Barefoot in the Garden of Good and Evil

It's Thelma, y'all.

Difficult childhoods are often the point of departure (to god only knows where) for creative writers. I have a friend, for example, a prize-winning author of literary fiction, whom I've known since high school. Aside from being a bright, friendly, genuine guy learning his chops in AP English, he also possessed a wildly unfortunate home life. Not until years later, at a class reunion, did I learn that his mother had been married eleven times -- twice to the same man, his biological father. There were other classmates among us, now gone on to their own careers as musicians, songwriters or whatever, who won leadership awards at school and ran interference between their philandering parents at home. You might conclude that a crummy home life is actually a great training ground for creativity and fantasy. While all those other kids are happily eating their after-school snacks and consulting Dad on their science projects, the not-so-happy kids are in their rooms, or up a tree in the back yard, maybe, waiting for the domestic dust to settle and praying somebody might drop by to break up the tension. Those kids are wishing really hard they were someplace else, and they're highly motivated to imagine it in delicious detail. All that vigilance and detail-noticing pays off, too, because it sticks around as potent memory. You can conjure up a scene like it happened yesterday, if you want to. Or make it up entirely and still make it convincingly real.

Then there were the kinds of difficulties, the Level II Problems, let's call them, that arose from inhabiting that fantasy world without the proper gear. Like shoes.

My brother and sister and I were feral kids. We lived in a house too small to stay cooped up in, so we spent most of our leisure time outside in the yard, or in someone else's yard. Every yard was a different fantasy zone, and our own morphed daily into whatever vessel it needed to be. It had a ditch near the street which doubled as a castle moat, the Mississippi, and a frog kingdom. The back yard frequently had sheets hanging on the line, which divided it into a place where, as the John Prine song goes, we had "the key to escape reality." We lost complete track of time running those creative scams on ourselves. If it rained, we played in it. If it got dark it was time to go home, and if we were late my dad whistled for us like you'd summon livestock. Mostly we ran around barefooted because nobody bugged us to put on shoes. We'd start out every spring hopping around gingerly until we finally had our feet broken in in time for summer -- tough leathery soles like little dog paws. Then there was no stopping us.

But the difficulty with running around barefooted is the inevitable trauma to the feet. Stepping on thumbtacks and jacks around the house seemed like an everyday occurrence, at least until my mom finally stepped on a jack and took them all away from us. The outdoor injuries, though, were more epic and memorable. My sister, for one, suffered chronically from a parasite called pinworm. We were told they were caused by running around barefooted, or by playing with diseased cats, or by sloshing around in ditch water, all three of which we did regularly. They'd give her this bubblegum-pink medicine to take and the worms would clear up, but the following summer they'd be back. Strangely my little brother and I never caught them.

But we got our share of the pestilence. My brother's constant plague were these ingrown toenails. When he was still little enough to get his feet into his mouth, he developed a nervous habit of biting his toenails. He spent at least a third of his childhood in front of the TV with an ingrown big toenail and a basin of epsom salts. Mom would get the water screaming-like-Aerosmith hot and try to soak the infection out. Me:"Hey, what are you doing?" Him: "Soaking my toe and watching Electric Company." I'm not sure how old he was when the problem finally went away, but it persisted well beyond the point where he quit going barefoot. I think he finally had outpatient surgery during his freshman year of college. Maybe that cleared it up.

As for me, I'm convinced I nearly lost my leg one summer, in a freak barefoot incident that somehow went unnoticed by my parents. I was playing a hide-and-seek game, trying not to get caught, hauling ass through the back yard. It was a blazing hot day, and the grass was up over my ankles since it hadn't been mowed in a couple of weeks. Suddenly I felt something go "pop" under my foot. I stopped and looked back, and to my staggering horror it was a jar. One of those little jelly jars that pimiento cheese (my favorite) used to come in. Thick glass that a 45-pound slip of a girl couldn't break, but my guts told me it had probably shattered because of the heat. I guess it cut my foot a little, right in the center of the instep, but it didn't seem bad enough to take me out for the day so I'm sure I stuck a Band-aid on it and went about my business.

