A Child of Divorce

MPR is running a four-part series called Divorced Kid: Stories from the 1970s Divorce Revolution. According to the documentary, 1979 was the year that saw the divorce rate reach a historic peak. A decade earlier, in 1969, California  had passed a law allowing no-fault divorce, which meant that people could get divorced without having to prove the other party had seriously wronged them in some way. Other states soon adopted the same law and divorce rates rose throughout the ’70s because of it.

During the first part of the series, Sasha Aslanian, the host of the series, talks about the movie Kramer vs. Kramer and how ground-breaking the movie was for its time. The author of the novel the movie was based on, Avery Corman, was a child of divorce and he discussed how the divorce was a family secret. He simply didn’t talk about it. Neither did other children of 1970s divorces.

I was one of those kids. My parents divorced when I was 11, which was in the late ’70s. Listening to the MPR series, I was surprised to find that our family was within the peak of the divorce movement. It certainly didn’t feel that way to me at the time. Living in a small town, it felt like our family was rare for having gone through a divorce. Like the other children of divorce from the series, we didn’t talk about it.

I felt like a pariah, in no small part because the parents of the large Catholic family across the alley from us forbade us from playing with their children after the divorce. Apparently, we were now unclean.

I remember the specific day of the divorce, not for its date, which I don’t remember, but for my feeling of abandonment. Our parents, at least one of them, were supposed to retrieve us from school that day. It was a sunny day, so no pathetic fallacy going on there, but we waited and waited and waited in front of the school. Soon, no one was left at the school and still we waited. Eventually, someone retrieved us. I don’t remember who. All I remember was the waiting and the sense that we had been forgotten in our parents’ drama.

Before my parents separated, we knew that something was amiss because of all the arguing. My sister and I shared a bedroom upstairs, above the den, which is where at least some of the arguments took place. We were sent to bed by 8 or 9 p.m. at that time – while it was still light out in the summer. The daylight and the arguing conspired to keep us awake. On at least one occasion, I rallied my sister and brothers, who shared the other upstairs bedroom, and we went downstairs to try to stop our parents from arguing. I have no idea what they thought of us, but obviously our intervention didn’t work.

My mom told us they were getting divorced in advance of the actual court day and she prepared us for taking over the household chores when she was gone. She showed us how to do laundry. Each of us was assigned certain recipes from her repetoire of family meals. We were taught how to properly do the dishes and clean the house. It was indicated to me that as the oldest daughter, I’d have to take charge of much of this, and I do remember being the one who was left with the dishes and the cooking most often. (Perhaps my siblings remember this differently.)

What was highly unusual about our parents’ divorce for the time was that my dad got custody of us. Most of the time, the mother got custody and the father dealt with the child support payments. We stayed in the house with Dad and Mom moved into an apartment. There didn’t seem to be any sort of visitation agreement. We just biked or walked over to Mom’s to see her whenever we felt like it. For stretches of time, we might visit every day.

The MPR series dredges up all kinds of memories about the divorce and what life was like after the divorce.  (Sasha mentions that bringing up divorce among children of divorce produces raw feelings. Yep. It does.) It was a pivotal point in my life, where family life was ducky before and had many moments of lousiness afterwards. Mind you, it wasn’t all lousy because we did reach a certain equlibrium following the divorce, but the family cohesiveness was gone.

Looking back, I think that the biggest reason for my parents’ divorce was a lack of proper communication between the two of them. My dad was and remains a fairly non-communicative person. My mom needed more communication in general and, specifically, more assurances about her value as a person. If they’d had Dr. Phil or Oprah at the time, perhaps they could’ve figured this out.

While many children of divorce grow to become adults who get divorced, I was determined not to add to this statistic. I’m not sure when this became a conscious decision on my part, but I knew that when I got married, it was going to be for life. After two decades of wedded bliss, Hubby and I are well on our way to this goal. (And we’re going to be living a looooooong time, so we’ll have many more decades together. Because I said so.)

Interview Conundrum

I was interviewed about Greenville this morning by a reporter for the local paper. I was nervous, as I typically am when interviewed, but not horribly so. The reporter asked how I would describe the book and I mentioned that it’s a series of linked short stories, a.k.a. a short story cycle, and tried to explain how they were linked.

The reporter asked several questions related to what the book was about. She was attempting to encapsulate the book so as to interest people in reading it. Trouble is, my book has been difficult for me to encapsulate. It doesn’t fit neatly into any genre. It’s not a romance or a mystery. It’s closest to literary fiction, but not really serious enough for that category, yet it’s not funny enough to be categorized as humor. I’m stumped.

So, then, a question for those of you who have read Greenville. How would you describe it in a sentence or two?

Acres of Acorns

We have oak trees in our yard. And when I say oak trees, I mean A LOT of oak trees. There is always something falling off of them, whether leaves or acorns, bark or limbs. (Yeah, that limb dropping thing? Not so fun when one hits the car.) Right now, as we speak (or, rather, as I write and you read, unless you’re reading this far into the future), it’s acorn dropping season. They’re clunking down on the roof of the house, the roof of the car, into the yard and onto the sidewalk.

