When we first saw this arguably charming but definitely neglected house seven years ago, my husband and I couldn't decide whether or not we should take on such a daunting project.

"Let's make a list of pros and cons," he suggested, so we each sat down with a pad of paper and began scribbling. My first entry under the pro side was "writing room." I could finally have a space of my own in which to create, to reflect, and to hide my Sharpie pens and chunky notebooks from my kids. (My husband repeated his first pro as his second, third, and fourth, too-- space for a big screen tv!!)

We ended up buying the house, but my dream of escaping to what would be my tiny writing room up in the attic remained a fantasy for quite a long time. I was too busy dealing with the catastrophes that were happening on a regular basis in every other part of the house. (The first six months alone brought us a host of problems that read like a list of plagues-- Fleas, Dead Furnace, No Water In Second Floor Bathtub, Half of Front Porch Suddenly Falling Off, Baby Possum Stuck On Roof, Kitchen Light Fixture Inexplicably Crashing to Floor, and Mysterious Thumping Noise Often Heard Underneath Dining Room Table.)

More time passed with still no progress on my little sanctuary. I'd be down in the basement, mopping up rainwater from the latest flooding, and fantasize about my room like it was some faraway exotic destination. I cut pictures out of the Pottery Barn catalog to give me inspiration on how to decorate it once I was finally ready. I envisioned a clean space with a Zen-like quality, streamlined to accommodate a sleek desk and chair, with little else to distract from my pursuit of creativity. One day on a whim, I bought an interesting vase at a cool gallery to hold my pens and that inspired me to finally haul myself up to the third floor. I think I wrote ten words before I heard the familiar "Mom! There's something wrong with the toilet!"

As it turned out, the vase was only one of the very few things I purchased to furnish my writing room. Almost everything else in here is a hand me down, usually from one of my daughters' bedrooms when they no longer wanted it. (Which explains the Sleeping Beauty motif on an old nightstand that now serves as my filing cabinet.) This room has become the cats' favorite place to sleep, so their beds litter the floor near my desk, which is a rescued table from my mother's basement. The dented bookshelf was left here by the previous owners, because it is simply too big to get out of the room.

And then, most unexpectedly, there are Blanche and Maude, the vintage life-sized wooden mermaids (although, come to think of it, who can be exactly sure what life-sized is when talking about mermaids?) that flank either side of my window. These were obtained at an antique show when I stopped in front of them to tie my gym shoe and the dealer said with a desperate edge in his voice, "Give me twenty bucks for the mermaids and you can take them. I'm sick of dragging them around to every show." How could I say no?

So that's how this odd scrap of a room came into being. The best part of working in here is the feeling of safely being tucked away and not being able to witness the dishwasher leaking all over the floor or the doorknob falling off the front door again. If I ever manage to come up with a best-seller, I'll use part of my newfound riches to buy that desk and chair. The Sleeping Beauty nightstand and sad bookshelves will both be tossed out immediately. The mermaids, however, can stay.