The problem was that it wouldn't heal. I complained about it some but kept thinking it was just a dumb little cut, and I'd seen way worse. Later, maybe a couple of weeks later, my dad noticed a red streak running up the back of my leg. At that point the Band-aid was stripped off and the wound examined. It looked like a red star, with rays heading out in every direction from an angry little pock in the center. Hot water was drawn. Epsom salt was applied. Drugs were probably ordered. It got better, but there's still a tiny star-shaped scar on the sole of my right foot. It's a little medal, you might say, from a leathery, scrappy childhood full of worthwhile difficulties.

Honey, I Smothered the Kids: A Case for an Uncompromised Life

So this week's NY Times Magazine is dubbed "the college issue," wherein different articles take a look at everything from the admissions process to how campus life and postmodern 'studenthood' have changed, to the encroachment of capitalism and competition on higher education at the expense of, well, higher education.

There's this one story about two or three kids applying to colleges, some needing full tuition to go at all, and some just hoping to clang the bell with their academic sledgehammers and get in to a good school. At any rate, college admission has become a full-time moonlighting gig for all of them, piled up on top of the day job of AP classes, perfect SAT scores, and oh yeah, working on that novel they started at Interlochen two summers ago. As you'd imagine, the climaxes are Olympic. The agony of rejection from Princeton; the thrill of a seemingly random Dartmouth victory when some other girl with better test scores gets turned away.

Quarterbacking the whole Herculean tournament is the hyperconscientious parent. The suppertime consultations start in 10th grade ("raise your hand once a day in that class, sweetie, so you can hit the teacher up next year for a recommendation") and give way to a veritable war room by the start of senior year. Dining-room tables disappear under stacks of file folders. Application sessions drag on until 3 a.m., with parents handling all of the project management from deadline reminders to daily task lists (like completing the nth application with time to spare before dawn to work on the prize-winning Halloween costume).

Sure, applying to college has become a morass. In the ugly struggle among schools to manipulate their rankings, a lot rides on trawling for more and more applicants to reject. Students are the dazed victims here, even as they covet campuses with flashy 'curb appeal' and concierge desks designed (and paid for with all that sky-high tuition) to attract them in the first place. It's hard to read about people killing themselves to play along with the seemingly impossible game. It's not unlike the insanity of finding and keeping decent health insurance. I'm always hoping the insanity will give way any second to full-scale consumer mutiny, and I'm in. Got my poison pen and canned goods ready.

Meanwhile, where are these parents finding all this time? As if the 24-hour suicide watch on toddlers weren't enough, parenting has now become a full-blown cottage industry with endless job assignments, the Parent/Agent/Manager/Scout/Publicist/Decorator/Life Coach. Grooming kids on the farm team to get to the show, coaching them on all the plays so they get a shot at a first-round draft pick. Then what?

And I'm not talking about the kids. They're going off to college to get on with their overachieving lives, or to overturn them maybe, and they'll either come out ahead or have their parents to blame if they tank. And what are these parents going to do with themselves? The big yucky question nobody wants to answer. I guess you could argue that some parents are fairly well-developed in the important personal and interpersonal ways, and that they'll snap back into their original selves once the kids are out of the house, and find something compelling to do. But what I see more of is a sort of self-abnegating focus on kids' lives as the most important element of the family, at the expense of vibrant marriages and, probably, happy kids. If there's a way they could turn all those acquired fussing skills into something marketable, though, I'm buying. At my stage of life now, with the stakes higher than ever, what I really want more than anything is a set of parents like that to help me out. But as a kid....there's at least five kinds of sick about your mother getting more upset than you do over your rejection letters. Or your parents doing all your strategizing for you while they also run the household, cart you around town and clean up after you. And you people out there ghost-writing those admissions essays, you know who you are. You're all busted.

Maybe I'm just jealous and resentful because I had the kind of parents who refused to sign up for the overparenting trap. They saddled us with housework, made us do our own lunch and laundry and figure out our own rides to theater practice and speech tournaments. If we weren't prepared at school or left our lunch at home, we took the hit and self-corrected pretty quickly. We made our own Halloween costumes out of posterboard and clothes we found in the attics of rent houses we lived in. My parents rarely interfered with Real Life on our behalf, which pretty much kept them out of our business too. With no one to take the fall we had to decide what kind of people we intended to be. In the meantime, they included us in who they were -- working parents who had their own dreams, friends, interests and problems, and who sometimes weren't available to us because of those. So with more deliberation than I give them credit for, they raised me to be independent, not comfortable. They taught us to manage by not doing it for us, and to my knowledge they suffered no guilt. Inadvertently maybe, they supplied us with enough deprivation to cultivate things in us like gratitude, respect, stamina and mindfulness. Oh, and creative problem solving. They taught us to survive; the achievement part was largely up to us, and though we didn't do as well as we might have with more "help," at least we knew the credit was entirely ours. I like to think the survival skills gave me the audacity to pursue an uncompromised life that interests me. It takes more guts, I confess, than I'd really planned on. Did we all turn out just perfectly and beautiful and Hollywood? God, no. But we've had an adventure. Everyone got a turn to shine. We all have interesting stories to tell. It was never dull.

