The Universe Giveth...

The last few months have been rather busy, and despite my best intentions, I stopped blogging, stopped jogging, stopped doing yoga, and essentially stopped doing anything except getting through the biggest, scariest event I have encountered in my time as a mother: Son #1's bar mitzvah. As someone who was not raised Jewish, I wasn't sure what to expect. The fact that everyone around me (in-laws, parents of other bene-mitzvah-aged kids, etc.) approached the topic with a mixture of dread and seriousness convinced me that I had to clear the decks and focus; the fact that I had only the vaguest sense of what I was doing didn't exactly instill me with confidence, either.

So for those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a bar mitzvah isn't just a fancy thirteenth birthday party. In fact, Son #1's bar mitzvah was nearly two months after his actual birthday. It is a coming of age ritual, where a boy becomes  responsible for following the commandments; in practice, this meant Son #1 spent many years in religious school learning Hebrew, and the last year learning prayers, his torah portion, and a haftarah portion so that he could lead the service. (For a girl, it's called a bat mitzvah, and at our temple, which is Reform, it is exactly the same as a boy's service.)

Thankfully, Son #1 took his responsibility to study very seriously, and stayed on top of what he had been assigned to learn each week. This meant that all I needed to gnaw my fingernails over was planning the celebration afterward. My husband's family all lives in town (or within an hour or two's drive), so we anticipated a cast of thousands. We needed a venue that could accommodate them all and feed them well. We needed a DJ who could keep a large roomful of people from toddlers to octogenarians entertained. And I needed to find a dress with a neckline high enough and hemline low enough to be tasteful in temple, and yet did not make me look as ancient as I felt (hanging out with a thirteen-year-old who rolls his eyes at every third thing you say can do that to you). It already seemed like an impossible quest.

Did I mention I got to put three boys in suits? They enjoyed it this much.

And of course, then I made the process even more fun by deciding that I was going to do a bunch of things myself. Why hire someone to make centerpieces or party favors when you can do it yourself? Why hire someone to make a slideshow of cute pictures of Son #1 through the years when you can do it yourself? Why get a photographer to make a sign-in board when you can design one yourself and get it printed at the local printer's much more inexpensively?

I'm a little surprised that D-I-Yism hasn't made it into the DSM as a diagnosable mental disorder yet, but my husband can tell you that I definitely made myself crazy over the months leading up to the bar mitzvah. I had to scale back my design for the centerpieces when I realized that my original plan would require roughly sixty hours I didn't have, and by the time I got done with folding and stuffing 180 favor boxes, I practically cheered when I found square labels at Staples that I could print out instead of then making 180 tags to adorn said boxes. I spent hours considering and rejecting songs to accompany the slide show, not to mention paring down the thousands of cute photos we have of Son #1 through the years to a streamlined selection that would not make our guests nod off in their chairs. (And no, I did not embarrass him with any nude baby pictures. I'm saving those for when he starts dating.)

And then in the midst of all of this, as we were chasing down the last RSVPs less than three weeks before the bar mitzvah, my husband got bad news. His company had decided to phase out his job, and after a few more months, he would be unemployed and our family would be without an income. I'd like to say that I handled this with calm and grace, but in truth I handled it with lots of swearing and some hysteria. If I hadn't been eyeball-deep in finishing up the aforementioned DIY projects, I probably would have been trolling Pinterest for voodoo-doll designs to use on my husband's soon-to-be former employers. I was bitterly sure that my enjoyment of my son's hard work would be overshadowed by the anxiety I now felt about my family's future. I felt like an idiot for essentially opting out of the workforce for thirteen years, knowing that no effort of mine could replace my husband's income.

Sometimes, though, the universe throws you a bone. That same week, when I was barely keeping it together, keeping my tunnel vision on the bar mitzvah to keep myself from freaking out about everything else, I got an email that my former employer had recommended me to one of their clients who was looking for a freelance proofreader. And then a regular proofreading client of mine asked if I would be interested in doing some editing for them. My freelance income isn't much; in a good year it covers things like summer day camp for the boys, and in a bad year, it provides an excuse for having something other than "housewife" on my resume. But knowing that I'd be able to bring in something at that moment was enough to take me a healthy step back from the edge of the ledge.

