Writers Write

Here is the sentence I worked on - in my head - for an hour last night while awake with a sick child.

"As it turned out, Tuesday morning’s breakfast buffet at the Sugar Maple B&B was far more deadly than usual, though it took quite a while for anyone to notice."

I'm still waffling about the first bit and keep taking it out then putting it back in. They're unnecessary words. So they should go. But I like the tone and voice they suggest.

Obviously I tend toward verbosity.

XXI

These are the 4th Olympic Games since I started blogging. And as usual, I can't wait to get back to watching!

We ate dinner at a restaurant tonight. (After what we spent to "fix" Paul's car, a few extra dollars and calories seemed inconsequential.) Adjoining the dining room was a bar area with several large televisions, all tuned to sports channels. And none tuned to The Olympics! All over the blogosphere people are complaining about how exceedingly boring the opening ceremonies are.

So jaded!

Or maybe it's just me; I'm a mutant freak.

But, man, I love the Olympics. I watch every moment I can, every two years.

Today I watched the U.S. Women's Hockey Team batter China while jogging "four miles" on my trampoline.  (The Wii grossly overestimates distance, but makes me feel good at the same time.)  The girls were so inspired that they jumped on for two quick sprints each after my workout.  They love to see their faces on the leader board (they're each other's only competition at the "3 minute" level) and to call out the names of the Miis they recognize along the course.  "There's Grandma! I'm gonna catch up to Grandpa!"

And it's not an Olympic sport, but the girls have really been having fun Wii bowling lately, too.  Who says video games are bad for children?!  Not a parent cooped up inside with two young children on a snowy day, methinks.

A friend called yesterday.  "Are you watching short track?"

Of course I was.

"I bet you really got choked up at Celski's story, huh?"

Not really.  She knows that I get emotional about the Olympics and she likes to poke at me.  I appreciate that.  But it's not the human interest stories that get me all verklempt, it's the sport, baby.  It's the competition, the pushing at the boundaries of endurance, the successes and failures on the track, the slope, the ice, the mat, the course, the pool.

The Canadian women's hockey team decimated Slovakia 18-0 in their first day of competition.  The hometown crowd cheered mightily for their beloved champions.  Then the Slovakians skated off the ice and the stadium gave them a standing ovation.  That made me teary.

The Chinese team the American women clobbered 12-1 yesterday?  Sure, they suffered a decisive defeat.  But it wasn't a rout.  Toward the end of the match, one of the Chinese athletes scored the team's first goal.  She pumped her stick in the air and they all screamed in triumph.  All the way to the last bell, the entire team worked hard.  They didn't give up.  They were competing at the Olympics! and that is, in itself, a victory.

On the other end of the spectrum, I could watch Apollo Ono's first 1500 heat over and over and over all day.  (The semi-final and A final not so much.)  He's cool, he's relaxed, and then, BAM, out of nowhere he's going twice as fast as everyone else.

As for the Opening Ceremony, sure the parade drags a bit sometimes but it's fun with good company.  ("Good company" does not include Bob Costas being sarcastic and giving unqualified fashion commentary. Sidenote: I'm a huge Mary Carillo fan!)  And the show itself - thoughtfully included after the parade so the athletes could sit and watch - was breathtaking.  If I started every day of my life listening to kd lang sing Hallelujah, I think I'd be a better, happier person.  (Seriously, go listen. Tell me if you don't feel inspired to go run, write, invent, hug, love, give, be. And while you're there, check out the Define Canada slam. Brilliant.)

I love Canada.  I love Canadians!  Thanks to all the organizers, volunteers, athletes, and sponsors for a great show.

Is it the weekend?

No, I'm not complaining about a long Monday. Quite the opposite. I feel like it must be the weekend soon. I have that fabulous Thursday night feeling.

Thursday nights are great because there's only one work day between you and the promise of unstructured, fabulous weekend. (By Friday night I'm sometimes too exhausted to experience the excitement fully. And let's not face the fact that weekends are simply not as unstructured and carefree in reality as each looms in my fantasies.)

But back to tonight and my Thursday night/weekend feeling. Yesterday I was exhausted and depleted. I'm no more caught up on sleep tonight, and I'm still tired but I'm rejuvenated. What's the difference?