So go ahead, slack off. Drink beer and play canasta once in a while and let your kids figure it out on their own. Sure they'll resent you later -- for having more fun than they did, not for micromanaging their time. Make those little rascals responsible for their own happiness. My parents were fond of a card game they called Three-Toed Jesus. Doesn't that sound like a party waiting to happen?

At Princeton they have some advice for concerned parents at freshman orientation. Don't call here, they warn, worrying about whether your children are doing OK or not. If they aren't smart enough to solve their own problems, they don't belong here.

Canasta, anyone?

Posted by Thelma, a frequent parent stunt double

Peter Terry, Mega Music Mogul

It's Thelma, and my friend is pissed off. Not Louise, some other friend.

We see each other about once a year, when he comes off the road and goes back into his studio to write his own songs. When he's got the time, we get together and co-write something. Sometimes the sessions go really well, we get into a nice productive zone and lyrics generally fall where they need to. Other times it's tougher, but we'll spitball something together, a couple of verses and maybe a chorus, then force ourselves to finish it later before we move on to something else.

We're both pissed, actually.

The first thing we do, usually, is catch up for half an hour or so, then make some coffee and get to work. Co-writing is like turning yourself into one of those squishy plants that sucks water out of thin air. You sit there with nothing and get something out of it. Don't ask me how it works. I really do not know. In general one of us tosses out a line as a starting point, then we improvise around it and make up what it means. He's better at it than I am, but I'm trying to give myself a chance to improve over time. Normally I don't write like that, at least not anything good, but I envy people who do. It seems so much easier than waiting around to be inspired and then being precious about your big fat great idea. Which I mostly do.

But anyway, we're pissed today. And we start talking about it.

I'm listening to my friend describe his life over the last several months. From the outside he seems just like every other talented musician with a covetable career: An astounding natural gift that he dedicates his energy and attention to, the respect and awe of his fellow players and fans, loads of fantastic career opportunities, diverse streams of income like ace-level recording session work, a publishing deal, and private-jet tours with bands you can't not have heard of. But on the inside he's twisting around in the wind just as baffled as I am about The Way Things Work. The Way Things Really Are in the Music Business. How Hard it Is to Be One of Those Artists Trying to Write Well.

He says that nothing is really about the songs any more, no matter what people say. We all want to vomit when we listen to mainstream country radio (well, I sort of like some of the songs, but I doubt if they'll be featured on the Country Gold Hour 35 years from now with Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard and Crystal Gayle). People in the industry wouldn't know a good song from the butts they chase at the after-parties. Blah, blah, blah. And it does seem like the game ramps up and changes every few years, and that artists have shorter and shorter windows for doing their best work before they slide into 5-minutes-ago obscurity, and it does seem like things happen to them psychologically, emotionally, that the rest of us can't really understand or imagine, no matter how good things seem to go. It WILL kill you, my friend informs me. It's only a matter of time. I can't decide which It he means --fame, or failure, or the partying, or the conceit of success, or the weird plight of artists in general, in which some fail appallingly upward and others languish in megatalented obscurity. Or the dealing-down, the weird inverse relationship between the quality of music and its ubiquity, the McMusic Business, you might say. Maybe all of it.

He says the same thing I've heard my producer friends say, after they've played at the major-label big money craps table until they can't stand it any more. "I just want to work on something that means something to me." I'm listening to all of this, and I'm realizing two things. Thing One: I'm relieved that it isn't just me, and his confessions make my general sense of alienation seem less of an aberration. Thing Two: Although I'm angry, it doesn't consume me any more like it used to. And I think my friend's going to do OK, too. His self-awareness is going to keep him out of the jaws of hell, the ones that clamp down on you periodically so that your wounds never heal. I suppose you could say that our sensitivity makes us vulnerable to such things in the first place, unlike less reflective types. Statisticians and claims agents, maybe. I think it's more a matter of how bad things have to get before you order yourself to acquire perspective. Hard-won perspective that demands just as much energy and attention as your art. It becomes your art. Because you can't give in. You do whatever it takes to heal. And you keep writing. Not everyone makes it out. And my friend is right -- It, whatever It is, will kill you if you don't.