Confessions Of A Compulsive Travel Planner

I can’t help myself. Once my family decides where we will go on our next vacation, I begin to compulsively research every detail of our future destination. I quickly assemble an impressive body of information that includes every sightseeing tour available in the area, the reliability of the laundry service at the hotel where we plan to stay, and what we should expect to pay for local taxis. Within a matter of minutes, I can expertly discuss the pros and cons of the meal plans offered by each resort within a 10 mile radius of where we might stay.
Luckily, we like to escape our long Midwestern winters and visit warm places, so I can pack light clothing and reserve the rest of the suitcase for a library of guidebooks. But mere guidebooks are only the beginning of my mission. I also stuff a large plastic envelope full of brochures from my travel agent, any newspaper and magazine clippings I can find about wherever it is we are going and scraps of paper with notes and advice given by well-traveled friends. I then drag this envelope around for so much of our trip that it actually figures prominently in several of our vacation photos.
But still my work is not done. Because of the dozens of travel related websites available on the Internet, I can throw myself into a fact-finding frenzy that stops only when the computer finally crashes. It is those websites, though, which post travelers' opinions and reviews of almost any tourist destination in the world that are the drug of choice to a travel detail addict like me. From daily (okay, twice daily) readings of tripadvisor.com. mytravelguide.com and wheretostay.com, I am informed from past vacationers to our future getaway which local restaurants offer vegetarian menus and which do not. I find out what time to be out at the resort pool in the morning to get the best chaise lounges. I learn my way around places on which I haven't even yet laid eyes. “Take a sharp left at the stone carving of the dolphin,” I tell my husband who is looking for the car rental desk at the hotel on our first trip to Curacao. Someone had helpfully posted directions on fodors.com (or was it epinions.com?) for the car company’s less than centrally located counter off the lobby and I was only too thrilled to smugly recite them when the need arose.
I have to admit that not all of the advice I’ve taken from these message boards has worked out as well. A gentleman wrote a trip review of his visit to Grand Cayman Island and noted that the fish off the coral reef liked to eat CheezWhiz. I found this a bit odd, but I dutifully packed several cans of it in my suitcase and took it along. Perhaps the fish we came across while snorkeling were more health conscious than the ones he did, but the CheezWhiz did not seem to be greatly enjoyed by any of the marine creatures we encountered. I ended up bringing most of it back home with me, losing valuable suitcase space for souvenirs and getting strange looks from the custom officials looking through my bag, who were obviously wondering why anybody in their right mind needs to travel with that much CheezWhiz. Since no one in my family actually cares for CheezWhiz, it remains in the kitchen cupboard to this day. It is, my husband says, a junk food testimonial to his travel philosophy: “Just figure it out when you get there.”
Therefore, in a halfhearted attempt to allow myself just a hint of spontaneity on our next vacation, and in a sincere effort to educate my children in the process of travel planning, I made an announcement as we began to discuss where we wanted to go next. I was turning over the bulk of the Family Travel Research Project to our two daughters. Each would be expected to present a couple of relevant facts about the region we intended to visit, and suggest an activity that would deepen our knowledge and appreciation of the area. We decided on Mexico. The girls were given a week to compile their report. I held myself back with difficulty from immersing myself in all things Mexican and began to teach myself needlepoint instead.
The next week, the girls appeared at Sunday breakfast with fewer materials than I would have gotten from one half hour of surfing the Internet alone. I invited my younger daughter to begin her presentation.
“Cuba is a land frozen in time…” she began to read from a tattered folder.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “But isn’t that the report you did for geography class last year?”
“Well, it’s close to Mexico and a lot of the stuff is the same anyway,” she said indignantly.
I turned to my older daughter. “And what information have you found to share with us?” I asked.
“I thought we were doing this next Sunday,” she answered.
I’ve come to accept that this extensive preparation is part of the thrill of the entire travel experience for me. Plus, when I get home I immediately post all my advice online, telling everyone else where to stay, where to eat and where to shop before I have even finished unpacking.
To those of you who can merrily throw caution to the wind and travel without a carryon bag full of crumpled post-it notes about bike rentals and great places for authentic local crafts, I applaud your carefree style. Maybe one day I will join your spontaneous ranks and actually experience the thrill of discovery on a vacation. Until then, though, e-mail me if you want to find out the best shop for rum cakes on Grand Cayman before you even set foot on the island—or if you’d like to buy a few cans of well-traveled CheezWhiz.

If I don't post here for awhile, please call the Chicago police and have them check up on me to make sure that I am still alive. I say this because I think my husband may be trying to kill me. Apparently he has ruled out anything as obvious as slipping some rat poison in my Diet Coke or "accidentally" backing his car over me when we're cleaning out the garage--no, his method is far more subtle, one that will be difficult for even the most savvy of detectives to figure out.

To put it a very Sopraonos-like way, I think he's trying to whack me by suggesting that we get a 3rd dog.