Book club.

I had dinner one-on-one with a fabulous friend tonight. Then we walked next door to my favorite coffee shop for our book club. A group of wonderful women sitting on couches, talking about a book, sipping hot drinks.

I hadn't even read this particular book (though I will!). It didn't matter. I feel . . . better.

Last week I found myself in an unpleasant conversation with a woman who Does Too Much. We all know this woman, I believe, or perhaps we know her brother. This woman feels guilty if she sits down to watch TV with her husband in the evening because she's not doing something productive. She does a lot of good and useful things in her community. But she's also frazzled, burned out, resentful, and negative.

A few of us were trying to explain the importance of taking care of oneself, saying "yes" to volunteer gigs that rejuvenate but setting down burdens that we're tired of carrying.

"Your group of younger moms is better at that, which is why so much falls on the rest of us," she replied.

Yowch. In this case, her criticism was poorly aimed. (She was talking to a group of very active and involved volunteers.) And I know that her problem is internal rather than external: being unable to say no, taking on too much, carrying others' burdens needlessly at times, and not taking time to replenish her reservoirs.

So tonight I'd like to thank my loving husband for encouraging me to do the things that make me feel whole, and thank my friends who help me relax, refill, restore. I am grateful, and I am well.

Balls in the Air

I'm a deadline person. As a due date approaches it draws my full attention like a beacon and I focus until I've met my goal. This process has worked well for me for 35 years, but I'm currently finding myself with quite a lot of beacons causing light pollution in my brain.

First and foremost, I'm a mother, now. And not just a mother, but a mother of children who have activities and responsibilities. School, classes, meetings, conferences, therapies, sports, commitments, stuff, junk, and above all, PAPERWORK. Keeping on top of all that could easily be a full-time job.

But it's not because there's no time for it to be!

There's the need to exercise. And eat right. I find focusing on those two activities much easier when I can let other things go. Like housework, which I can't let slide too far because it seems I'm having people over a lot lately. So there's hosting/event organizing for the list, too.

And editing my work in progress. And freelancing to pay the bills. And, oh, look at the date! November is National Novel Writing Month and I'm nearly 2000 words into my new novel.

Plus we have this influenza A/H1N1/swine flu joy, which hobbles us all. (Ellie's the one who's sickest at this point, but she's on Tamiflu and she's doing OK. I'm trying to embrace the required quarantine and see it as an excuse to loosen the schedule a bit.)

Despite all the more immediate activities, I can't forget that Christmas is coming and homemade gifts don't make themselves the week of December 20th.

So forget fun things like reading novels and watching television and playing Nintendo. Perhaps I'll work them back into the rotation in January!

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

This month, for Barrie Summy's Book Review Club, I'm writing about Go Ask Alice by "Anonymous."

September 26−October 3, 2009 is the American Library Association's Banned Books Week. I'm not a big fan of public book banning, so I decided to choose a banned book and review it this week.

I read Go Ask Alice only once, way back when I was in Junior High. Since then, I don't think I've ever really talked about it with anybody but I still think about this novel frequently.

Amazon Product Description:

It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life.

Read her diary.

Enter her world.

You will never forget her.

For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl's harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful -- and as timely -- today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.

Look, I know it turns out the book was written by an adult anti-drug activist rather than an actual teenage girl (but who really thought this was a memoir?!) and perhaps some of the message is a bit heavy handed. But I didn't notice that when I read the book as a kid.

I have never tried drugs. Most people I know have done a little (or a lot) of experimenting. And many, though not all, of them enjoyed themselves and survived unscathed. But I haven't ever experimented, and I credit much of that to my reading this book at just the right time in my life. What if what if what if . . . everything goes wrong?

There's so little we can control in this life, I feel like I need to measure every significant risk. What can I gain? What can I lose? Maybe I'd have a really great time stoned out of my mind. But my mind isn't such a terrible place to be. And maybe I'd end up like Alice.

How ironic that parents refuse to let their teens read this book because it's so graphic. That's the point! It wouldn't be very scary or convincing if it depicted drugs as a relatively harmless diversion, or, worse, didn't mention drugs at all.

There are monsters under the bed, and while we need to protect our children's innocence when they're very young, we also need to prepare our children for the world in which they live.