So we wrote this song about how impossible it is to dodge all those bullets like Indiana Jones. And how hard it is to care about the here and now when you're strung out on tomorrow and yesterday and getting the crap kicked out of you. It's not finished yet, but I think it'll be good.

Peter Terry and the wounds that never heal

Louise again.

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine whose mother was murdered in 1985. Someone attacked her while he was sleeping. In the same house. He woke up on the day before his 17th birthday to find his mom lying unconscious, severely beaten, in the room down the hall from his bedroom. She lingered for two weeks and then died on Halloween.

The police called him the other day and let him know they're re-opening the case. This happens from time to time. It doesn't mean they have any new information. It's just part of the procedure, he said, so that cold cases don't ever freeze over entirely. They'll ask him all the questions they asked him the first time. They'll want to know what he saw. What he smelled. What he heard. Who she knew. He wanted to talk to me about what he might do to prepare himself for the emotional and spiritual beating he's about to experience, as he slams headfirst into the details of a trauma most of us could never imagine enduring. What is there to say? We talked for a while, but really, there's a despair about something like this that can't be fanned away. All I could do was give him some shrink advice and let him know I cared about him and would be rooting for him, praying for him, and would be unflagging in my devotion as his friend. Then I hung up the phone and cried.

During the course of writing my books, I've become friends with several Dallas homicide detectives. The DPD homicide squad's motto is "We never forget." And they don't. I know this because I know them and because I have the mug. They stay mad about these murders - especially the ones involving "innocent" victims. The ones who were in the wrong place at the wrong time - as opposed to someone who was choosing to engage in a high risk activity, like exchanging gunfire with a drug dealer, for example. Or robbing 7-11's. There is a distinction. Not in the value of the life of the victim, of course, or in the necessity for justice in each case. Or in the amount of work, energy and intention the detectives give each case. The difference is in the level of outrage that rises up in you on behalf of the victim. (The official designation for the victim in a murder investigation is the complainant. Which I always thought was sort of macabre, since the victim can no longer complain about anything.)

There was a murder in Dallas last December that my homicide friends worked. A 50ish woman is leaving her office building on Greenville Avenue at the end of the work day. A man follows her off the elevator and through the lobby. You can tell by his demeanor and his clothing that he doesn't work in the building and shouldn't be there. As she nears the door to the parking lot, he reaches into his pocket and takes out a gun. She steps through the door into the cold night air. You can see Christmas decorations in the background. As she begins to turn to look behind her, perhaps realizing that someone is behind her, he jacks a bullet into the chamber, straightens his arm, and fires into the back of her head. She drops like a stone. He puts another bullet into her as she lies motionless on the ground. Then he reaches down, tugs at shoulder strap of her bag, which is now wedged underneath her body. When he realizes he's going to have to expend time and effort to get the bag, he leaves it and walks away.

The reason the cops know all these details is that the entire thing was caught on the building's video surveillance system. When the detectives reviewed the tapes from the day, they saw that the man had been riding up and down the elevators, walking down hallways, poking his head into offices, looking for a victim. He's on the elevator, going down, presumably about to leave the building, when she steps into it and the doors close behind her. He spots her bag and makes his decision. They ride down together and then he follows her out into the night.

I saw clips of the video - the murder was featured on The First 48, a show on A&E. (The First 48 has been following DPD homicide for a couple of years now. They devoted their season opener this year to this one case. If you watch it, you'll see my friends, Detectives Eddie Ibarra, Phil Harding, and Robert Quirk, as well as many other dedicated detectives who do this unspeakably impossible job.) I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the clip of the murder itself. I'm afraid I'll never get the image out of my head.

How do you look up at a blue sky with your face to the warm sunshine and reconcile your mind to something like that? How has my friend made it this far with the stench of evil smelling up his life? Imagine, one day you and your mom have supper and do the things you do when you're 17 and she's trying to raise a 17 year old by herself. And the next morning, you find her lying there. And you look around the room and see the gory evidence of her last desperate moments. And you never get those images out of your head. Ever. For the rest of your life.