See:

Acorns on the sidewalk

Take it from me, these babies are no fun to walk on. Every time one rolls around underfoot, I feel like I’m going to break an ankle, and that’s no lie. Yesterday, I swept the sidewalk clean of Nature’s marbles before packing the car with recyclables. They kept falling – some even fell into the trunk of the car – as I made trips back and forth to the house. It didn’t take long for them to be all over the sidewalk again.

In the afternoon, I finished mowing the lawn after Hubby did the rounds in the back yard. The lawn was lumpy with acorns and I wondered where all the squirrels were. Why weren’t they gorging themselves on the feast that was presenting itself so readily? Fuzzy little ingrates. They’ll regret not taking advantage of this bounty come wintertime.

My mom said something about the acorns falling early this year and how this will mean an early winter.  According to this discussion on New Jersey Hunter, this appears to be just the right time for acorns to be dropping.

As I was rooting around for lore on acorn-falling season, I found Interesting Facts About Oak Trees, an article that discusses the numbers of acorns oak trees produce at particular ages. Judging by the numbers of acorns in our yard this year, it must be both a good year and our trees must be in the sweet spot of acorn-producing age.

Applying Basic Science to Zombies

Young Son is full of great thoughts lately. Tonight, while we were in the car returning from a short trip, he asked, “Why doesn’t anyone use science to deal with zombies.?” We asked him to elaborate. His thoughts on the subject: If a zombie is buried at the traditional grave depth, if he started digging to get out, he wouldn’t make it because the dirt he was clawing through would keep filling the hole. Rigor mortis would also be an issue. Assuming a zombie is coming back from true death, rigor mortis would have already set in and the zombie’s arms and legs would be frozen into position.

Young Son was also curious as to why zombies always go for human brains. Why brains, as opposed to some other body part? Why don’t scientists (at least the ones in movies) study this? My conjecture on this latter thought is that perhaps the scientists in the movies are too busy trying to get away from the zombies to stop and figure out why they have a predilection for brains.

FtTP: Make a Wish + Health Care Reform

Young Son just had a brilliant idea. He said that a terminally ill child should ask for health care reform from the Make a Wish Foundation. How could politicians turn down the Make a Wish Foundation? They’d have to come up with a solution. After all, it’d be for a child.

The Old Workhorse Iron

This morning I had to do a little ironing before I got dressed for work. I’ve been putting it off, but could do so no longer. (I do like to iron, but sometimes the rest of life gets in the way.)

I took out the ironing board, plugged in the iron, and hit the on switch. It didn’t stay on. I hit it again and held it. It didn’t stay on. I tried plugging it into a different outlet, hit the on switch again. No dice. It wasn’t going to stay on. The iron, a Black & Decker Steamxpress, has an automatic switch that shuts the thing off if it’s been sitting for too long. Nice feature, until now. Apparently the switch is broken, so the iron is now unusable. Shucks. It’s not that old an iron, either.

Black & Decker Steamxpress Iron with broken switch. I love the roll-up cord feature and light weight of this iron.

I still needed to do my ironing, so I dug out the Old Workhorse Iron I think I found in the house when we moved in. This baby is so old, it has a cloth-covered cord. It’s a Toastmaster; it’s really heavy; and apparently nothing can kill it. Normally I use it to iron wax paper together to use for tracing patterns. Today, it was used for proper ironing and it worked splendidly, of course. The Old Workhorse Iron will probably outlast the next 4 irons I purchase.

The Old Workhorse Iron - a Toastmaster. It's so old, it doesn't even have a cutesy model name. Note the cloth-covered cord.

Stinky House

Over the weekend, we moved Eldest Son off to college. When we returned, a stinky stink was wafting through the house. Could it have been the shrimp tails residing in the garbage can since our Friday night meal of shrimp alfredo? Yep. That was part of it. I took out the garbage.

But still the stinky stink remained. Could it be the dirty dishes we left soaking in the sink? Yep. Whenever we will be away for more than a day, I like to wash the dishes before we go. Part of the reason is that I hate to come home to mounds of dirty dishes because travel is exhausting and dirty dishes represent work. The other reason I hate to leave them is because of the stinky stink they produce.

Windows opened …

Garbage removed …

Dishes washed …

Stinky stink gone.

Twitter Caught On

The last few days, I’ve had a number of strange followers show up on my Twitter account. Twitter sends me an email every time there is a new follower and I always check out the profile in case the new follower is someone I want to follow back.

The strange followers, however, were coming hot and heavy in more ways than one. The emails would give me what appeared to be a normal female name, nothing with numbers in it, which tends to be a dead giveaway for spam, but next to the name, the same name would repeat within parentheses, but have a random letter in the space between the names. This was very consistent, so this must have been a way for these particular accounts to fly under Twitter’s radar for a few days.

When I clicked the link to the supposed new follower, I’d be taken to her (all female names, mind you) Twitter page, where I’d find one tweet and a very strange avatar photo. The tweet would be a salacious invitation to text the gal. The avatar photo, when clicked upon, would reveal more info to text or contact the woman, plus a nude picture of said woman. Oh, yeah. Twitter porn. How nice.

