your pillow and hope no one sees. 

I'm off to make a gut-wrenching decision on Into Thin Air. I loved it in tenth grade but haven't cracked the cover since. It's sort of pleasing to have it on the shelf, but probably not pleasing enough to justify boxing it up and lugging it across town. Wish me luck. 

In Which I Make Nice Smells

A brief history of chicken stock:

1990-2006: Every year around the end of November, I watch my mother make turkey stock. All sorts of unnatural items go into the pot, most memorably the bits of a turkey that you would be least likely to consume. I helpfully observe that the neck looks like the thing that comes out of one's chest in Alien. My mother, year after year, swats me out of the kitchen and informs me that my observations are not appreciated.

2007: Thanksgiving with my fiance's family. After dinner, I observe a large pan in which turkey bits and unappetizing veggie parts are floating in water. I give it a good squirt of dish soap and go on my merry way. Not long later, I see the pan bubbling on the stove. Well, poo. I consider my options:

(a) Pretend I didn't see the pan and let my future grandparents-in-law eat soapy stock. Deny all responsibility next time I see them, when they say "And it was the darndest thing...there was something off about that stock. Something mighty peculiar..."
(b) Confess.

I chose the latter option, and to Grandma's credit her face didn't even fall. She actually laughed and said, "Oh, honey, it doesn't matter. Saves me having to use it." And she never once brought it up after that, even though she totally had license to tease me mercilessly forever after.

2008-2010: Avoid the kitchen at stock-time.

2011: I have been reading, I think, too many cookbooks. All my favorite authors tell me that I haven't really lived until I've made my own chicken stock. They tell me I'm not a decent cook if I use the Swanson stuff. They tell me I won't regret making it. And since I believe them, I decided a few months ago that I would man up and just make the dang stock. I have, therefore, been collecting all the extra chicken bits from our meals and tossing them in the freezer, and by now I have a pretty nice supply of carcasses in there.

So tonight, not wanting to go for a run because it's very cold and rainy feeling all domestic-goddess-y, I threw on my apron, excavated the carcasses from the bowels of the freezer, dug through the vegetable for crisper for anything of interest, tipped the contents of any spice jars that were mostly empty into a pot, and sat back to spend the evening sniffing. And oh good glory.

I say this in all humility: I am very, very good at making stock. I am probably the world expert at making stock. It is deep and rich and probably sinful and it's only been on the stove for ninety minutes.

Mom, I'm sorry about all the snarky alien remarks. And Grandma, I'm sorry about the soap. I didn't know what I was ruining.

In Which I Raise a Crumpet to the Happy Couple

Well. That was lovely, wasn't it? Two happy people setting out on a grand adventure together...and what better way to begin an adventure? I always like to have cherubic choir boys lauding me when I start my adventures, personally. Also shrubberies. And fabulous hats. (Especially hats that resemble the entire female reproductive system.)

I don't know how Kate managed to make it through that ceremony without bawling her eyes out. I was a watery wreck at my own wedding (ended up wiping my nose on my roses when I hoped no one was looking). Heck, anyone with that kind of poise deserves to be queen.

But the best that can be said of the wedding has, of course, already been said by my sister, who is infinitely smarter and wittier and charming-er than moi. As she so elegantly put it:


"Everyone is going on and on about how this is a sign of hope, a celebration of the potential of the next years, a way for the Church of England to attract some people back into the fold, or a chance for the monarchy to make amends to its people for its past mistakes. A tall order for two young people who just want to get married. And, for all the pageantry, for all the songs, for all the tears, I am less than sure that the wedding accomplished any of these things completely and I doubt that the new princess or her husband set out with those goals in mind. I think they just wanted to get married. However, what the wedding did do was, for two hours, unite two billion people around an event that wasn’t a war, a riot, or a natural disaster. Instead, it was an act of sweet love and a moment of true happiness. As a global community, we haven’t gotten one of those lately. I’d kinda forgotten what they looked like. Who knew happiness came with so many hats?"

In Which I Observe My Surroundings

Since we moved to Oregon everyone's been telling me, in reference to restaurants, stores, coffee shops, attitudes, hairstyles, and cars, "That's so Eugene." I never have any idea what they mean. Do they mean that something is local? Distinctive? Trendy?

In my quest to understand the essence of Eugene, I have made the following observations:

• While walking down the street one frequently overhears something like the following: "They had a baby girl but they're raising her gender neutral." (How does one do this?) 
• There is a fair here--the Oregon Country Fair, held every July--in which visitors are politely requested to cover their genitals before 5 p.m. Please note that paint counts as a covering. 
• At the Saturday farmer's market, vendors dressed as Pilgrims (probably not intentionally--they're just wearing a lot of blankets, which seems Pilgrim-y) sell hemp onesies, ugly scarves, and stale bread. 
• Every fall the city crowns a Slug Queen. (I think Slug stands for something, or perhaps it's just in reference to all the slugs littering the sidewalks here.) Apparently this is an honor. 

All of these things are, irrefutably, so Eugene. And here's just one more story that, I think, neatly illustrates the culture in this city. (Or possibly throughout the Northwest? I'll need to continue my research.)