Peter Terry is the evil figure in my books. His literal identity is shadowy but the suggestion is that he's a demon. But really, he's a metaphor for the opposition. It's us against them. I don't mean "the complainants against the murderers." Because I think the guy that killed that woman and the person who killed my friend's mom are losing to the same force of evil in the world that everyone else is fighting. But they haven't lost in the same way. They've surrendered their humanity. Or some part of it.

See, the thing is, you can't let that happen. You've got to fight. My friend is entitled to heal from this terrible wound. And I believe he will. I pray for that for him. (Peter Terry's wounds never heal, by the way. Have you ever noticed that Jesus keeps his wounds? But that they're healed? That's how important our wounds are.) But sometimes, I just feel the weight of it all.

The opposition is formidable. And it's aiming for us every day, as we say good night to our mothers for the last time or step off an elevator and into the night. What Peter Terry wants is your peace of mind. Your joy. Your serenity. Your sense of safety in the world.

But if we give it to him, what else is there?

Neil Diamond and other inequities in the universe

What is the deal with Cracklin' Rose?

This is one of the worst songs I've EVER heard. It was on the radio today as I was driving home and I almost had to pull over and vomit in public for the first time since, like, second grade. Has anyone ever really listened to the lyrics?

Cracklin rosie,

get on board

Were gonna ride

till there aint no more to go

Taking it slow

Lord, dont you know

Have made me a time

with a poor mans lady

Hitchin on a twilight train

Aint nothing here that I care to take along

Maybe a song

To sing when I want

Dont need to say please

to no man for a happy tune

Oh, I love my rosie child

You got the way to make me happy

You and me, we go in style

Cracklin rose, youre a store bought woman

You make me sing like a guitar hummin

So hang on to me, girl

Our song keeps runnin on

Play it now

Play it now, my baby

Cracklin rosie, make me a smile

blah blah blah.

Cracklin' rose. What IS that? Do you know any woman on the face of the earth who would want to be referred to as cracklin ANYTHING??? Rumor has it (this is apocryphal and little-known) that the song is really about a cheap bottle of Canadian red wine. Okay. Maybe. That would help a little. But still...

Okay, my point -

Neil got PAID to write that song. And Neil got PAID a lot of money when he recorded it. He still gets PAID every time it plays on the radio. And admit it - you knew the chorus, right? The Oh I love my rosie child part. But did you ever really listen to the song?? Did you know it was about someone (or something) named Cracklin' Rose? And yet we sing along and support the madness. Some of you (you know who you are) even bought the record.

Another favorite of mine - both for its equally patronizing message about women (love that in a man) and its sheer inanity, is Someday Lady by Bob Seger. Check this out...

I've seen you smiling in the summer sun

I've seen your long hair flying when you run

I've made my mind up that it's meant to be

Someday lady you'll accomp'ny me

Someday lady you'll accomp'ny me

Out where the rivers meet the sounding sea

You're high above me now, you're wild and free ah but

Someday lady you'll accomp'ny me

Someday lady you'll accomp'ny me

He sees her out there smiling, wild and free and makes up HIS mind (did anyone check with her?) that she's now lucky enough to stop her life and join his! Wow. What a treat. Sign me up.

Okay - back to the point.

Do you know how many GREAT songwriters there are out there? And how many amazing songs there are that you've never heard?? When is the last time you went to hear a local musician perform live? Admit it. You can't remember, can you?

Check your local entertainment guide and go out and hear some live music this weekend. Preferably at a small venue. Buy a CD at the show. And a T-shirt. And send the performer a drink. Support your local artists! You'll thank me in the morning.

Go to a GOOD CD store (the ones where the employees actually know something about music - not the ones in the back of a bookstore) and buy a new CD by someone you haven't heard of. Tell the person helping you who you like and they can suggest some alternatives. (Amazon and iTunes are also happy to make suggestions).

Find the GOOD songs! They're out there!

Some recommendations:

any of Trish's music, of course - (my personal fave songs: Concession Stand Song, Thelma and Louise - for obvious reasons - Relentless), Patty Griffin (1000 Kisses is one of my all time favorite records EVER), Bruce Robison (genius songwriter - check out the CD Wrapped), Johnny Goudie (Boy in a Box - beware: contains the F word), Lucinda Williams (Essence is just astonishing. Also contains the F-word. A theme, perhaps?)