And ironically, having the minor crises of bar-mitzvah planning to fret over helped to keep my mind off of the larger crisis of my husband's impending joblessness. I probably vented more than a proportional amount of steam over the flakes who contacted us at the last minute--oh, I know I said we were coming, but we can't make it for reasons we absolutely could have foreseen when we sent our response card in--but I was able to keep my anxiety over his job hunt to a few dozen daily reminders to email everyone he knew to let them know he's looking. (Hey, for me, that's good.)

The day of the bar mitzvah came. Son #1 did a beautiful job, if I do say so myself, and I was able to shrug off my worries and enjoy the day with our family. (Seriously, though, the people who RSVP'd "yes" and then didn't show the day of with no warning--I'm keeping a list, man.) Watching Son #1 calmly lead the service, and then enjoy himself at his party, reminded me that there are bigger things in the world than making a paycheck--like learning that hard work pays off, and experiencing the joy of knowing your family and friends are there to cheer you on. The glow of happiness on his face made all the months of anxiety and hours of crafting worth it.

But if any of you know of a twelve-step program for DIYers...Son #2's bar mitzvah will be in about two years. I'm not sure I'll survive another 180 favor boxes...

Growing Older

Last year I turned forty. It shouldn't have been any big deal for me. In fact, I spent most of my youth wanting to be older than I already was. Adulthood meant that I would be able to leave crooked teeth (and the vast array of embarrassing orthodontic devices meant to correct the problem) behind, that I might actually grow taller and develop a figure (that only sort of happened, on both counts), and that somehow, someday, I might actually get to make my own decisions and be taken seriously.

That or reading the Beloit College Mindset List.

So believe me, I was as surprised as my poor husband was when, a few weeks shy of the fateful day, I burst into tears over the idea of turning forty. It had come out of nowhere. What did I have to cry about? By almost every measure, my life was exactly where I wanted it to be. I have a happy marriage, and a nice (though perpetually messy and in-need-of-repair) house in a good neighborhood. My boys are reasonably well behaved and do well in school. I have work that I enjoy doing, even if the amount of it that I get qualifies it more as a hobby than an actual career. Of course, last year I was still massively overcommitted to volunteering, but even then I knew it wasn't going to last forever.

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on in my subconscious. I had actually left all the awkwardness of youth behind me. Adolescence was a hell I would never need to return to. I could fondly reflect on the days when my husband and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment filled with a collection of hand-me-down furniture that looked like it had been picked at random from the nearest Goodwill and know that all the inconveniences of sharing one coin-operated washer and dryer with the residents of five other apartments were behind me. I could even look back on my days of early motherhood and laugh indulgently at the young woman who thought it would be a good idea to re-read The Feminine Mystique while eyeball-deep in postpartum hormones, and who lugged around a diaper bag full of enough supplies to get Son #1 and me through the first week of a natural disaster in comfort. (For the record it is a horrible idea to re-read The Feminine Mystique when you have a newborn, unless you like sitting in a rocking chair clutching your baby and sobbing hysterically. And overloaded diaper bags are a good way to mess up your back and lose your favorite baby outfits because they get buried in the bottom of the bag.) So why the tears?

I think the first part was due to a quirk of timing in my life that yields much-deserved karmic lessons on a regular basis. You see, my mom had me when she was twenty-seven. I had Son #1 when I was two weeks shy of turning twenty-eight. So now when I look back on my childhood and think of how I viewed my mother at whatever age Son #1 happens to be at the moment, I am struck with the inescapable fact that he is probably seeing me the exact same way I saw my mom at the same time of life. When he was in early elementary school, this view was mostly pretty good. To my elementary-school self, my mom seemed both old and ageless. She was capable of anything in my eyes, and was always there when I needed her. And she always knew when I was trying to pull one over on her. I could tell by the confidence with which Son #1 expected me to be able to solve his problems that he saw me the same way, though on the inside I felt not terribly organized, just one step ahead of his needs. Hell, there were even days I felt as though I were the babysitter, and wondered what moron had decided to leave me in charge. And I discovered that the secret of my mother's seeming omniscience was that kids are really, really, really bad liars.

