Tuesday Slice: Accidental success

 

I can't share an elevator

with Tina Fey

because our dogs don't get along.

She and her husband 

are wonderful people, though.

When I was nine, 

I wanted to write comics.

My classmates told me

my drawing sucked.

So I started typing stories instead.

Here we are, thirty years of the series.

Magic Tree House is thirty, too!

Mary Pope Osborne and I are friends.

I never planned to write for kids.

But I ended up at Scholastic,

writing social studies magazines.

Then a humor magazine.  

Remember "Bananas"?

I was asked to write YA horror.

I hadn't done that before, 

had to read some before I started.

I changed my name 

from Robert to R.L.

just like S.E. Hinton.

The first book was a hit.

And the second.

Remember Fear Street?

I was asked to write scary books for kids.

Here we are, 300 books later!

In the beginning, I was writing a book

every. two. weeks.

Not anymore.

I write ten pages a day.

My editors help keep me straight,

tell me if I've done that bit before.

Writing is easy...

if you write the outline first.

I outline the entire book, 

beginning, middle end.

Then the writing part is easy!

Have fun!  Enjoy it!

Not one word comes from my heart.

I entertain people!

Thanks for thirty years of Goosebumps, Bob.

Image and paraphrased anecdotes from a Zoom visit sponsored by 

Sam Houston Stare University Library Science Department.

Tuesday Slice: Mind-full words

 

To get through this

I need more of this

and, maybe,

an appointment with a

therapist.

Tuesday Slice: Weeding

 

Books only come to life

if they are read, I tell myself,

as I spy old favorites

strewn across the

library tables.

The report ran hundreds

of pages long

Books that were sitting

on the shelves, 

barely touched, if at all.

Five or six dozen at a time,

they are displayed for a week

Every student and teacher 

encouraged to look there first,

rescue them if they need

to be brought to life again.

There are a few I rescue, 

knowing they still fit 

within our curriculum.

After the last class on Friday,

we box up the remainder

and send them on

to the warehouse

for someone else

to breathe life into the stories.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: In memory of

 

I am providing the prompt for our Spiritual Thursday writing group this month:

"In memory of..."

As the ephemera for Dia de los Muertos multiplies in stores and decor it 

occurs to me

I have no family plot

My grandparents interred

in their urns to the north

Relatives buried or burned

from coast to coast

My own mother

five-hundred-eighty-three miles

to the west

(Unlike my husband's side--he

took me to his family's cemetery

as a means of introduction)

And just like that, an ofrenda makes sense.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

As a child, Halloween was all about the costume and the candy, followed by obligatory attendance of Mass for All Saints Day.  When my mother passed just months after my thirtieth birthday, my focus began to shift to the true meaning of these holy days and the ancient need for connecting with our ancestors that precedes Church.  I find myself yearning for signs, dreams, anything that forms even the thinnest of links with loved ones who have left the mortal plane.  

And then a memory popped up in my Facebook feed.  

Maybe those links are there in the crochet chains and stitches, in the afghan on my bed, the pictures on the wall, my mother's hands becoming my own.   

An ofrenda surrounds me in art, recipes, handiwork.  I just need to pause, notice, and give thanks...and light a candle or two.

Tuesday Slice: Let it burn

 

The cough has been coming on for a few days, but the fever didn't hit until Saturday night.  Just a smidge under a hundred; I wasn't feeling too prickly, so I took a Mucinex for the cough and headed to bed.

I woke up at seven-thirty, dizzy as soon as I sat up.  Checking my temperature a few minutes later confirmed my suspicion--I was a smidge over one hundred.  After making my coffee, I settled in for a day on the couch, getting up to rehydrate, check my temp, and take a COVID test, which was negative (whew).

The thermometer kept bouncing between ninety-nine and a hundred all day.  I was hoping it would burn itself out, but the thermometer read one hundred point four after my four-thirty alarm on Monday morning, prompting a text to admin and a sick day entry on the absence portal.

Monday came and went in a haze of PBS shows, some light reading, and feeding a returning appetite.  Temps continued to remain below a hundred...would I get to go to work on Tuesday?  The intermittent coughing decided to become more constant at bedtime. After a midnight trip to the kitchen for more meds, I bunked on the couch, propped up by pillows and hopefully out of earshot of my sleeping husband.

The four-thirty alarm was brutal...but temps are below a hundred, and sub plans are a pain in the rear.  Off to work I go, with cough drops in my pocket.