Tonight I went to Schuler’s Books and met Melanie Lynne Hauser, author of “Confessions of a Super Mom”. You might also know Melanie from her blog, her website, and/or her MySpace page. She does all that, plus she’s the Mother of two teenage boys!

Here’s Melanie telling us how she came up with the plot and characters, and about her writing process. She told us it took her a month of going about her daily activities but writing the book in her head before she started actually writing it.

She’s very excited about the paperback, because they are more affordable and “they fit in your purse”. The book has also been optioned, so it might be made into a movie or something. And there’s a sequel coming out next year!

After passing a plate of fudge-striped shortbread cookies, she read us a passage from the book. If you haven’t read it, you can find it in any bookstore, on Amazon.com and also in the library. It has a little of everything-a divorced Mom with kids trying to balance work, parenting and romance, a mystery, a sub-plot about videogames and subliminal messages and why kids shouldn’t eat too much sugar, and a funny inside look at the PTA.

One of my favorite parts of the evening was when Melanie talked about her MySpace page, and about blogging in general. She said something about Mommybloggers and a lady in the audience exclaimed “what? There are MOMMYBLOGGERS?” Whoo-hoo! Represent! After the talk was over, I gave my blog card to that lady, and on the back I had written the URLs for Mommybloggers, BlogHer, and ClubMom. She said she hadn’t started a blog, and I encouraged her to start one, and to come here and feel free to click through my blogroll. I told her that blogging was how women were meeting, supporting and sharing their common interests with each other. I felt like a Blog Ambassador.
I got Melanie’s autograph (”From one Super Mom and blogger to another!”), and asked someone to take our photo. No fair wearing those high platform sandals, Melanie!

Check out Melanie’s sites to see if she’s coming to a bookstore near you. Her next stops are in Illinois and Indiana. I promise you’ll enjoy meeting her as much as I did!

By the way, I just uploaded a bunch of new photos to Flickr. Check ‘em out here!

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Today marks the 37th season of Sesame Street. And while I’m still reeling from the fact that I am older than Sesame Street, I’m also joining Mrs. Davis from The Lovely Mrs. Davis Tells You What To Think in commemorating the occasion by posting about my favorite childhood books and TV shows.

How old am I? I am SO OLD, when I was a kid there were only four channels on TV. FOUR. ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. We also had this huge box that sat on top of the TV with a giant dial that turned the antenna on the roof (remember those?), and on really clear days we could pull in CKLW, a Windsor, Ontario station that showed “Bill Kennedy at the Movies.” My parents dictated everything we watched, except on Saturday morning when my brother and sister and I watched cartoons. I know Sesame Street was on, but I honestly don’t remember watching it. When I was a pre-schooler, I have no memory of watching TV at all.

I do, however, have a crystal-clear memory of being in the second grade, during a rainy day when outside recess was cancelled, and we sat on the floor in our classroom and watched “The Electric Company” on a TV that was wheeled in on a cart. I’ve looked at the DVD of the show, and none of it rings any bells, except for one thing. There was a song, used to teach kids how to pronounce “tion” at the end of a word. The only part of the song I remember is the chorus, which went “t i o n shun shun shun shun!” So I would like to buy that DVD, and share that little bit of my childhood memory with them.

Books, however, are an entirely different story. I started reading when I was three. I progressed from Golden Books to chapter books by first grade. The first book series I read was “Little House on the Prairie”. My Mother had to write a note to my first grade teacher giving permission for me to check out those books from the “older readers” section of the school library, and I had to read a page out loud to my teacher to prove I could read all the words. This, I remember doing.

My boys have shown no interest in the “Little House” books, not even the “boy” ones like “Farmer Boy“. I’m hoping Kaitlyn will want to read them, and will be careful with my first edition paperbacks. My Mother saved every book she ever bought me, and I now have them in carefully packed boxes in the basement. I’m hoping Kaitlyn will want to read “Harriet the Spy“, “The Moffats“, “All-of-a-Kind Family“, and “Understood Betsy“. I want her to read “B is for Betsy“, “Papa Pellerin’s Daughter” (out of print), and “Laura’s Luck“.