*

With materials accused of being pornography censors have to decide if the content is intended primarily to titillate or if it serves a larger artistic aesthetic. So too it is with these books, each of which depicts something unpleasant. Should we only publish books about pleasant topics where nothing ugly happens? Fie. What greater sin than white-washing the past? We can't and shouldn't try to revise history. Nor should we attempt to make all the world's tumors into lumps of peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough.

The ugliness in these novels is informative, educational, and artistic. It is not intended to shock and titillate as much as to illustrate and illuminate. Revealing warts-and-all is how these books teach.

A few recently banned books that struck me:

Anonymous. GO ASK ALICE. Avon; Prentice-Hall. Challenged as a reading assignment at Hanahan Middle School in Berkeley County, S.C. (2008) because of blatant, explicit language using street terms for sex, talk of worms eating body parts, and blasphemy. The anonymously written 1971 book is about a fifteen-year-old girl who gets caught up in a life of drugs and sex before dying from an overdose. Its explicit references to drugs and sex have been controversial since it was first published. Source: May 2008, pp. 98-99.

Hosseini, Khaled. THE KITE RUNNER. Bloomsbury. Challenged as appropriate study in tenth-grade honors English class at Freedom High School in Morganton, N.C. (2008) because the novel depicts a sodomy rape in graphic detail and uses vulgar language. Source: May 2008, pp. 97-98.

Lee, Harper. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Lippincott/Harper; Popular Library. Retained in the English curriculum by the Cherry Hill, N.J. Board of Education (2007). A resident had objected to the novel's depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression. The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it. Source: Mar. 2008, p. 80; May 2008, pp. 117-18.

Twain, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens]. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Bantam; Bobbs-Merrill; Grosset; Harper; Holt; Houghton; Longman; Macmillan; NAL; Norton; Penguin; Pocket Bks. Challenged, but retained in the Lakeville, Minn. High School (2007) and St. Louis Park High School in Minneapolis, Minn. (2007) as required reading for sophomores. The district will conduct staff training about race issues and revise the way it weighs requests for curriculum changes. The district will also let its staff offer alternative assignments on racially sensitive issues in ways which “students do not feel ostracized because they have opted out of the assignment." Challenged at Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Tex. (2007) because of racial epithets. Challenged at the Manchester, Conn. High School (2007) "because the 'N' word is used in the book 212 times." Source: May 2007, p. 99; July 2007.

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November is Boring Blogging Month

First up is a progress report on my fitness goal, because I know that you care. But it's a happy day because I passed a significant (to me) "decade" mark. You know what I mean, right? There's something so psychologically important about that tens place ticking down one. And I'm also more than 1/6 of the way to my goal. So, woo hoo!

Second, before I go to bed tonight I should have written more than 30,000 words on my NaNoWriMo novel, which is fabulous. I find the 20,000's to be the hardest part. And given the email pep talks the NaNoWriMo folks send out, it's a pretty common problem. After that, it's sort of a long, fun coast to the end. There's something psychologically important about passing 30,000 words for me.

I think I'll leave it there, and save the substantive bit for tomorrow. I'm off to write!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Goal

First of all, it's very very hard to keep up with all the home stuff (this is the time of year when we have what seems like weekly meetings preparing for Kindergarten, plus all of our usual activities and therapy stuff, plus I'm doing this officer training thing at church) while doing NaNoWriMo and exercising nearly an hour a night. Very very very hard. I'm a little behind on my word count.

But the exercise and all that is going very well. Yesterday I had a funny little set-back. I ate well all day, no snacking or binging, and had a great workout. But my weigh-in was flat. Very frustrating. Ditto today. Weird.

It turns out that there was a bit of a biological cause. But also - and, I believe, mainly - there was something I was consuming that had a few more calories than I expected.

You know I love love love my lattes, right? Well, if there's anything in the world that tastes better than a latte, it's a Starbucks Egg Nog Latte, available only from mid-November through the end of the year. Paul got me one as a special treat yesterday, and it was even better than I remembered from last year. Heavenly! Delightful!

"Do you have a sugar free version?" my wonderful husband asked the barista.

"No, but it shouldn't be a problem," she replied. "The egg nog lattes have no extra sugar."

Whew, was she ever wrong.