That started to change when Son #1 hit adolescence. It's obvious to him now that I don't know everything--all he has to do is ask for help with his math homework in order to find my Achilles heel. I am regularly treated to eye rolls and exasperated sighs, and as often as I am taken for granted as a source of solutions (i.e., clearing my calendar on a day's notice to help chaperone a middle-school hike) I am also taken as an impediment to the life he would like to be leading (how desperately unfair that I will not let him play the Xbox until his eyeballs bleed). I wonder if I am going to be paid back in kind for each eye roll and exasperated sigh I directed my mother's way, because if so I've got a long row to hoe yet. And is he looking at me with the same unsympathetic adolescent eye I turned to my mother, when she gazed in disappointment in the mirror? I'm sorry, Mom. Now I get it. I'm not sure where my crow's feet came from, or the cellulite on my butt. And why the hell am I still getting zits? I bet you were thinking much the same kind of thing back in the day--little did I know at the time that my day would come.

The other part was a far more sobering realization. It's that I have hit the point in life where I have to acknowledge that not everything is truly possible any more. Some options I don't care about now and never did--I never wanted to be an athlete (of any kind), and my efforts at exercise are just about evicting the aforementioned cellulite and keeping myself healthy. As fascinating as I find science, I know I don't have the math chops to be anything more than an interested observer. I'm too claustrophobic to go deep-sea diving and too prone to motion-sickness to ever go up in space. But some realizations are more painful. I know that taking thirteen years (and counting) out of the regular work force means that I will most likely never have a high-powered career of any kind, and there are times I feel like I let my own potential down by opting out. Despite my best intentions, I gave up writing for about eighteen years, and I'm not getting that time back. I will never have a daughter. As much as I used to enjoy the adventure of moving to a new place, I will most likely never live anywhere other than Los Angeles again. In other words, the life I have now is pretty much it.

It's not that I'm sorry to have the life I do (see paragraph two, above). In the grand scheme of things, I know how lucky I am, and how much of the good things in life I have in abundance. But now I think I get why people have mid-life crises. If I had looked around and been truly unhappy with what I saw, I might have felt desperate to start changing that right now. Instead I shed a few tears over the dreams that will stay dreams forever and moved on. The plans I make now will have to stick a little closer to reality, and that's okay. And if Son #1 is looking at me and thinking that I'm hopeless--well, someday he's probably going to have a teenage son who rolls his eyes over his receding hairline and horrible taste in music.

My Kid with Asperger's Syndrome

Today's post is something a little different from my usual (and not because I don't have plenty of material for the next chapter of minor domestic disasters). Recently I was asked to do a guest blog post by teacher Danielle Filas, a woman who has taken her fearlessness, intelligence, creativity, and energy and applied them to the classroom. She and I became friends and roommates in college, and I'm happy to say that although we are now separated by several time zones, our friendship knows no distance. (Though I do occasionally pout that it is highly unlikely any of my boys will have the privilege of being in her classroom.) I was honored to be asked to write this post about Asperger's Syndrome, which Son #1 was diagnosed with at the age of four. I highly recommend following Danielle's blog, EduNerd, for thought-provoking insight on teaching, learning, and infusing education with passion and creativity. (Did I mention I'm bummed she doesn't teach my kids?)

I'm cross-posting here because I think that while my post was originally written to offer some insight to teachers, the information in it can be of use to anyone who knows someone with an autistic spectrum disorder.

My Kid with Asperger’s Syndrome

My oldest son is twelve, and he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at age four. I’ve got plenty of stories about how this has affected his time in preschool and then in school, but I decided I would start by asking him what he thinks teachers should know about kids with Asperger’s. He thought for a second, and then said, “I think they should know that it makes them more emotional.”

Surprised?

People with Asperger’s are often thought of as emotionless: flat affect, no empathy. The truth (as I see it, anyway) is that the problem is one of communication. My son didn’t come with the wiring that allows him to automatically understand the meaning of nonverbal gestures, tone of voice, or body language. But he himself has all the feelings that those things express. And he empathizes strongly with other people. His difficulty with nonverbal communication makes him slow to pick up on the nuances. The contrast between his own feelings (like everyone else’s) and his ability to tap into the sea of nonverbal communication that we are all awash in every day (slow compared to everyone else’s) tends to make him anxious.

So he reacts differently than other kids his age might. On the last day of school before winter break, I came home to a message from the coordinator at his magnet middle school. My son had misplaced his lunch box, and was upset. The coordinator assured me that they would make sure my son had a lunch. I could imagine the scene: my son hyperventilating, probably crying, sure the problem couldn’t be fixed because his emotions were overwhelming his ability to problem-solve.