Neil and Bob both have new records out, btw. I think they've made enough money, don't you?

Rock on - Louise

New York Awful Times

"If we cannot stop envying, it seems especially poignant that we should be constrained to spend so much of our lives envying the wrong things." --Alain de Botton

I love reading the Sunday New York Times. On Sunday. It's not the same if you don't get to read it until Monday, which I know because I've spent so many Sundays riding in vans coming home from places like Arkansas. Louise hooked me up with a Sunday-only subscription, and it's like Christmas. Or Thanksgiving, when you can eat nothing but the pie if you want. Sometimes I just work the crossword.

Not this past Sunday. Skipping a step here, blatantly, the one where I berate myself for being hopelessly out of touch and somehow, without noticing it's happened to me, old. I'm neither. I'm just genuinely, appropriately grossed out by the sludge that's settling over our humanity. That's how it seemed to me after reading two articles in Sunday Styles, the Op Ed, Week in Review, Sunday Business and that article about Rachel Zoe in the magazine. 12-year-old schoolgirls sneering at sexual timidity from their east side apartments. 36-year old multimillionaires trying to buy a more interesting life with the help of a publicist. Hedge fund gluttons who can't wait to make their first hundred million -- wait, make that billion -- so they can buy bigger stuff than the aforementioned rich boy. Wasted brain cells that used to memorize things before memory-retention became arcane like, 5 minutes ago.

Are we dead yet? Because the addiction du jour -- to contempt, smugness, ennui, entitlement, attention and pretentiousness -- kind of makes crack look like a cakewalk. I know, I know, leave Britney alone. Boo f-ing hoo. But still. And most of the columnists seem sympathetic, not to their subjects but to what they're writing that they never get to be explicit about: A bunch of stupid crap that readers want to read no matter what else you could offer that might be way more interesting and intelligent. Hell, I read it, didn't I? But I hadn't expected to step into a big stinky pile of it in my New York Times.

You don't get to buy back your humanity. You have to earn it back. And anyway, what if we just competed with ourselves and quit looking around to see who's noticing? It's too bad we all aren't paying more legitimate attention to ourselves and less frivolously to each other. We'd probably be surprised at what we could really accomplish. If you want a sampling of what this might feel like, take a level 3 yoga class. By the time the instructor tells you to wrap your arm around your kidney, grab your foot and then straighten your leg, you won't want anyone looking at you. And you'll be too busy to notice anyway.

And I hate that the quotes that come to mind in these moments are always the CS Lewis ones about Satan and stuff. "To be," Screwtape wants us to convince ourselves, "means to be in competition." Apparently that's how you get yourself on the guest list down there in Hell. Or the one about how money can't buy you love. Sure it can. Doesn't even last long enough to go stale. So eat up and quit bitching.

I guess there are a few illusions we should hang on to, if they make life more bearable. For now I'll be stubborn about my vision that the curse of empathy is real. And that it's not really a curse.

I just realized I never got around to reading Modern Love. Maybe I should go back and do that.

xoxo - thelma

An introduction to the perils of the creative life

Louise here.

Let me just say, if we'd known what we were getting ourselves into, we would have kept our day jobs. Probably. Maybe. Okay, maybe not. But it would have been a BAD decision, because the creative life is worth the tar-pit, asphalt and diesel-scented, ADHD, Pig-pen meets the Tazmanian Devil lifestyle it necessitates. We think.

I wrote the first word of my first novel during another lifetime. I'd just turned 30 and my brain exploded. Plus, I was living in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and it snowed 15 FEET *not a typo* in one month. The first sentence I wrote: "Abbie Sullivan's scream cut that thick Texas air like a sharp knife splitting a melon." Not bad. Pretty good, actually. Still re-writing that story. My agent will take it out into the world someday soon.

That sentence ruined my life. There was no chance in h - e - double-toothpicks I'd ever be able to go back to civilian life again.

Then I re-met Trish (details of first meeting in a future post) and it was downhill from there. We bonded because we were WRITERS. Under-parented writers who shared multiple obsessions: office supplies, good cup-towels, underwear with the elastic still holding, socks with no holes. And food. Fried chicken, fried okra salad, meatloaf, tuna casserole (recipes on request). And words. Just the right word for the job.

And a sisterhood was born.

This blog is an effort to expand the family. We know you're out there! Let's bitch and dish about the creative life.