I figured it was just a syrup, like Starbucks' other flavored lattes.

I was wrong, too.

It's not a syrup, and it's not sugar free. It's espresso and egg nog, with a little bit of 2% milk. Gulp. No wonder it's so good!

Serving Size 16 fl. oz.

Amt Per Serving
Calories 470
Fat Calories 190
Total Fat (g) 21
Saturated Fat (g) 13
Trans Fat (g) 0
Cholesterol (mg) 140
Sodium (mg) 230
Total Carbohydrates (g) 53
Fiber (g) 0
Sugars (g) 48
Protein (g) 16
Vitamin A 10%
Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 50%
Iron 2%
Caffeine (mg) 150

I Have a Cold

Saturday night found me curled up in bed with my laptop, reading an erotica e-book. It was research, I swear. No, really, it was. And here's how you know. My cold is stuck at that obnoxious nose-running-like-a-faucet stage, which prompted me, once all witnesses were safely asleep, to shove Kleenex up my nostrils. What's less sexy than that?!

I am so tired right now, but before I can post this and go to bed, apparently I need to reinstall Internet Explorer. I am seriously considering getting a Mac next time.

While I'm drifting hazily on exhaustion and thinking about technology and how much it can suck, I'll mention that it's absolutely not comfortable to curl up on my side in bed while reading my laptop's screen. And this is why I don't think that e-books - while they serve a valuable role in the market and can be quite convenient - are going to completely replace books anytime soon.

Sure, there are e-readers that are less cumbersome than laptops or PCs. But those are expensive little devices that require occasional recharging and internet connectivity. And they're a lot more costly to replace than a $6.99 paperback left in an airplane. They're also a little harder to share. So, sorry, I can't slip you the erotica e-book that I just finished, or at least not legally.

To recap, I'm tired and I have a cold. G'night.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Although I might now be a spoiled rich girl, I have not forgotten my roots. (You do notice the tongue stuck firmly in my cheek, right? Whatever else I might do, I tend to take myself lightly.) Tonight I drove a hybrid car for the first time, and I enjoyed it very much.

The part where the engine stops (apparently) running when the car is stopped, however, kept freaking me out. I'm sure I'll get used to this, but my history with cars that die when they stop is not one that involves vehicles functioning well. I used to drive an old VW Rabbit that died whenever you hit the clutch unless you gave it a little gas simultaneously. This made approaching 4-way stops and driving in rush hour traffic especially challenging as I had to pretend that I had three feet. Ah, the good old days. When I leased my first new car, a standard, entry-level Saturn SC2, I thought I was living in the lap of luxury. And I was, for an editorial assistant with student loans and no independent wealth!

I was out on my own tonight, in the new car, because it was Greater St. Louis Sisters in Crime "Get Your (Right) Gun" night at Top Gun Shooting Range in Imperial, Missouri.

I had a great time and learned a lot (though a nice chunk of the material was familiar to me thanks to Lori L. Lake's guest blogging at The Graveyard Shift) but I'll include just the personal injury report for now.

By the end of my time at the range, I was flinching badly with each shot. The instructor assumed it was because of the recoil, and that was partly true. (I'd moved up from a .22 semi-automatic pistol to the same model 9mm that the St. Louis County Police carry.) But mostly it was because the casings kept attacking me.

Several of them landed on my head or on my arm. One somehow got behind both my glasses and safety glasses, and others must have have hit my forehead, because it's streaked with soot. My (formerly favorite) white shirt is a bit charred in front. And, worst of all, two fresh casings went straight down my neckline, burning my chest! I have a couple of painful little blisters to show for this, though they just look like blemishes from afar. The weird thing is that I chose the shirt because it does NOT have a stretched out neckline and fits up above the collarbone, as I prefer. My shooting partner wasn't having the same problem, but the instructor said that the issue was with the gun, not with my stance.

Anyway, it was a GREAT program and I had a wonderful time, malicious casings notwithstanding. And then I got to drive home in the fabulous "new" car, which is especially great because we haven't had to start paying for it yet (with the exception of the check that passed from Geico to the dealership via our checking account).

