Laurel Snyder

For anyone who usually blogs in LJ(but happens to stumble by), I now have a feed!

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/laurelsnyder/profile

Great good thanks to Susan Taylor Brown!!!!

Is no fun.  It’s AWFUL.  I slept in the toddler bed last night (can you say “OW”?) because I was told to monitor his breathing, “just in case.” 

Just in case? 

Really? 

That’s the way to make a momma craaaaazy.

No, croup, is NO fun.

But a sick baby, all sleepy and sweet, curled up on your chest while you read a book…

There’s something very cuddly about a limp noodle.

Poor noodle.

I’m not even sure how I came home from BEA with The Girl Who Could Fly.  Maybe it was in the bag I stole after speed-dating?  In any case, it’s amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing!  Why haven’t I been hearing more buzz?

It keeps switching gears on me. And I really dig that.

First I thought it was going to be an updated version of those homey book about salt-of-the-earth types who farm the land and quietly love their spunky children.

Which was pretty awesome.

Then I thought it was going to be about a magical boarding school.

Which was pretty awesome.

But now I see where it’s headed, and it’s WEIRD!  There a great deal of carefully executed political/social commentary (AWESOME) and the most lovely magical details (a glowing giraffe, cricket who sings opera, snapping rose with teeth) and there’s also quite a well-tooled adventure, with some real suspense. VERY well plotted.

(I haven’t learned to do that yet myself)

And everyone, everyone, everyone is complex. There is no EEEEEVIL villain.  There is no perfect hero.  Everyone is human, and yet everyone is bizarre and unusual.

THAT, my friends, is the kind of book I like.

This is a book of magic in the real world.  As much as it begins in a kind of Penderwicky-land, where kids still run around barefoot in the grass and nobody has a cellphone, despite that it’s the 21st century….

Emotionally, it’s very much about the world we live in. Where people are mixed up and neurotic and they try to control everything around them, in a sad attempty to avoid being  swept up…

And about how you gots tah lissen tah yer gut.

(To all the control freaks out there, and that means pretty much everyone– this should be required reading!)

(And to Victoria Forester– will you come over to my house for a tea party? Pretty please?)

REVISED!!!! WHILE THE FOLLOWING IS STILL TRUE, I FEEL THE NEED TO TELL YOU THAT MR. MADDOX HIMSELF CALLED ME THIS AFTERNOON, IN QUICK REPLY TO A VOICEMAIL I HAD LEFT FOR HIM EARLIER IN THE DAY.  HE WAS VERY APOLOGETIC, AND APPEARED GENUINELY SURPRISED TO HEAR ABOUT THE SIGN IN MY YARD. 

ONE CANNOT ASK FOR A LOCAL OFFICIAL TO BE MUCH MORE RESPONSIVE THAN THAT, AND WHILE IT IS STILL TRUE HIS CANVASSERS LITTERED,  I AM RESERVING JUDGEMENT (along with my vote) UNTIL I’VE HAD A CHANCE TO RESEARCH FURTHER. 

Dear George Maddox,

 Sticking PLASTIC yard signs (that will become a non-biodegradeable mess) in my yard without asking my permission is NOT the way to get my vote.  It is the way to assure I will vote for your opponent.

But  be sure… I will have my eye on you from here on out. Whether you win or lose, you better plan to pick up every damn sign in my neighborhood, or I will sic enviro-watchdogs on your ass in a heartbeat.

Thank you kindly,

Laurel Snyder
East Lake Terrace, 30032

We had a truly wonderful day on Sunday, visiting Birmingham to see our friends play the City Stages Festival. 

It was one of those special days when magic just kind of happens.  Perfect weather, and we stumbled on a free parking space, so close it should have been illegal, when we were cruising to find the cheapest pay-lot.  Then, when we got to the ticket gate to pay, a woman shoved FREE tickets (like, 60 bucks saved) in our hands and suggested we have a “blessed day”. 

We decided to take her advice.

So after that we had lemonade at a hotel bar where the woman refused our money, and when we ran out of sunscreen and asked where we could buy some, the guy who worked for the festival sent a lackey out to buy us a bottle.  Free sunscreen?

It was insane. We literally could NOT spend our money.  We had this amazing FREE day.  There were jugglers and craft projects in the children’s festival, and terrariums full of reptiles, and balloon animals.   Mose was screaming and dancing and running around, and Lew too.

Then we headed over to see Pieta and Bo, and it was awesome, awesome, awesome.  Because they are THE BEST.  And we spread our blanket and danced around, and ate things on sticks, and drank lemonade.  And after that we found the zydeco tent, strung with lights, and people were dancing, and the whole day was just perfect.

And then we were tired, so we walked the 14 feet to our perfect FREE parking space and came home.  And ate a late supper and drank a beer.  And went to bed.

And felt, as the woman said, pretty thoroughly blessed.

We now officially LOVE Birmingham.