This kind of meltdown is fortunately less common with him these days, thanks to techniques his teachers have used throughout the years to not only help him get past difficult moments, but to keep them from occurring in the first place.

"Clouds" by C. Frank Stramer

The most important thing to know about an Asperger’s meltdown is that you have to let it pass before you can deal with the problem that triggered it. Period. No exceptions. (For an inside perspective, read this take written by an adult with Asperger’s). My son in non-meltdown mode is sweet, compliant, logical, and thoughtful. During a meltdown, he and all of those wonderful qualities have left the building. The best thing you can do is to provide a safe spot (maybe even just a chair in a quiet part of the room) for him to calm down. This includes keeping well-meaning classmates away, because even their attempts to soothe him (“Are you okay?”) can add fuel to the mental fire. He’s not throwing a fit to try to manipulate anyone, and yes, he really is out of his own control. My son describes it as “losing his thinking,” and that’s exactly what happens to him.

Unfortunately, my son has experienced a couple of spectacular fails in regard to this principle in his school years. His first grade teacher never could quite understand that if he had done something wrong, she had to wait until he was done freaking out over how horrible he was before she could impose a consequence for his behavior. She unwittingly made more than one meltdown worse than it needed to be, and he left first grade anxious about school in general. In fifth grade, when he had a meltdown on the playground and lashed out physically at his then-best friend, a well-meaning school administrator tried to get the boys to reconcile while my son was still freaking out. Instead, my son told the other boy that he hated him and never wanted to be friends again; he repented less than two hours later, when he had his emotions under control, but by then it was too late. It would have been much better to separate my son from the other student than to attempt a technique that may work well for typical students, whose emotions cool faster and may not completely overwhelm them in the same way.

Fortunately, the highlights of my son’s education vastly outnumber these sad chapters. His second grade teacher was militant about making sure my son had an undisturbed place to calm down if he needed it. In fourth grade and up he had a break card that allowed him to go sit outside the classroom for a moment, no questions asked, if he felt that he was getting overwhelmed and needed to calm down before he hit meltdown stage. (The ironic part is that by fifth grade, just knowing that he had the option to take a break was almost always enough to calm him to the point where he didn’t need to actually take one.) Using self-checklists, where my son took a moment to monitor his own emotions and behavior, or talking to him directly about the things that can influence our moods (such as being hungry or tired), helped him to be more in tune with his own emotional state.

One of the best ways to keep him (and other Asperger’s kids) on an even keel is to make the school environment as predictable as possible. His teachers through the years have made smart use of calendars, schedules, and visual aids to ensure that my son knew what to expect out of each school day. (This is something I think most teachers do anyway for all their students, but Asperger’s kids eat it up.) The less uncertainty my son has about what is going on, the happier he is. Right now his favorite teacher is his algebra teacher, who structures his class the same way each day and makes his expectations clear. My son repeats one of Mr. R’s favorite catchphrases: “No surprises!” as if he has won the lottery. Having a generally stable environment helps him to “roll with it” when something unexpected does happen.

Jay's Thought Stream

My son is an individual, and his experience in school and with Asperger’s is unique. Each student you have with Asperger’s will also be a unique individual. They will be impressively capable in some areas and bafflingly behind in others. Their skills are real and their deficits are real. The little things you do for them, like making sure they have the right seating placement in the classroom, can make a huge difference. My bright, beautiful boy has grown into a thoughtful and responsible young man under the care of his teachers (and a moment to brag: he brings home excellent grades!). As a parent whose child has benefited from the help given by thoughtful teachers over the years, I want to say thank you for taking the time to read this; I hope it helps you develop great relationships with your own Asperger’s students. 

Enjoying the View of a New Year

So it's about that time when those earnest New Year's resolutions start dropping like flies, we're all just getting the hang of writing "2013" on our checks, and regular life is taking over from where the holidays dropped us off. I can't say that I really made any specific resolutions this year; at age forty, I know all of the things that I should do (exercise more often, drink more water and less alcohol, write in months other than November [speaking of which, I made my word count in NaNoWriMo, thanks for asking!], read more good books, be less cranky, etc.) and I also know at times this year I will do well in some of those areas and poorly in others. The best I can do is try to make good choices when I can, one decision at a time.