It wasn't just the shiny hybrid car in the parking lot that probably stood out at the range. I wore khakis and black Danskos, carried a canvas bag that says, "Fall Into A Good Book!" and walked in carrying a latte from Starbucks. (Ah, latte. Is there any more wonderful food on this earth? I think it's better than pizza.) And so we end with a reprisal of the spoiled rich girl image.

The big surprise, of course, was that none of these things really stood out, at all. Because, though we on the left love stereotypes at least as much as our friends on the right, gun lovers don't fit into neatly categorized little boxes, either. And there was a clearly marked recycling box right behind the firing stalls for empty ammo boxes.

Irritating Tickle

I'm a little bummed and frustrated. Our new minivan - known as the Cool-Cool-Car or the Cah-Cah-Coo depending on which child you ask - turns 1 this month. It has almost 16,000 miles already, and we'd planned to push that up to 18,000 easy by the end of the month with a trip out to Wyoming to see Paul's parents this weekend.

We've only made the drive once before, last April when Paul was between jobs, but it went well so we thought we'd make it an annual event and Paul's parents' spring break seemed like an ideal time.

I like Paul's parents, I like travel, and I like Wyoming. And while a 19-hour (one way! without significant stopping!) trip is grueling, especially all in one shot with two little kids, I'm excited by the challenge.

So I've been psyched about this vacation for a long time. But now Paul's feeling a bit off, and not that excited about going, and there's snow in the forecast along our route, and . . .

Sigh.

No vacation for me.

(I continue to deny the slight tickle in my own throat and possible tiny little low-grade fever.)

When Paul takes a shift at the wheel, I get great writing time in. If the girls aren't sleeping, they're probably happily watching videos, and Paul is likely to be tuned into an unabridged audiobook on his iPod. A cushion on my lap to prop up my laptop, writing notebook open on the console beside me, feet up on the dash, I can write for hours. Blessed, uninterrupted hours with very few distractions. (Have you ever driven across Nebraska? Trust me about the distractions.)

Bucket List

No, not the movie, the St. Louis Bloggers January Carnival. My recent not-cancer freak-out threw this one into bold relief for me:

Sarahlynn's To Do Before I Die List:
1) Watch my kids grown up healthy and happy.
The End.

Since I'm trending a bit contrary, my other would-like-tos include:

• Have my whole house organized, top to bottom, with no Monica Closet. Not even a Monica Drawer. Just once, just for a few minutes, just to see what it feels like.
• Publish a good book, to good reviews and sales.
• Find a miracle cure for my feet so that I can rollerblade again.
• While I'm at it, find a miracle cure for cancer. And world hunger. And so forth.
• Have sex with Taye Diggs and his identical twin brother.

What? What?!

OK, well, I don't like New Year's Resolutions and I don't like Bucket Lists, so I don't play nicely with either. My mind just doesn't naturally think in superlatives like, what's my favorite book/movie/song/color? What do I most want to do before I die?

There's a lot of stuff I want to do before I die. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before Easter. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before bed tonight.

But last Sunday, I did "ask" my Sunday School class make some sort of New Year's Resolutions, because the lesson suggested that we do so.

We Believe that our lives are pieces of God's plan. What can we do in our immediate futures to help imagine our eternal lives in God's presence?

Ah, this exercise I like better. It's far less morbid!

• I can practice saying, "Yes."
  
• And I can stop waiting for the question, looking instead for opportunities to volunteer in ways that make a significant contribution without inspiring me to feel resentful or overwhelmed.
  
• I can continue the practice I began working so hard on last year, involving compassion and understanding.

On these, I've already begun. About these, I already feel hopeful.

And, in the end, I think they're more important and valuable both to me and to others than worrying about when I'll die, or where I'll travel, or even the state of my half-organized basement storage closet.

Big, Fun, Scary

This is a follow-up to NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to take on one big, fun, or scary goal for 2008. You know, sort of exactly like a New Year's Resolution. Which I don't do. But.

Why not?

Big: Weigh less than my (stunning if I do say so myself) Y2K weight by Christmas

Fun: Cruise the Inner Passage, go to Disney World, and spend a long, hot, child-free weekend in Mexico

Scary: swim cage-free with sharks

No, really:

Big: Limit gorging and resume regular workouts (notice how this is not a SMART goal, but I'll know and that's all that matters)

Fun: go on at least one date per month, and therapy sessions do not count

Scary: Submit at least 2 magazine articles to editors and at least 5 novel query letters to agents.

