The Blog I Should Have Posted Three Weeks Ago

Vacations would be so worth it if we could skip the packing part. I dread pulling out the old suitcase, and when I finally do get around to it, it takes hours to figure out what's going to accompany me on my journey.

The clothes I wear comfortably, happily every day turned to dreck as I start packing for our trip to the Pacific Northwest.

Nothing from my closet looks spiffy enough, nothing fits quite right. I always pack too much, and yet invariably I have regrets about leaving some thing necessary behind.

Packing is an imprecise science and a real stresser, and that's only the beginning of the joys of traveling these days. Follow that experience with long lines and security checks, worries about flying, concerns that something important has been forgotten and who wouldn't need a vacation?

Wish us luck. The weather forecast is seasonal and sunny and we'll be visiting new places. I'll be back to blogging in September but first I'm going to see some mountains, some whales, a world class garden or two, and a lot of Katz. If I didn't have to pack, it would all be perfect!

P.S. It's September 13th and we've been back for over a week now. My apologies for the long break. I hope to have a story or two about the trip for you shortly as I finally get my rhythm going again. Thanks for being patient.

Saying No

Katz said no to me yesterday and I was mad all day.

Here's how it went:

I wanted him to do something I felt was important but I knew he wouldn't be entirely comfortable doing. It was a parenting thing and he's very much a let's-not-do-anything-unless-it's-a-crisis sort of parent, where I'm more of a we-can-make-our-adult-children's-lives-much-better-by-sharing-our-wisdom sort of parent, so this is not the first time I've asked, he's said "no," and I've been mad.

Still, I've learned to pick and choose what I ask for, so even before I opened my mouth, I thought the conversation through carefully and tried to choose an opportune time. Besides my best efforts, he still said no.

Now, I'm not a prima donna; I don't need to always hear yes. And I went into this conversation knowing it was an iffy proposition, so I even saw it coming. I expected no and I would have accepted no. The problem is that "No" isn't a literal translation of our conversation.

Katz listened to the question, muttered something not very nice that included the words "nose out of it" and then got quiet.

"I know, I know," I said. "You don't want to, right?" I asked.

"I'll think about it."

And that's when I got mad.

Now, to be fair, Katz is a near-perfect husband. We don't agree on everything but we rarely fight. However, when we do, it's most often due to "a failure to communicate," so this is a historical problem for us. Katz is funny, good hearted, a great husband and father, and he COMMUNICATES for a living, so my question is, how come he just can't say no? Better yet, how come he can't figure out a way to say no and still make me feel okay about being turned down.

In my imagination, I can deal with the perfect rejection. All I need is a kind voice, the understanding that I'm not a lunatic for making my request, and a non-defensive, soft spoken explanation that he's just not comfortable in the role I want him to play. I get that! I understand that!

What I don't understand is why--when he knows that "I'll think about it" means "no" and he's darn sure he's done all the thinking about it he needs to and will never change his mind and will never revisit the conversation again if it's up to him--he can't just say no and put me out of my misery.

Of course, the fact that I'm finishing this posting on Wednesday and I've been quietly mad at him since Sunday morning reveals that I have my own communication issues. Katz knows I'm unhappy and, to his credit, I know that makes him unhappy, too, but instead of dealing with it, he's walking around on eggshells.

Writing and the passage of a few days have dampened my anger, and at least on my end, we're getting close to detente. But oh how easy, oh how sweet it would have been, if he only would have said "no" instead of "I'll think about it."

First Mystery

I've always loved mysteries! It started with Nancy Drew when I was a kid and went from there. Early favorites were Agatha Christie's English mysteries, Dick Francis's jockey-hero puzzles, Dashiell Hammett's slender, ice cold and crisply written detective tales, and Josephine Tey's brilliant Daughter of Time. More current mystery writers I appreciate include the hilarious Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiaasen, and Alexander McCall Smith's gentle and lovely No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. There are dozens more writers I could mention, but needless to say, with this kind of reading history, my comfort with the mystery genre is not all that surprising.

So, for your amusement, resurrected from the flood waters of our basement, is the first mystery I ever wrote. If memory serves me, I wrote it when I was maybe 14 and very melodramatic. It has no grade on it, so I obviously wrote it for my own pleasure.

Enjoy!

Untitled

I saw her walking down the street,
I almost died of fright.
My heart was going wild
This really wasn't right.

She walked along so slowly,
A smile upon her face,
A drop of blood laid on her cheek,
A sign of death it traced.

I heard her say "Hello John,
It's been so long a time.
Whatever came between us?
I believe it was some crime.

It was you who did the nasty job,
Of that at least I'm sure.
It was a foggy night like this,
The diamonds were your lure.

You set them on the table
And forward I did come,
And when I was a foot away
You shot me with your gun.

I laid there on the bloody floor
And you stood o'er me laughing;
Now that you committed crime
You found it rather smashing.

You hurt my feelings, John my love,
But seeing that it's done,
It's now my turn to laugh with glee
For I have got the gun.

Bang, you're dead! Why you're trembling dear.
Did you think I pulled the trigger?
Don't slip away, Johnny my darling,
I've only to move my finger.

Should I shoot you through the head or heart?
I must take careful aim.
Did you know that is is rather fun?
It's almost like a game.

When you shot me it was quite a mess
So I must take my time.
It really is a shame, you know,
To be shot down in your prime.