What I found myself thinking, though, was how much better I felt at the start of this year than at the start of 2012. When 2012 dawned, I was still neck-deep in a series of commitments that I had started with enthusiasm in previous years but which taken together were overwhelming me. I knew an end was in sight, but it was many months away. In the meantime I was waking up with panic attacks nearly every day and spending much of my time being irritable and distracted. (Okay, much MORE of my time. I'm not exactly Ms. Warm and Fuzzy most of the time, but when your family starts to treat you as if you're going to go off at any moment like a carelessly handled tube of nitroglycerin, you know you have a problem.) I like being busy, accomplishing things, being responsible, and making a difference, but I had overextended myself so far that my life had become a to-do list, and I barely felt like I was staying one step ahead of what I needed to do.

This year, many of those commitments had been handed off months before. Admittedly, I woke up with a panic attack on December 26th thinking about all the undone tasks related to Son #1's rapidly approaching bar mitzvah, but it has been several months since a panic attack was my regular alarm clock. I've taken up some regular exercise (well, semi-regular over the holidays while the kids were home), given up Diet Coke, and revived this blog, which I had started the summer of 2011 in a burst of what I thought was optimism but which was actually desperation. I curbed my volunteerism at school somewhat, choosing tasks where I can help but where I don't have to call the shots. I've made some progress at getting the house in order, though admittedly a lot less than I had hoped to. I'm not exactly where I want to be yet (maybe not even in the same time zone), but I feel like the road I'm on is taking me there for a change.

It's nice to start a new year feeling happy about the steps I've made in the right direction instead of dwelling on the multiple areas in which I have failed. It almost gives me hope that this will be the year I find the floor of my garage, get rid of every unnecessary piece of paper in the house, succeed in getting my boys to put their dirty socks in the hamper every single time...and win the lottery. Okay, maybe not. But at least I'm starting this year in the sure knowledge that the light at the end of the tunnel I was stuck in at the start of 2012 was not, thankfully, an oncoming train. Here's hoping that your 2013 is full of positive potential too.

Happy for the Holidays

So this year I didn't get ornaments on the Christmas tree until yesterday. That's right. Oh, the tree had been up for a couple of weeks, but first we had to let the not-really-a-kitten-but-still-acts-like-one get her ya-yas out by trying to climb the thing a few times, and then wrap up the last week of school and school parties and baking and gifts for teachers and random things like a long-overdue toilet repair and excavating Son #1's room and...

 Our cat wishes she could do this.

Is it any wonder that people hate the holidays? I saw the first encroaching signs of the approaching holidays when the back wall of the seasonal section of our local Target filled up with Christmas lights a week before Halloween. I admit it made me cranky, because instead of a wall of lights I saw a long unspooling to-do list, full of Hanukkah parties and Christmas events (yes, our family celebrates both). I saw high expectations and disappointed hopes in my future, because those things always seem to go hand in hand. The pressure to make things magical for the holidays, especially when you have kids, seems overwhelming. But life doesn't stop for you to suddenly become Betty Crocker and churn out twelve dozen perfectly decorated sugar cookies to give to the neighbors, or to spend hours untangling strings of lights to find enough that work to decorate the tree. Hell, for me it's an accomplishment to have enough Hanukkah candles in the house.

This year a couple we're friends with stopped by and dropped off a container of cookies, along with their holiday card. I experienced a moment of panic, even as I smiled, thanked the husband, and waved to the wife, who was sitting in their car at the curb. I hadn't thought of baking for any of our friends, even though a week previously I had made roughly five squintillion sugar cookies and pizzelles for Son #2 and Son #3's holiday class parties, to give to the school office, and to send to Son #1's teachers. I mentally started calculating the time it would take to make some more sugar cookie dough, and whether or not I had enough colored sugar to decorate another several dozen cookies, and then...I let it go. This is not going to be the year that I am the Woman Who Does Everything More Beautifully Than You (and who likes that b*tch anyway?). Next year probably won't be it either.

There are no lights on the outside of our house. I haven't sent out our cards yet because they are New Year's cards (much easier than sending Hanukkah cards to some family and Christmas cards to the rest), and the best present we got from my husband's family was the moratorium on gifts between adults. Last year I spent the Saturday before Christmas in the mall, in a weird mental zen state of completely embracing the suck, knowing that I was elbowing my way through crowds to shop (two of my least favorite things combined, yay) because I had not managed to get it together to complete my shopping earlier online. This year the patron saint of our holidays has been Amazon.com. And my husband and I severely restricted our budgets for each other's gifts in favor of the much more practical gift of finally having our living room and dining room painted (a task that will take place AFTER the holidays are a memory).