There's a woman I work with who is just the most lovely, tender-hearted person in creation. She's soft-spoken, gentle, and unfailingly generous. She's the sort of person who can always be counted on, who, you sense, would maintain her calm in the worst kind of crisis. She's the sort of person who strips away all your illusions about what a lovely person you are, because she's just so good. 

For the past week or so she's been growing one of those little ducks in a jar full of water on her desk. You know those things? It's a little pellet, and you drop it in water and after 48 hours the pellet turns into a slimy, dense heap of duck. Or T-Rex. Or Christmas tree. Whatever. The duck (I named it Butch) has grown to its full size, and it was sitting out on a little plate. I went to look at it today, and we both sort of tilted our heads as we looked at it.

"Don't you just want to rip its little head off?" she asked. 

I stared. "No, not really. No," I said. 

"I'm used to dead animals," she shrugged. "My husband owns a fish hatchery, and he's just got a menagerie of carcasses in his freezer. I told him to throw me in there when I die, but to make sure to pose me nicely."

"Pose you nicely," I repeated. 

"Yes. We found a dog on the road once that was just about gone, so we took it home and called the vet. It died before we could get it there, though, so we brought it back to the freezer and posed it nicely."

"You don't freeze a carcass," said I. "I think you're supposed to bury it or incinerate it or something."

"But the owners might have been looking for it. And they did come around just a few days later, and it was good for them to see their dog. It was posed so nicely, they said." 

I must have been giving her quite a look because she laughed and patted my arm and said "It's not that weird around here. Trust me." And I thought, You are so Eugene. 

In Which I Get Good at Bureaucracy

We moved to Oregon a few months ago and have, ever since, been putting off making it legal. (It's the residency equivalent, I suppose, of knocking someone up and fleeing the state before her pa can tell you to make an honest woman out of her.) (I feel like this metaphor is going to fall apart on me soon, so best to abandon it here.) 

But the hubby's Michigan license was set to expire soon, so off to the DMV we went. 

The Oregon DMV is a wretched little building populated by bored people. The flippy-hair chick at the information desk is bored, the scraggly-hair lady at the computer is bored, and the unwashed masses of people clutching their checkbooks--some of whom have been there long enough to actually begin decaying--are also bored. (We fell into this last category.) (Not so much the unwashed part.) 

The flippy-hair chick--somehow I remember her chewing gum, although this cannot actually be the case--added up the costs for us. Sixty bucks each for licenses. $173 for the license plates. Some other large amount of money for the registration. Five bucks each to take the driving test. And seven dollars--this amount sticks in my head--for a VIN inspection. The VIN inspection consisted of the flippy-hair chick leaving her desk, walking outside, looking at a set of very tiny numbers hidden on the car, and then returning to her desk. Seven dollars for this. Do you know how many lattes that would buy me? (Two.) 

After the VIN inspection (which, I've just got to say, the car passed with flying colors), off we went to sit in the chairs. After the length of an ice age scraggly-hair lady called us up, looked at the eighty-seven identifying documents we'd brought along, and concluded that we had insufficient proof of address. 

It was around this point that I started longing for cake. I figure when people move to a new state the least its DMV can do is provide a party of some sort. Would welcome balloons really have killed them? 

Scraggly-hair lady seemed disinclined to provide balloons.

So Hubby ran home to get extra proof of address. (Looking the lady squarely in the eye and saying very sincerely, "I promise you I live here," didn't seem to do the trick.) He returned, documents in tow, twenty minutes later. In these twenty minutes the scraggly lady had already forgotten us, so we had to begin the process all over again. But finally she let us take the test. 

Here are some things you need to know in order to get a driver's license in the state of Oregon:

• The exact distance at which you should flick off your brights when another is approaching from the opposite direction. (I just turn them off when I see the other car's headlights. Apparently you're supposed to wait until they're within 400 feet. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not very good at judging distance when it's pitch black out.)
• The amount of your fine should you not provide proof of insurance upon an officer's request. 
• How long after a move you have to provide the DMV with your new address. 
• What you should do when you see a big red sign that says "STOP." 

I got one of these questions right, plus a few others, but was ultimately declared a menace to society, and scraggly-hair lady refused to grant me a license. Hubby got many more questions right than I did. He got his license. 

So back I went the next day to re-take the test. Same bored people in the same wretched building. I passed this time--fewer stupid questions--but the powers that be (scraggly-hair lady was nowhere in sight) once again refused to grant me a license because I'd neglected to bring all fifty-eight thousand pieces of documentation. 

But I returned, still valiant, on the third day, every piece of paper that has ever had my name on it in hand, and presented them to the scraggly-hair lady, who was now wearing a pair of badly ripped jeans. She took my picture and asked me if I wanted to be an organ donor.

"Everything but my eyes," I said. "I wouldn't wish my vision on anyone. Ha ha ha."

"Um, there's not really a form for that?" she said. (Did I mention that she was an up-talker?) 

"Never mind," I said. 

"Well, welcome to Oregon," she said, and cracked what may have been a scraggly-toothed smile. It wasn't a welcome cake, and it certainly wasn't a bunch of balloons, but I felt like we'd become friends by this point. I smiled back.