That idea seems harmless enough until you know that we already have 2 Labrador Retrievers. Young Retrievers who have so much energy that our house actually shakes when they chase each other up and down the stairs on an average of 47 times a day. Big Labs who are tall enough to stand up on their hind legs and help themselves to whatever they like off the kitchen counter in the blink of an eye, including a bag of bubble gum mistakenly left there by my daughter. That caused me to leap out of bed at 3 in the morning, after I was awakened by the unmistakable sounds of a dog choking. I immediately rushed the Lab to the emergency vet clinic and only realized that I had been wearing 2 different shoes and had a lump of hardened toothpaste on my left cheek after I got back home with the now totally fine dog.

Ours are heavy Labrador who climb into our bed and insist on sleeping on top of me, so that I am practically pinned onto the mattress. (One time the black Lab slept so close to my head that when I opened my eyes in the morning, all I could see was black fur. For a second I thought I had gone blind during the night.) Labs who eat so much that I am constantly at our local pet store to buy giant bags of expensive dog food. I'm at the register so often that the chatty saleswoman just picks up the conversation where we left it off the last time I was there..."So anyway, Les, I told him my husband that he'd better take me on a vacation or else I'm going without him. And I tried that stuff you told me about for that rash on my arm and it didn't work. Okay, that'll be $98.46 and I'll see you soon."

It's not that I don't love our dogs--I do very much. But it is the same way you love a hyperactive toddler. As cute as that tot might be and no matter how much you enjoy being with him, you always breathe a sigh of relief when he goes down for a long nap. Now multiply that toddler by 2 and add on 130 pounds of energetic dogs both of who seem to have bypassed the sleep gene and you see why I'm an exhausted Dog Nanny. Neither dog seems to have the gene that allows them to be amused by any dog toy on the planet, because they immediately destroy any toy given to them. Chewbones that promise on the label to "give your dog hours of enjoyment!" are decimated by these 2 in a matter of minutes. The only thing that interests them is physical activity , so much so that I'm like the guy in the TV ad who kept saying "time to make the doughnuts", except that I keep muttering "time to walk the dogs."

In short, our dogs never stop moving, chewing, drooling, eating, jumping, or scrounging for inappropriate items to put in their mouths. And that means that I never stop moving as I take those inappropriate things out of their mouths, clean up the chewed remains of some vitally important item that I will now have to piece back together, figure out what it was and where to get another one, feeding them, pulling them down when they jump on couches, beds, and even the kitchen table. (Yes, the kitchen table. For one memorable period of time our yellow Lab would leap onto the table and take fruit out of the bowl and then leave it strewn around the house. Combine this with the fact that the same Lab liked to chew the heads of my daughters' old Barbie dolls and leave the them near the fruit and it looked like we were members of some weird cult, one that made its followers leave half chewed banana peels and mutilated Barbies in the corner of the living room in a bizarre worship ritual.)

I first caught on to my husband's murderous plot one afternoon when we were watching the dogs play with a ball in the backyard.

"You know what I think when I watch them having a good time like that?" my husband asked me.

"That you hope that they're wearing each other out and that they'll come inside and sleep for a few hours?" I said. "Or that they won't eat your cell phone again?"

"Nope," my husband shook his head. "Look how cute they are and Labs are so much fun to be around! Let's get another one to add to the mix. How much more work can it be when we already have these two?"

I was unable to form any coherent words at that point, which may be for the best. I'm going to act like I have no idea that my husband is trying to off me by getting another big dog, the very thing that will immediately sap any strength or mental stability I have left at this point. Let's fact it, I'll be a goner the first time I try to walk all 3 of them at the same time. So I'm just staying very alert and watching to make sure he doesn't try to sneak in the murder weapon--a bag of Puppy Chow.