I don't think the kids will notice that there are no elves on our shelves. We didn't spend three hours in stop-and-go traffic to drive past someone else's Christmas lights, and we didn't stand in a line of grumpy adults and fidgety children so that they could tell a man in costume their wish list. Sorry if that seems "bah humbug"y, but I look back at my own childhood and these things don't stand out to me. Tellingly, my kids haven't asked to do either. Maybe they are wise enough to know that either outing would come with a heaping helping of cranky mama.

This would be me after two hours in line.

The boys seem plenty happy with the endless supply of cookies and the lazy days of winter break when they can be in pajamas an hour past when they would normally be in school. Son #2 will spend this evening, I know, glued to the Santa Tracker app on my iPhone, and Son #1 will probably be the lone voice of reason among the boys as we alternately threaten and cajole them into bed at a halfway decent hour. (The tradition at my parents' house is that no presents whatsoever are put under the tree until after the kids are in bed, which means that we adults have a vested interest in getting them to bed so we don't have to stay up until two a.m. ourselves.)

This year I'm listening to that voice of reason myself. The breakable ornaments are staying put away for their own good, to survive to a year when adolescent feline curiosity has ebbed. The hours I spent coaching Son #1 to recycle most of the mountain of papers covering his desk were much better spent than if I had taken that time putting out myriad holiday decorations that would just have to be taken down again. Tonight I will enjoy a glass of wine with my family, and tomorrow I will enjoy being pried out of bed by my boys, who will not have any idea how I can possibly still be asleep when there are presents under the tree at Grandma and Granddad's! (Okay, maybe enjoy is a strong word on that last one, but I'll be good to go once you get some coffee in me.)

I hope that you have spent your holiday season doing what brings you and your loved ones joy. I hope that you have let go of unrealistic expectations for making the season perfect and that instead you can enjoy what is put before you. (I, for one, am looking forward to another exciting edition of "Seriously, People Really Think That's Okay to Wear to Church on Christmas Eve?" later today.) Laughter, hugs, family, friends, love, good food...and gratitude for everything I have. There. I'm happy already and I haven't opened a single present.

Happy holidays to everyone.

Life Gets in the Way: NaNoWriMo Edition

[Before I get started on the subject of this post, I just want to say a big thank you to the voters of California. For those of you who read my last post, you know I was somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of Prop 30 passing, and feeling a bit worn down after years of cuts to K-12 education in this state. So thank you. I know that we're not nearly out of the woods yet, but I finally have hope that the hard road ahead will lead upwards.]

November is a terrible month in which to write a novel. I know this, because I have done it now three times, and am working on the fourth, and every year I curse the timing. Surely, there must be a better month. One where the kids are in school more (24-7?). One where I am not cleaning up after Halloween and ostensibly planning for the holidays. One that features vistas of spare time just waiting to be filled up with brilliant writing sessions where I effortlessly craft reams upon reams of deathless prose.

If you're wondering, this is what people like me do with their Novembers.

Yeah, right.

I first got introduced to the madness that is National Novel Writing Month by my dear friend and college roommate, who not only participates every year but has her middle school students do the Young Writers Program. The idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month, no excuses, no inner editor, just the pure fun of writing at top speed. I watched with envy and awe as she blogged about it in 2008. I was an English Writing major in college, and in the many years between my graduation and that date, had managed to confine my writing skills to business use, grocery lists, PTA fundraising appeals, and the like. She encouraged me to try it myself, so in 2009 I did.

I had forgotten how much fun writing could be. Make no mistake about it, when you're trying to stick to writing 1,667 words a day (approximately 6 or so pages), you're not anywhere in the neighborhood of crafting deathless prose. If you're like me, you've gone into the month with something that looks like an idea, maybe a reasonably well-formed first scene and a few incidents that you know happen somewhere in the middle to drive that shapeless, amoeba-like plot in a vaguely forward direction. But after you've exhausted that meager reserve, you're making it up as you go along, inventing characters, settings, and scenarios on the fly.

In order to have even a prayer of finishing on time, you have to accept that your writing may be bad. Really bad. That later you will look back through scenes you wrote and hope that there's a pony in there somewhere among all the horseshit. On the upside, you will also surprise yourself with bits of clever writing that seems to come out of nowhere, because your brain will spit them out before your internal censors have a chance to shut them down. If you're lucky, you will also have a family that quietly leaves you alone when it finds you giggling over your computer at a phrase or scene of your own that you particularly enjoy.

