Thursday, May 10, 2007

 

Well, tomorrow I leave on my sailing excursion with my friends. It will either be wonderful or a disaster. When Vicki emailed the sailing school to ask if she could bring a hair dryer she received an answer like this, "Well, the boat doesn't have any electricity, we rely on a battery, so maybe it's not a good idea." What the woman meant was, "You idiot! Who the hell brings a hair dryer on a boat? Perhaps our battery power is best spent on the lights that keep other boats from slamming into us, and not on helping you maintain a sleek bob." Needless to say, I was horrified that Vicki would even ask.

We have all of our gear - including new Coach sandals for me and Vangie, a new J Crew madras bag to carry the iPod and the new battery-powered docking station so we have music, the new sailing gloves and sailing sneakers that have a cool mesh so we don't grow mold in our shoes overnight, and, of course, the cute navy blue Gilligan hat. Vangie went overboard and sprung for the clips to keep our hats from blowing off, the strap to keep her sunglasses on her face, the headlamps so we can play cards without holding flashlights, and numerous other gadgets that she will never use again (unless this trip is a succes, in which case we're already planning the next sailing trip).

If you read about three women washing ashore off the coast of Cuba and being taken political hostages, you'll know it's us. At least Vangie is fluent in Spanish. And I'm sure Vicki could learn to like a good cigar. Bon Voyage!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

 
Yesterday's Publisher's Weekly included me in their "Three Answers" feature. Here's both the Q's and the A's:

PW: What's this book about, and where did the idea came from?
JO: It's an anthology, sort of an homage to Judy Blume, where contemporary female authors wrote about how Judy Blume affected them growing up and how that informed their life later on—not just as writers, particularly not as writers, but really just as girls growing up and the women that they became. I write both adult books for women and teen fiction for girls, so this idea came when, after I started writing my first teen book, it occurred to me that so many of the issues you write about in both genres are so similar—it's like the grown-up version of it—and I started to think of how what you read as a child affects you even as an adult, and I immediately thought of Judy Blume.


PW: What are "Judy Blume moments"?
JO: That's from my essay: the idea that every time I thought about how I associated with Judy Blume, they weren't these big pivotal moments, they were just really stupid things—a nightgown I owned, or watching my mother put on makeup as a kid. They're moments that, when they're happening, you don't really recognize how significant they are, and it's only afterwards that you realize that those were the things that make you the person you become.


PW: Do you think that girls who are reading Judy Blume's books are influenced in the same way today that girls were, say, 20 years ago?
JO: When I went back and read the books—a title like Forever, that was considered so risqué at the time, but compared to today's standards it was so tame. So I do wonder, when a girl today reads a Judy Blume book, if it has the same impact, because I think girls at a much younger age are a lot more mature now than perhaps they were 20 years ago. It's all still relevant, though. I read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great to my nine-year-old daughter, and she loved it. It's interesting how they've updated it: what used to be a record player is now a CD player. Just updating references like that made it a completely contemporary story, because it deals with timeless issues.

Monday, May 07, 2007

 

The other day I was killing time on a long flight and decided to peruse my date book. I've never really partaken of all the helpful pages in the beginning and end of the book - like the birthday guide, which has the birthstones and flowers and astrological signs associated with each month, or the health & fitness tracker, with its neat rows where I can keep drack of my target heart rate and the number of sets, reps and weight I lift. There was a page that I did find useful, however, as it listed the anniversay gift by year.

According to this list of traditional gifts, the first year should be commemorated with paper, plastics or clocks. Ok, it's just one year, no need to go overboard. Marriage is all about the long haul, so a little clock on year one, while not a gift I'd like to receive, is probably acceptable. But as I made my way down the list, the other gifts were equally as unattractive: pottery, willow or leather on the 9th anniversary. Furniture on the 17th. A musical instrument on the 24th (one of the most bizarre). But perhaps the strangest gift is the gift of groceries for the 44th year. 44 years? It's going to take 44 years for a man to go buy some groceries (for the record, in our house my husband does the grocery shopping - and we've only been married 13 years so I guess he's ahead of the game).

According to the chart you have to wait until the 60th anniversary for diamonds (and here I'd been trying to convince my husband that every anniversay is the diamond anniversary). The lesson here? Buy your own diamonds. You'll get them sooner and you'll actually get the ones you want. Besides, it lets him off the hook so he can figure out what to get you for anniversary number 46 - original poetry tributes.

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