The class of 2k8 is running a contest to highlight our “second-quarter” authors. 

Just pop by the site, answer a few questions, and win free books.  For reals.

Free books?

Yeah!

It feels wrong to hear about all of this second hand. It feels wrong, not being there…

Our friends and family are safe, but still… I wish we could help. We’ll be there in two weeks but I wish we could go now.

Listening to the reports, and talking to friends who are spending their days out sandbagging, I’m reminded what an astoundingly tight community it is.  What a special place.

Ach!

It’s Poetry Friday!  And today, because my mom and I were just talking about him, I’m posting a poem by Mark Jarman.  I LOVED this poems when I was an undergrad.  In college in Chattanooga. Where things began to happen, and I knew it.

It feels sad to me now.  Different. Nostalgic and sentimental.  A little too precious. But maybe that’s just my now talking…

What do you think?

**

Groundswell

Is nothing real but when I was fifteen,
Going on sixteen, like a corny song?
I see myself so clearly then, and painfully–
Knees bleeding through my usher’s uniform
Behind the candy counter in the theater
After a morning’s surfing; paddling frantically
To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,
Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor’s
Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt.
Is that all I have to write about?
You write about the life that’s vividest.
And if that is your own, that is your subject.
And if the years before and after sixteen
Are colorless as salt and taste like sand–
Return to those remembered chilly mornings,
The light spreading like a great skin on the water,
And the blue water scalloped with wind-ridges,
And–what was it exactly?–that slow waiting
When, to invigorate yourself, you peed
Inside your bathing suit and felt the warmth
Crawl all around your hips and thighs,
And the first set rolled in and the water level
Rose in expectancy, and the sun struck
The water surface like a brassy palm,
Flat and gonglike, and the wave face formed.
Yes. But that was a summer so removed
In time, so specially peculiar to my life,
Why would I want to write about it again?
There was a day or two when, paddling out,
An older boy who had just graduated
And grown a great blonde moustache, like a walrus,
Skimmed past me like a smooth machine on the water,
And said my name. I was so much younger,
To be identified by one like him–
The easy deference of a kind of god
Who also went to church where I did–made me
Reconsider my worth. I had been noticed.
He soon was a small figure crossing waves,
The shawling crest surrounding him with spray,
Whiter than gull feathers. He had said my name
Without scorn, just with a bit of surprise
To notice me among those trying the big waves
Of the morning break. His name is carved now
On the black wall in Washington, the frozen wave
That grievers cross to find a name or names.
I knew him as I say I knew him, then,
Which wasn’t very well. My father preached
His funeral. He came home in a bag
That may have mixed in pieces of his squad.
Yes, I can write about a lot of things
Besides the summer that I turned sixteen.
But that’s my ground swell. I must start
Where things began to happen and I knew it.

God I want one! 

 Mom, if you’re reading this…

If you have kids or want kids, you should read this!

The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner’s work.

But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.

Reading it has made me want to break down my housewife-week (and yes, while I write books, I am mostly a housewife).  If the article is right, my work-week should  be 38 hours a week.  I assume that doesn’t count “quality time” (reading books, emptying and filling kiddie-pools, playing with play dough, etc).  I wish they’d share their idea of what constitutes “work” but here’s what I imagine they mean…

My “Un-Billable Hours” (on the conservative side):

4 hours a week grocery shopping (takes much longer with 2 kids in tow, plus drive time)
2 hours a week on other errands (PO, bank, pediatrician, etc)
10 hours a week cooking and cleaning up from meals, packing lunches, wiping high chairs (this does not allow for actual cooking, just assemblage meals– cereal, sandwiches, frozen veggies, leftovers, etc.)
3 hours a week washing and folding laundry
1 hour a week paying bills and dealing with checkbook
2 hours a week changing diapers (10 diapers a day @ 2 minutes a diaper, includes running to trash can)
1 hour a week making beds (this does not allow for blowouts that require me to clean mattress)
5 hours a week “straightening toys” and other clutter
2 hours a week bathing kids and brushing teeth
1 hour a week dressing and undressing kids

Notice anything?  We’re over 30 hours already, and I have not yet begun to actually “clean” anything at all.  I haven’t emptied the trash, or changed the cat box, or scrubbed the sinks or swept the kitchen or cleaned out the car or hand-washed the sippy cups or watered the plants. To say nothing of mopping and dusting and washing windows (none of which I pretend to do). Not to mention holiday gift-buying, thank you note scribbling, other dumb stuff like that…

This begs the question… how do single moms DO IT?  And/or working moms who fall into that 2/1 ratio without the benefit of getting to stay home. How do they function?  How do they come home from a hard day at work and still do 28 hours a week?

Mother’s Day, HA!

(OH, AND IF YOU WANT TO BLOG YOUR OWN UN-BILL-ABLE HOURS, AND LET ME KNOW, I’LL LINK YOU!)