There’s “The Good Master“, and “The Singing Tree“, “A Wrinkle in Time“, and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”.
And then there are my Raggedy Ann and Andy books. I have first edition hardcovers of every book in the series. These are extra-carefully packed away. I got them out once to show Nathan, hoping he would share my excitement at the wonder and magic of the stories. But he didn’t, because the stories are about dolls and stuffed animals. If Kaitlyn doesn’t want to read them either, then I will just keep them for myself. Because there is NOTHING that will make me part with those books.

Even though I have much stronger and fonder memories of the books I read as a kid, I still have great respect for Sesame Street. We’ll be tuning in to see the new season and meet the new Muppet Abby Cadabby. In fact, my husband, who I never think is paying attention to things like kids’ TV shows, told me about it today, and said “they have a new cute little Muppet this season.” Awwww! He is such a Dad.

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Subtitle, courtesy of Fancypants: Happy, Shiny, BULLSHIT. Scroll down for parts I & II

PART THREE:

Bullshit: Running around in my head, I keep hearing that song-”Back to life, back to reality, back to the here and now, yeah”. The warm fuzzy feeling that I brought back from BlogHer and kept wrapped around me has been replaced by my old familiar friend anxiety.

This is going to be another one of those really sucky months. Three days, in particular, that shall suck to the highest degree, and bring all kinds of fresh hell to the thoughts that keep me up at night.

Starting with Sunday, August 20th. The double funeral, double memorial service for my Mother-in-law and Grandma-in-law. Two women, who died under very different circumstances, both cremated, both to be laid to rest in the same cemetery.  A gathering of the remaining daughter, the children and grandchildren, siblings and cousins and their families. The circumstances of one death almost overshadowing the unfortunate timing of the other. A picnic, at a park famous for it’s gardens, with food and children running and playing, and yet the cloak of sadness and loss on top of everything else. A sad day.

Monday, August 21st.  A visit to a pediatric urologist, to see if there is a physical reason why my son occasionally wets the bed at night. And I’m sorry in advance, honey, if some day in the future one of your friends unearths my archives and finds this post. I suspect the doctor won’t find anything, but I still have to take all three kids to the appointment, and then figure out what to do with Nathan and the baby while Ryan and I see the doctor. There may be unpleasant tests involved, I don’t know. I really hope not.

Tuesday, August 21st. The biggest cause of my feeling like a load of bullshit has been dumped directly onto me, eradicating any residual good feelings I had. At 6:30 am, my Dad goes into surgery for an esophagastric resection. I tried to find a good link, but reading what Google returned in the search made me so upset that I couldn’t continue. Dad has a tumor where his esophagus meets his stomach, at the gastric sphincter. It is very small, so small that it didn’t show up on a CAT scan, but did show up during  whatever that test is called where they put a tube down into your stomach with a little camera on the end. The surgery involves cutting out a section of both esophagus and about a third of the top of his stomach, and then joining the sections together. His surgeon told him that it was considered “very difficult” surgery, but that it is the best way to ensure the removal of the tumor.

Afterwards, he should be able to eat regular food the next day, but will also have a feeding tube for supplemental nutrition. He will leave the hospital with the feeding tube in place. He is hiring a nurse to come every day to treat him. I don’t know the details of that yet. Here’s what worries me the most:

1. My Dad does not handle anesthesia well. When he had surgery after he broke his back, he experienced post-anesthesia hallucinations. He spent two days talking nonsense, at one point loudly ordering the “nazis” out of his room. This scared the bejesus out of me, and I don’t look forward to it happening again.

2. He lives alone. And although he has a wonderful girlfriend who I’m sure will do everything she can for him, she won’t be there every minute of the day. He is 72, needs a cane to get around, and eats lunch and dinner out. So this will require a major lifestyle change for him. Not to mention that the only way I can be with him during the day is IF I can find someone to watch all three kids.

3. “Very difficult” surgery. The fact that they are removing a TUMOR. We haven’t even heard about the likelihood of chemotherapy. The word CANCER. The fact that I am his designated patient advocate and may be called upon to confirm his D.N.R. order or sign papers that say no, he does not want to be kept alive on machines.