During our long cold winter, many of my fellow Midwesterners dream of escaping to a sunny Caribbean beach. Me, I fantasize about garage sale season.
Forget about seeing a robin—I know spring has arrived when I spy that first GARAGE SALE sign along the road. I immediately burst into action, preparing strategies for the new season as I ponder which neighborhoods to target first and what route is the most efficient to hit as many sales as possible. (If I had studied biology in college even half as intently as I now pore over my garage sale itineraries, I’m confident that I’d be a noted brain surgeon today.)
During the season, I’m out early. I used to be honest with my family about where I was going, gaily announcing that I was “off to find some treasures!” But once the bounty I hauled home began to pack our closets, basement and garage, everybody began to discourage my missions. I then resorted to mumbling “I’m going to the market,” before I fled, but that was discovered to be a lie when I never returned home with any groceries. (You’re probably asking “why didn’t you stop at the store when you finished with the sales?” That couldn’t happen because my car became so loaded down with “treasures”, there was no room to put the grocery bags.)
Once at a sale, I move around the merchandise silent as a cheetah watching his prey before the attack. I may not look athletic, but you haven’t seen me sprint across the yard to grab that hand-painted tray I’ve noticed another shopper also eyeing. Suddenly I’m poetry in motion—and that poem is:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I saw that first
So hands off, you!

Being a garage sale addict isn’t always easy. There was the awkward moment last summer when my husband opened my glove compartment for a map and instead found a collection of vintage hatpins. Sometimes I stop to sift through stuff spread out on a driveway, only to be shooed away by the irate homeowner who’s just cleaning out his garage. And I haven’t fulfilled the dream of every sale junkie--- to appear on Antiques Roadshow and hear the awestruck appraiser say that the knick-knack I bought for two dollars is really worth a hundred thousand. Then my daydream turns into sort of a beauty pageant as the antiques expert puts a glittering crown on my head, singing,” There she is, Miss Garage Sales!”
Others welcome the end of winter when they see their first tulip. I’ll celebrate spring’s arrival only after I’ve bought a vase for fifty cents at my neighbor’s yard sale to stick that tulip in.

Just some thoughts on attending writing workshops...



The Eight People You Meet At Writers’ Workshops


At some point in your writing career, you will probably attend a writers’ workshop. That’s a great decision, because writing conferences can be an exhilarating experience. You can discuss the art of writing without being interrupted by everyday concerns like taking out the garbage or walking the dog. In a practical sense, you’ll gain tons of writing information, and will come home with at least a dozen new places to submit your work. You’ll be surrounded by fellow creative types who probably have many of the same writerly idiosyncrasies you do. (I still fondly remember a woman I met at a Vermont workshop, who, just like me, was totally incapable of writing a single word if she’s wearing shoes.) And at any conference, chances are good that you’ll also meet several other participants who fall into the following categories:

1. The Workshop Leader Wannabe. This member is a frustrated writing teacher. He constantly adds his opinions to whatever the conference leader says and frequently jumps in to answer other member’s questions. After the leader speaks, he’ll chime in with a “May I add something?” at least 10 times. Be prepared to have the workshop run an extra half hour due to his extra commentary.
2. The Confider. The workshop is like one long therapy session for her and she’s going to share a lot of personal details story at the first opportunity. As soon as the leader introduces a memory exercise, she’s off and running: “I wrote this because my ex-husband’s first cousin’s daughter once told me she hated my tuna fish salad. I remember how betrayed I felt by my husband, because he didn’t defend my decision to put onions in the tuna fish salad. I knew then that our marriage was a sham and soon I was proved right when he left me for his secretary. This piece talks about my emotions back then and how I feel now and how I hope to feel in the future.”
3. The One Who Never Reads Their Own Work Aloud But Has Plenty To Say About Yours When You Do. Enough said.
4. The Veteran. Count how many sentences this person begins with “Oh, I learned a different way to do that at---“(fill in the name of another workshop.) During the break, you’ll be hearing this participant compare and contrast this writers’ conference to every other one he has attended in the past ten years.
5. The Published One. This is dicey, because of course we all want to publish a book—why else would we be at a writers’ conference? But we vow to be gracious in our future published glory. We will not to mention the book in almost every paragraph we utter to our fellow participants, much like the woman I sat next to at one conference three years ago. I counted how many times she brought up her book that weekend, and came up with a final tally of 27.
6. The Self-Deprecator. At first you feel sorry for this shy creature, who begins each reading of her work with a nervous chuckle and a “This is really bad, but here goes…” By the fourth time this happens, it takes all the willpower you can muster not to scream out “just read the damn thing already!”
7. The Borrower. Shows up totally unprepared and needs to borrow a pen or paper. Didn’t this person realize she signed up a writing workshop?
8. The “Just Give Me That Agent’s Name and Pulitzer Prize, Here I Come!” Member. It’s usually the first workshop for this new writer. They think that getting published is as easy as just asking everyone else present if they “can give me the phone number of an agent who would want to read my soon to be completed novel. It’s a love story between a slave woman and space alien set during the Civil War. It’s gonna be huge!”
Okay, you’ve been alerted to the sorts of writers you’re going to find yourself surrounded by at a conference. (You may even find yourself with a mental checklist, X-ing off each type as you locate them, much like an avid birdwatcher out in the forest. Leave your binoculars at home though.) Sure, these eight can be a little annoying, but you’ve got to turn it all into a positive. They make the workshop interesting and you can view them as rich character sketches. Then you can become the ninth type of person you meet at workshops: The One Who Takes Everything Everyone Else Says and Does and Puts It Into Their Book.