Save a full rereading for December. Trust me.

That first novel (first draft of a first novel, really) was exceedingly lousy. For that matter, so were novels two and three. But I had fun writing them.

Yes, November is a terrible month to write a novel in. That first November, my husband went out of the country for a week and got go-directly-to-the-hospital-do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200-grade food poisoning, two of the kids got swine flu, the computer died, and all sorts of other hell broke loose. I still dragged myself across the 50,000-word finish line on time. I learned three very important things that year:

• If your novel is feeling really flat and you hate it, try killing off a character or two to get things rolling. You can always borrow the Traveling Shovel of Death.
• Back up your novel. It's not fun to spend five days with your computer in the shop, wondering if you're ever going to see the first 11,000 words of your crappy novel again.
• I can write 50,000 words in a month, even when my life is turning into a domestic disaster movie/farce.

This year I am the furthest behind I have ever been in my word count at this point (I should be at 18,337 and I'm only at about 13,300). My obstacles have included, but are not limited to, hours of following the presidential election, particularly onerous chauffeur duty (soccer practice, rehearsals, therapy appointments, more soccer practice, lather, rinse, repeat), school meetings and more school meetings, and knitting. (Note to self: the next time you think four pregnant friends need cute little items for their babies, plan ahead. Start early, like right after they pee on the pregnancy test. My right shoulder may never be the same.) This doesn't even get into the more routine domestic duties that can make it seem easier to put off writing until tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm bored to tears by my novel and haven't the slightest clue how I am going to eke another 37,000 words out of this story. But since I'll be damned if this is the year I break my perfect streak of finishing NaNoWriMo, I'll keep writing. If I have to throw in an alien abduction, I will.

The truth is, November is a terrible month to write a novel in, but so are all the others. There is no time when life will politely step out of the way and let you write a novel, or start whatever creative endeavor you think you're going to get to "one day" when things settle down. So if I don't return your phone call right away this month...if I don't get to the laundry right away, or the dishes...if I seem distracted and have an odd glint in my eye as if I'm sizing up what's going around me for possible insertion in the World's Worst Novel...I promise I'll be back next month.

I also promise I won't make you read my novel. At least until after the first edit.

What I've Been Doing

[My apologies in advance. My neighbor asked if I had any new blog posts up, since she hadn't seen one in a while. She hadn't missed one; the thoughts in this post have just been percolating for some time. I'm sharing even though I'm not sure this will be of interest or concern to everyone. I'll try to have something a little lighter-hearted next time.]

I've been a volunteer at my kids' elementary school for a long time. Though I made several mostly joking references last year to chucking my notebook at the first person who even hinted that they would take over as booster club president and then running far, far away, the truth is that I always knew that I would still be devoting a chunk of my time to helping at the school this year, in some capacity or another.

I started out innocently enough, back when Son #1 was in first grade, and I attended the first PTA meeting of the year, hugely pregnant with Son #3 and with one complaint on my mind. The previous year our school had started their first-ever appeal for direct donations, and the letter had stated that if you donated more than a certain amount, you would get a receipt for tax purposes. We had donated, and had never gotten our receipt. After the meeting I talked to the PTA president, mentioned to her my opinion that it made our organization look bad to not follow through on promises like that, and offered to send the thank-you letters in question if she had the information from the previous year.

I ended up not just sending those letters, but running that particular campaign for a few more years. I volunteered on the Box Tops for Education committee. I sent in recycled ink cartridges for the school for cash. I collected bottles and cans for my kids' classrooms to help pay for extra field trips and whatnot. (And yes, it felt like I spent an inordinate time either collecting or picking through items other people consider trash during this period. I have little pride when it comes to getting money for the school.) I served as the PTA's financial secretary for several years around the same time, counting up stacks of the grubbiest one-dollar-bills ever as I verified the totals for weekly pizza and popsicle sales prior to depositing the money in the bank. Our school started an annual festival to raise more desperately-needed money for enrichment programs, and I volunteered there, too.

This is me as a volunteer, only more glamorous.