I got a couple of these followers two days ago and nine of them yesterday. I blocked every one of them. I don’t blocked any old follower, but if I suspect accounts of being spammy, or violating Twitter’s terms of service, I don’t hesitate to use the blocking feature. When enough Twitterers block a suspicious Twitterer, Twitter gets the message and looks into the account.

Well, Twitter seemed to get the message right quick on these accounts because I got nine more of them today, but every one of them had already had their accounts suspended. Yay for the Twitter Foul Owl! “Mosey along now, nothing to see here.”

A Gift for Gift Baskets

For my Greenville book launch party, my sister-in-law surprised me with a lovely gift basket. My sister-in-law has a real gift for putting together gift baskets. She’s generous, creative, fun and really knows how to play off a theme. Here’s the gift basket she gave me:

The gift basket my sister-in-law assembled for Greenville.

Are you seeing the theme?

Do you also notice that the cereal (Apple Jacks, for the record) is exposed? It even has milk on it, which you can’t really see in the pic. See, I had just gotten up and was hungry, so I opened up the Apple Jacks, poured the milk, and started admiring the basket. That’s when I realized I hadn’t taken a picture of the whole ensemble. Before taking a bite of the cereal, I plopped it back into the basket and snapped a couple of photos.

Again for the record, the Mike & Ikes have been the family hit. Before opening the box, I had requests from Daughter and Young Son to hand over the whole box. As if!

Can’t wait to try the Ghirardelli chocolate.

Dot. Dot. Not a Lot.

This past weekend, Daughter asked me to design a birthday card for a friend. As I was drawing, she was gluing a couple of smallish pieces of heavy scrapbook paper together.

When the glue dried, she didn’t like the result – all bubbly and curved – and she expressed her displeasure.

I picked up two new pieces of the scrapbook paper and glued one to the other. She looked at the non-bubbly result and said, “How did you do that?”

I replied by saying I had used small dots of glue around the perimeter of one of the pieces of paper. Eldest Son, upon hearing this said, “Yeah, don’t you remember? It’s dot, dot, not a lot.”

I asked where he’d learned this rhyming bit of wisdom. He said, “In kindergarten.”

Our children have learned way cooler mnemonic devices than we did while in school.

Where the Streets Have 2 Names

Hubby and I went for a motorcycle ride tonight. Beautiful evening for it – clear, sunny, but a little cool, so the leathers and helmet were comfortable. We took back country rodes, which are always fun for the scenery, but not so much fun from the manure smell aspect. Must be the season for it because we went through several areas featuring the fragrance of animal waste.

As we drive along roads I’m not familiar with, one thing I do is try to keep track of what road we’re on and which compass direction we’re going. I have a macabre reason for doing this. If we crash and I can get to the cellphone in the saddlebag, I’ll be able to tell emergency responders where we are located. Provided I’m not unconscious, of course. The troublesome part of this, however, is that most of our country roads have at least two names. There’s the highway road number, be it state or county, plus a street name based on the 911 system that was put into place quite some years ago. There are some roads that even have three names. I’m assuming that any one of these will do in an emergency. At least I hope so.

Book Launch Party

This past Saturday, my good friend Jody hosted a book launch party for me in honor of my book “Greenville.” We had scads of food, good company, and Little Jack Dog for entertainment. Jody gave me a lovely introduction, describing my book as whimsical, which is exactly the same word Hubby uses when he describes my art work. After the intro, I explained the inspiration for the book and its structure (a series of linked short stories), plus why I had published three different editions. Then, I read part of the story called “Miss Fortune.” After the reading, I gave a copy of the Sharing Edition to each household worth of attendees. (Hope that makes sense.)

One of the people in attendance is from my area writers group and it turns out that he has recently self-published his own book, so we traded. His book is called “Mayhem and Mischief Most Foul” (LOVE that title!) and, like me, he did all of the writing (of course!), layout and cover design. His book is a mystery.

In talking to him about the process of self-publishing, I came to a couple of conclusions. As book publishing is transformed by the internet and more authors decide to self-publish, perhaps those of us who’ve done it could help others out with the process. We could do this through our local writers groups. The other thing we could do is help with promotion because exclusively self-promoting can come across as self-serving (which it is), but when it comes to the book-buying public, it helps to have those who are not the author recommend the author’s book.

Another thing I’ve come to realize is that there is no easy mechanism through many print-on-demand internet publishing services for offering books in independent bookstores. One issue is pricing. My cost for having one copy of “Greenville” printed is about $13.00. Cafe Press allows me to set a retail price, which is $19.95. What is needed is a price in between for bookstores, a price that allows both the author and the bookstore to make money.

Now that I’ve gotten those thoughts out of the way, I promised yesterday that I’d have pictures today, and I do.

Me, posing for a book-signing picture.

The beautiful, and unexpected, bouquet Jody gave me.

The flower vase, which looks like glass, but is really more of a plastic box.

The tomato rose Hubby made to decorate the cheese platter. Isn't it pretty?

Little Jack Dog, who wouldn't display his grovelling skills during the party, but suddenly remembered them after everyone had left.