When I was a sophomore in college twenty two year ago, I once spent 3 solid hours getting ready to go out one Saturday night with my then good friend, Lynn. Lynn was a popular member of a popular sorority on campus, and I was the exact social opposite of all that a popular girl in a popular sorority is.

We finally sailed out into the night once I was bathed, tweezed, perfumed, made up to perfection and dressed in what I then considered my by far "coolest" outfit. (So cool that I actually saved it until a year or two ago, until my 2 teenage daughters howled at it so derisively that I finally tossed it. Looking back, I realize I probably should have sent it to the producers of VH1's "I Love the 80's", but I was too tired to hunt for a box large enough to accommodate those Chicago Bear shoulder pads.)

But anyway, that long ago winter night back in Ann Arbor, I was positive my efforts had paid off and that I looked good. Not just good, but sexy with come hither eye make-up and the mousse in my hair holding the "feathers" in it just so. (Think Pat Benatar.) My jeans tucked into my short high heeled boots. (Think Pat Benatar again and never mind that the jeans were so tight that I could have caused someone a grave injury simply by exhaling, which would have caused the waistband button to shoot off with such force that it surely would have put an innocent bystander's eye out.)

Within five minutes, Lynn runs into a cute frat guy she knows and introduces me. "This is Lesley." And he nods at me and then he and Lynn have a very involved conversation about all their Greek brothers and sisters and I just stand there, nodding and smiling like I have a clue who they're talking about and trying not to blink too much so that my mascara won't smudge. When they finally finish, this adorable guy gives Lynn a kiss goodbye and says to me "Goodnight Helen."

Yeah, you heard it right--Helen. Is there any more an insulting name to mistakenly call a college junior trying to look sexy than HELEN, the name of your grandmother's roommate at the nursing home, for God's sake? The only woman who would be thrilled to be called Helen is one with a worse old lady moniker--those poor souls whose mothers named them Mildred or Dorothy-- after the spinster aunts they hoped would then leave them all her money when she died instead of to her cat. Compared to those names, Helen is a Playboy centerfold type of name, one who lists her interests as motorcyles and sky-diving.

I don't remember the frat boy's name, I'm no longer friendly with Lynn--but the memory of The Helen Incident has always stuck with me. Even now, I'd like to think that there is a remote chance that a stranger might think that I give off the exotic aura of possibly being named Deidre, Alexis or Justine. Instead, I'm burdened by the knowledge that something about me screams "Helen", a name reminiscent of a housedress wearing woman who knows how to make a flaky piecrust, clips coupons faithfully and drives a dependable sedan.

It's not the image I would have hoped for, but hey, at least I'll fit right into the retirement home
when I finally get there. And as added bonus, I'm pretty sure that Helen is the perfect name for the Shady Rest Bingo champion too.