So there you have it. Between now and then, I plan to continue on as normal. But I’m sure I’ll have an even harder time sleeping next Saturday night, and then I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I may find lots of time to lose myself in the Blogosphere, or I may stay off entirely to preserve my energy.

Sigh. Thanks for listening. I’m so glad I have you all to talk to.

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Subtitle, courtesy of Fancypants: Happy, Shiny, BULLSHIT. Scroll down for Part One.
PART TWO:

Shiny: One of the items in our BlogHer swag bag was a free 3-Month trial of Weight Watchers Online. It had a promotion code that needed to be entered at signup to change the cost of the program to zero dollars. It was like a sign from the heavens. I had started a new “eating plan” (sounds better than diet, right?) right before my MIL died, and had since gone waaaay off the track. But after seeing the photos from BlogHer and wishing I was happier with the way I looked, I decided to take the plunge. Besides, I’ll be 40 in January, and I want to lose 40 pounds by then.

So I enthusiastically went through the sign up process, except I made one teeny mistake. After entering the promotion code, I didn’t click the “Update Pricing” button. Without the clicking of that button, the registration program doesn’t recognize the promotion code at all, and my confirmation page showed that I was charged the full price.

I immediately fired an email to Weight Watchers Customer Service. I explained all about BlogHer, about the tote bag and the free 3-Month trial, and how I accidentally didn’t click the button, and how I didn’t want to be charged, I wanted 3 months FREE.

I was EMPHATIC in that email. I threw CAPS around as if I were punching the air for emphasis. I made sure that IMPORTANT WORDS AND PHRASES like “free” and “promotion” and “FREE” were properly capitalized. I was sure it was clear as day why I was emailing them and what the problem was.

Oh, the confusion on the part of Weight Watcher Customer Service. They didn’t understand these words I was using, like “free” and “BlogHer sponsor” and “HELP”. It took several exchanges before I finally begged for someone who could understand what I was saying to please respond to any further emails.

Today, I received an email from a wonderful lady named Rosa at WWCS. SHE UNDERSTOOD. She cancelled my not-free membership, issued a refund to my credit card, and asked me to sign up again using the free promotion code. Getting something for free and having someone go the extra mile for me? Shiny.

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Subtitle, courtesy of Fancypants: Happy, Shiny, BULLSHIT.

PART ONE:

Happy: This was a morning that required more than just my usual drip coffee with half n half and Splenda. No, this was a serious coffee morning. My ability to sleep shrinks ever more greatly as the days pass, until I am now up until at least 2:00 am, and yet must awaken by 7:30 in order to do something that approximates parenting. And so, after getting Kaitlyn changed and started on her morning bottle, I went to Beaner’s for a Grande Mocha Caramel.

Yes, that means I left my kids alone in a house locked up tighter than Fort Knox for twenty minutes. Ryan is beyond capable, some days he is a better parent than I am. They know my cell phone number, they know not to answer the phone or the door, they know to only leave the house if it is on fire, and then to go only to the next-door neighbor’s house. That doesn’t mean that I linger at the coffee shop for even a second longer than necessary, no. I get my ass there and back fast.

So, back to the happy. As I stood there, locking the front door, a breeze swept in through the trees, ruffling my hair a little. I looked up, taking in the bright, clear blue sky, and registering the fact that it was a good ten degrees cooler. My first thought was “oh no, that’s a FALL breeze.” But it wasn’t. It felt different than a fall breeze.

The fall breeze is smoky, with the rustling of dried leaves and a chill behind it that portends the cooler temperatures to come. Fall breezes send Mothers looking for last year’s Old Navy hooded sweatshirts, zipped onto protesting children and no doubt abandoned the second they are out of sight, stuffed into the bottoms of backpacks along with the Kleenex pocket packs we always make them take but which they never use.

No, this was just a good Summer breeze, the kind that lets the kids stay outside longer than usual. The kind of breeze that lifts kites into the air and keeps those decorative flags my neighbors attach to the front of their houses flying briskly. My dismay at the possible onset of Fall was replaced by the happy feeling that Summer is not yet over.

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