They called you 'John the wonderful,'
They called you 'John the great.'
It's sad but now they'll have to call you
Young John Brown, the late.

I'm dead, you know that very well,
But still my ghost walks on,
And so I swear on this cold gun
that you'll be dead by dawn."

Next day did the headlines read:
"We say with quite a quiver.
John Brown now lies in his grave,
He fell into the river."
Copyright 2010

Moving On

When we were kids, an infrequent but favorite activity was watching family movies together. Dad was both filmmaker and projectionist in the Devitt family. He'd set up the projector in the recreation room and after dark, often on a summer night, we'd all grab a chair or a place on the floor in front of the screen and watch the movies of our lives. We'd laugh at brothers in bow ties and matching plaid jackets and sisters in crinoline dresses, Easter bonnets and gloves. Sometimes an old neighbor or a younger version of my parents' friends or our great aunts and uncles would work their way onto the screen and a chorus of voices would rush to identify the mystery person.

I thought about these days yesterday when I tossed out a box of the photo slides Katz and I used to archive our early life together. There were slides of our wedding faded (and not very clear), of my dog Jody, of Katz with lots of facial hair and me wearing a fall (the 1970s version of extensions), of old friends who are no longer in our lives, and younger versions of my brothers and sisters.

It often takes a crisis to light a fire under most of us when it comes to checking off those projects we put on our mental "I Need to Do This Before It's Too Late" lists. You know, things like writing or updating a will, getting those Medical Power of Attorney documents witnessed and distributed, or signing up for an off-site, online backup for your my-life-as-I-know-it-will-end-if-I-lose-these computer files. I had just such a crisis when the floods came and a single box of slides got wet.

So, after two-plus weeks of schlepping a combination of the utilitarian, junk, memories, documents, and equipment out of the damp down under, then cleaning, drying, tossing, and organizing the basement of our lives,I finally had time to look at the wet box of slides. They were from our Partners in Crime days, a period of seven years that Katz and I consider to be one of the high points of our life. Part business and all pleasure, the mystery weekends we created at local resorts and on two Caribbean cruises came at a time when we were starting our family and stretching our creativity. The business helped me start my writing career, gave Katz a fresh audience nine times a year, made us a little money, and established friendships that have lasted upwards of 20-some years. When I found the slides weren't damaged, I trucked them over to the local Walgreens for a consult. Two days later, they were on a CD, preserved (hopefully) forever.

Over the years, we've shown the slides on a couple of occasions to the PIC group with the same results as family move night. The soundtrack is always voices shouting out, recalling specifics of a night or a group or a resort or a script or a performance, a cacophony of memories. As I tossed out the original slides, I knew I would never have to worry about losing them again, which made me happy. But I suddenly realized that the joy of sitting around a movie screen in a darkened room, sharing memories with people I love to the click click click sound of slides dropping in front of the light, will also never happen again. Like family movie night, those days are gone. And that's a little sad.

Old Manuscript Resurfaces

When I was a kid, my old man, Izzy Bloom, used to tell me my instincts were as off base as a runner from first rounding second just as the shortstop gets around to catching the pop up. When I got a little older, good old Dad kept pace with my libido by saying I had the instincts of a eunuch in a whorehouse.

I have to admit, there were times when I proved him right.

Still, I've always said if a fellow can't believe in himself, who can he believe in, right? And so when I looked at the 8 x 10 glossy in my hand, I accepted my premonition without question. I was so sure, in fact, that if old Izzy himself--God rest his soul--had been standing there betting his last ten bucks that I was crazy to think this dame was going to bring me trouble, I would have taken his bet at a hundred to one odds.

This is the first page of the first book I wrote over 15 years ago. It was right after I'd sold my mystery weekend business, which had been a huge personal (if not financial) success for seven years, and it was an adaptation of one of my mystery weekend scripts.

I signed with a NY agent who found "Drawn to Murder" promising, and she spent two years getting it rejected by all the big publishers. She sent me one rejection from an editor at St. Martin Press saying they'd like to see anything else this "promising" writer had to offer.

I've never been great at handling rejection, and I finally told my agent to throw in the towel. I had written a children's novel that she'd liked, too, but that never found a publishing home either, and in the back of my mind this meant I wasn't as good of a writer as I thought I was. Both books had been hard work, and although to this day I get encouragement/harassment from Katz to write that million dollar book so he can quit his job, I never have sat down and started another one . . . until now.

"Drawn to Murder" surfaced again, soggy but salvageable from the second of two basement floods that hit us in July. The pages are curled and look a little aged, but for the first time in 15-some years, I'm reading the book I wrote so long ago. The tone of the book is humorous, the writing is taut, and I like what I've read so far.

It's nice to know it really was a very good manuscript making the rounds back then, and I'm less embarrassed by the memory of my failure. Even more importantly, I'm anxious to get back to the new book. It has faced the obstacles of multiple power failures, floods, summer distractions, and an all-absorbing garden tour, and has barely progressed this summer. Although the first book had a beginning, a middle and an end before I even started writing it, I remember it took a year of hard work to finish. The book I'm writing now has an idea, a setting, and some characters, and I've given myself the same 12-month deadline, so I'm already feeling the difficulty quotient rise. Still, after seeing what I did once, I am encouraged I can do it again.