Thankful, Indeed

Everyone is feeling much better, and I never did get sick. We made it to my parents' house safely. Leftover Thanksgiving dinner was all the delicious fun and a lot less stress than the traditional meal always ends up being.

All in all, it's wonderful to be out of my own house for a little while and back in the comfortable clutter of my parents' home.

And Paul bought me an adapter so that I can power my laptop in the car, which allowed me to write nearly 4000 words on the drive! I'm not a great typist, but occasionally I can look up from the screen, and it was an interesting experience to be living in my fictional world, typing along, and looking out the windows at the dark Illinois landscape rushing by.

"There's a 24-hour Starbucks at the next exit!"

All in all, the weekend has gotten much better, and I am, as ever, Thankful.

And then Georgeanne’s shriek and Coralyn’s giggle brought him back with a blink, and he saw their colorful coats against the white snow and black trees, he saw the rolling hills and icy ponds, he saw Maggie’s face looking up at him, he saw the textures and pieces of his life laid out before him, and his heart felt so full, so full of love and longing.

To Be or Not to Be (a Stay at Home Mom)

Do you ever feel like you're balanced on the cusp of two very different realities? Like your life could take off in two different directions from here, each of them plausible and exciting, but mutually exclusive?

I felt that way when I was pregnant. My career was going very well, it was exciting, and I felt that I could really throw myself into it and make a name for myself in my company. And yet . . .

A part of me always wanted to be a stay at home mom. My mom stayed home with my younger sisters and me until the youngest was in school. She was really good at it. She always had constructive, fun, creative things for us to do. And she took on mothering like any other career. She read books, she prepared in advance, she worked hard. I have always wanted to provide the same kind of wonderful, magical childhood for my own children.

Which way to go? Either way, there would be guilt. Guilt at putting my children in daycare while I worked at a job that wasn't really "important" (in as much as that I wasn't actually saving lives or anything like that) or guilt at staying home, not being a "good enough feminist," not using my college degree, etc.

There were also dreams. I dreamed (and still do) of being an author. I want to make a living writing fiction. I'm not asking to be Sara Paretsky (though I think she's amazing) but maybe Dorothy Cannell? To make enough money that we don't have to worry about money, enough that I can call myself a writer and mean "as a profession" rather than as a "hobby."

I was further confounded when I learned that Ellie was going to have some serious health problems. I coped with the news much the way I usually cope with big things: I threw myself into the moment, working really hard and not thinking too much about the future. My boss always wanted to be a stay at home mom and asked me unofficially what I thought I'd do. At this point I was still really torn and told her that I was sure I'd come back to work because it would be too hard and too depressing to be home alone all day with a seriously sick and disabled baby.

After Ellie was born, I had a hard time imagining her sleeping in another room, let alone leaving her for an entire work day or - God forbid! - a business trip. I was still thinking of going back to work, somehow, even though Ellie wouldn't take a bottle and I hadn't found a sitter for her. Then, a month before I was to return to work, I learned that Ellie was going to need open heart surgery the week that my family medical leave expired. I asked for more time off, unpaid. No dice.

So in effect, the decision was made for me. In some ways, it was a real relief not to be responsible for making such a huge decision. I love staying home with Ellie right now. I also miss work. And if my company had been more flexible - if I could have had 6 months or a year off unpaid, I believe that I would have returned to work and that the company would have been better off for it.

I'm almost certain that I would have returned to work if my company had offered:
- extended leave (up to a year, unpaid)
- on-site daycare
- reduced travel
- the opportunity for job-sharing or part-time employment

Alas, none of those options were available to me and I'm still a little bitter. I know that I am fortunate in that I don't have to work in order for us to keep food on the table, although we have had to tighten our belts (figuratively speaking only). I know that I am fortunate in that my not working was a choice that we were able to make as a family. But I feel that - in my situation - I didn't have much of a choice. I simply couldn't go back to work while Ellie was having or recovering from surgery. I simply couldn't leave her during her first and most vulnerable months. And that was the right decision for us.

Hopefully my career will resume, or take off in an exciting new direction, when I'm ready. When we're all ready, as a family.