Then Sons #1 and 2 got into the magnet at our school, which is on the same campus as the regular elementary school (the "home" school). Though I had shed a few minor duties, in addition to most of the above, I started helping with the booster club. The next year I took over as booster club president (giving up both the financial secretary post and the annual support fund chair to two separate, sane people); I had already become a festival co-chair the year before. I won't bore you with further details, but I've joked over the years about indentured servitude, and various people at the school have opined that I actually sleep in the nurse's office and that the festival storage shed is my office.

This year I may have retreated a bit from the fundraising strategizing, but I'm still around, volunteering in the  school office one morning and Son #3's classroom another morning. What I'm seeing, and what I've seen through all the years of trying to figure out every way possible to bring money into my kids' school, is a big reason why I had to take a step back.

Every year that my kids have been in school, our budget has taken a hit. The support fund was started because the school was losing funding. As our state budget woes have gone from bad to worse over the years, more funds have been whacked. Once we had math and literacy coaches to help struggling students--those went a while ago. We went from two librarians to one, to one half-time, to none. Our magnet coordinator has been half time for a few years. We lost our assistant principal altogether. Our assistant principal EIS (for special education) is now half time, splitting her time between two schools, with no chance to get to know the students for whom she administers IEPs. Our class sizes have gone up. And none of this even begins to hint at the turmoil that has been created by years of pink slips going out in the spring, to be rescinded later (or not). Teachers have retired as much to get out before things get worse as because they have genuinely reached the end of their career, and good teachers with just not quite enough experience have been forced out by layoffs. District office cuts have forced a reshuffling of administrators, meaning that on top of all our other losses, we've had a rapid turnover of principals over the last few years. We've lost days of instruction to furloughs.

As a parent, it is demoralizing to work hard all year to raise the money to give our kids weekly (!) P.E. lessons, a little art, a science lab, whatever, and then have the district whack another chunk out of the budget. I got exhausted trying to keep up morale (mine and others'), touting the importance of participating in the latest fundraiser to try to preserve the program of enrichment we already have when it began to feel like so much rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic. Yes, we have made things better, kept our school going and even reached for things we didn't have before in the midst of a steadily deepening budget crisis in our state, and I don't regret the time I have spent helping those efforts. But each year it has gotten harder to get up the energy to do it all over again when time and again we've gotten the legs cut out from under us by circumstances we don't have the power to change. My admiration for our teachers and staff and my fellow parents has grown as each year, despite the challenges, we all get up and do it all again, but each time with fewer resources and more demands.

The sensible response to having your fate in the hands of California's voters.

The problems with my sons' schools stem from California's budget and governmental woes, and those aren't going to be solved any time soon. In the meantime, we're looking at another round of cuts, mid-year this time, if Proposition 30 on the ballot doesn't pass, with more cuts to come in the years to come. A competing measure, Proposition 38, wouldn't automatically stop the cuts this year, but it would generate revenue for next year and the years beyond. We're beyond the point of cutting fat from the schools, well beyond the point of trimming dubious programs. If we want to get something from our educational system (by the crudest measure, higher test scores, and by a more sensible measure, an educated populace), we have to pay for it. There is no getting something for nothing.

I'm not feeling good about the citizens of this state having the backs of our students. It's easy to rail about higher taxes and grumble about how the state government is spending the money it already has, no matter how modest the increase proposed (to put Prop 30's terms in perspective, a quarter-cent sales tax increase is the equivalent of one penny for every four dollars you spend, and I don't think I know anyone personally who makes the requisite income--$250,000 annually as an individual or $500,000 as a couple--to even see the income tax increase). Most of the people casting a ballot don't have a child in school. From the outside, the schools probably look the same to them, maybe just a little dirtier because of all the cuts to our custodial staff, and a little shabbier due to the cuts to maintenance. Or maybe not, if the custodians work as hard as the ones at our school do.

We've reached the end of where personal efforts can make up for lack of resources, though. Too many years of being in crisis mode have burned out teachers, staff, and parents, and those brave faces are looking a little strained. It's time to stop pretending that we can get educational results at the top of national ranks when our per-pupil spending, teacher to student ratio, and a host of other measures are at the bottom of national averages. Nobody expects to get a Mercedes on a Kia budget when they are car shopping; can we please stop pretending that it is possible when we're talking about public education? California public schools need the voters of California to help us; we need to have the funds to keep going.

On November 7th, the day after the election, is my weekly volunteer day in Son #3's classroom. I'll still be there no matter what the outcome.

Oh, but by the way, I'm not above doing this, either.