On Being a Temporary, Volunteer, Stay-at-Home, Would-Be Writer Mom

Every so often I make an unconscious decision to stop reading. Sometimes, I stop reading the Bible. Sometimes, I stop reading msnbc gossip columns. But lately, I've stopped reading everything except for certain comics strips. Even when I read to my friend, six-year-old Carllie, I ask her to finish reading each sentence because I just don't have it in me.

Carllie has been coming to my church in Modesto with her dad for most of her life. Things haven't been so great, so Carllie came to stay with us because she needs a family while her dad works out some law issues with the police. And because I am unemployed, I was able to spend the last three days playing with Carllie, painting pumpkins, making waffles, playing at the park, etc. Effects: 1) makes me glad I don't have kids, 2) makes me excited to have kids eventually, 3) makes me want to adopt.

My parents took her along with them tonight, and I took advantage of it and went to B&N to read some periodicals and it was entirely disappointing. The Writer's Digest was boring, depressing, and boring. It was filled with 24-year-old published novelists writing about how they became successful. Common thread? They did nothing but write unpublished "trash" for years until finally they wrote their ground-breaking novel about the horrors and sterilization of western society. Now, I don't mind the holed-up writing bit, but I won't do the my antidepressant-ridden dysfunctional-life-at-an-amusing-distance writing style so I can be in some pseudo-philosophical writers' cool club where they write in shapes or have three-page-long footnotes. I don't want to write in gimmicks, I want each little letter to come together with other letters and make words that match with other words to mean something to someone, the same as they mean to me.

When I got home, Carllie and I read "Geraldine's Blanket." It's a story about a little girl (actually, a pig who wears clothes) who loves her blanket even when it is tattered and patched and dirty. Geraldine's parents hope that a new doll will take her attention away from the detestable blanket; they even make Geraldine choose between the blanket and the doll. [Spoiler Warning] Geraldine's love for her blanket wins out when Geraldine gets clever and makes a dress for the doll out of the old blanket, leaving her parents flabbergasted.

I've always identified with Geraldine, and I still do. I am constantly falling in love with things that people call silly. Like a multi-colored fish pitcher where the the drink pours out of the fish's mouth (used to have a matching cookie jar). And I actually had a blanket that I clung to until it was barely a thread in my hands (a thread which my parents eventually stole and hid). As a side note, I could on for pages and pages on the joy of being a pack-rat, but I won't. You're welcome. OR, maybe later.

Carllie read the word patched perfectly on her first try tonight and it really made my night because earlier that day she didn't know what to do with the -ch sound, and I told her all about it. By the end of the book, her lovely reading made me want to do some reading of my own, anything pre-1950 will do.