An Open Letter to Everyone, and the Lamest Book Review Ever
Reviewed today:
Dear Principal of Lousy School:
Yes, I know that y’all miss my kids. Thanks for the call yesterday. They are well-behaved children and don’t cause a ruckus. But you gave us lice. We might come back next week, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. In the future, please send home a letter when you are lousy. Or at least call. Or at least check heads. Anything less is… irresponsible. Which is not a skill we want to learn at school or at home.
Here’s to being a grown-up,
WM
Dear Ariel Gore:
Your new book, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights (Paperback), is frickin’ great. I got halfway through it (I love the interviews, even the fake one, which cracked me up) but then I started crying. I love to write. I would love to get back to my old manuscript, and my old, old manuscript, and maybe even a new manuscript, but I am tapped out here.
HOWEVER. This will not last forever. So when we were at lunch, and my girlfriend A kept sneaking peeks at the book and flipping through it, then looking at me, as if to say, “You want to send this book home with me, don’t you?” I did not. (It really is that kind of book — you want to have your way with it, once you open it.) I will finish reading it, then I will write, query 15 more agents and hope for the best. Then, and only then, will I loan A the book. Or perhaps I will sleep with it under my pillow, like girls do with slices of wedding cake, hoping. Perhaps I will make A buy her own copy.
Yours in getting published somewhere other than Thee Blog,
WM
Dear Readers:
You read me daily, or almost daily, yet no comments? What’s up? Was it something I said?
Just wondering,
WM
Dear Jane “Ed.D.” Nelsen, Lynn Lott and H. Stephen Glenn:
Thanks for sending along the Positive Discipline series for review. Someday, I promise you. But not today. I am tired and need to go take a bubble bath.
Yours in parental strength,
WM
Dear Wacky Anne, who suggested that the kids and I take two-hour lunches while we’re homeschooling:
Brilliant! Today we went to Marinepolis Sushi Land with my sister (and frankly, I don’t care if the Moonies supply their fish), then to Staccato Gelato, THEN to Hannah Bea’s Poundcake and More for coffee and games. It was more of a three-hour lunch.
Yours in tighter jeans,
WM
Dear Hannah Bea’s:
Why must you make such delicious poundcake? I keep nibbling — first the lemon glaze, then a bit of poundcake, then I break off another hunk of lemon glaze. The whole cake will be gone soon if I keep this up. You have turned me into a 12-year-old that’s how happy I am.
Love,
WM
Dear Donald Miller:
Your book is cool. Thanks.
Yours, spiritually,
WM
, 
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hey – is this also what you post in your reviews on amazon? How would I know if I’m reading the review of somebody legit, like you, vs. some nutcase?
April 17th, 2007 | #
I mostly forget to post on Amazon.
April 17th, 2007 | #
Dear Wacky Mommy,
Sorry about the lousy lice. But glad you’re getting to experience the glory that is the two-hour homeschooler lunch.
We’re moving east of Peninsula Park, near Vancouver and Ainsworth. Is that close to you? Is it close to flying bullets? My kids heard there are going to be other kids next door and that was about enough for them.
Yours in NoPo madness,
RM
April 17th, 2007 | #
I heart you, WackyMommy. Maybe there are few comments right now because the whole V-Tech thing has us all speechless. Three hour lunches? Pound cake? No one ever told me that home schooling involved pound cake! Between school violence and your lunches, home schooling is looking more and more attractive.
April 17th, 2007 | #
Once, a friend with 4 children who chose to homeschool for a few years looked at me and said “Is it OK if my main motivation for homeschooling is that I don’t have the energy to get them out of their pajamas in the morning?” I said yes.
Now she sends some of them to school. I suggested she use my method–send the children to bed in their school clothes. Voila! no dressing battles in the morning. Not that I ever do that with my daughter….
I love 2 hour lunches. Slow food, indeed. We often play cribbage and Boggle and Scrabble during breakfast and lunch. It is very educational. The only downside is that our game pieces are a little sticky. Your children will treasure your homeschool week(s).
It beats being in a PPS cafeteria where all you can hear are the teacher monitors saying “Let’s go. Clear that tray and get out to the playground.” We called it the cattle call. For the 2 years before we homeschooled, I went every day for lunch for a number of reasons, including the fact that my daughter was traumatized. Sometimes I signed her out and we went and sat on a bench in the community garden and ate. Several magical lunch hours were spent in large trees on the edge of the playground. Once when we ate at home, we heated up Wild Rice soup, made a tent near the fish tank, sat in it and pretended we were Omakayas and her grandma from the book “Birch Bark Canoe”. We had raisins instead of dried blueberries.
On another topic, Walter Mosley also wrote what sounds like an interesting book about writing “This Year You Write Your Novel”. I was hanging on his every word during his mid-day interview on NPR today.
April 18th, 2007 | #
I’m a bad commenter. more of a lurker, but really actually, stalker-ish I suppose. ?I retain information like a sponge, and then email, and bloggers think I’m a freak, so I shut up.
Er, perhaps I should do the shutty up thing now.
April 18th, 2007 | #
I love comments! Thanks, you guys.
April 18th, 2007 | #
I believe Portland Public Schools has a new Health and Wellness policy. While it directs ways to not turn kids into crackheads, it totally left out ways to avoid infestation. I suppose steps such as a 1/2 sheet of paper sent home with each child in a lice-infested classroom would be too costly and labor-intensive. Ditto the email blast to affected households with internet connections. Way too expensive. And the automatic phone call the district delivers when your kid is absent for one freakin day? Way to costly and who wants to bother? Easier to watch them itch and send each and every head of household of affected kids to the loony bin with delirious eshaustion from cleaning and nit-picking. So please cut the school district a break and understand that there could never be a way for them to possibly notify you that critters were crawling around your child’s classroom. The $1.20 for copies could cause the whole house of cards budget to crash down. While home-schooling may not be cheaper (gelato and pound cake expenses add up) it is definitely healthier. Good luck Wacky Family!
April 18th, 2007 | #
Hey I comment! Shut your griping! Just kidding. I totally feel your pain. I figure I’m lucky if 10 percent of my blog stats comment. Do you run about that?
April 18th, 2007 | #
Mary, heh heh heh.
Edj, today it’s about 100 percent, it would appear.
April 18th, 2007 | #
Hi Wacky Mommy,
I love pound cake, and even better if it’s lemon glaze topped. I bet that would go good with a cup of coffee…
April 18th, 2007 | #
It did.
April 18th, 2007 | #
I have asked if I could enroll my kiddos at your homeschool before – now I want in! Poundcake, indeed.
April 18th, 2007 | #
The first book about the writer looks cool and I like to read funny stuff.
April 18th, 2007 | #
We’ve been meaning to go to Hannah Bea’s ever since we moved to North Portland. I even drove past it today, and thought about it. Now that I have this affirmation, next time I will stop.
Mallory–homeschooling is *all about* pound cake. And any other dessert your heart desires. When you are homeschooling, you can consider a trip to Hannah Bea’s to be a field trip, and of course, everyone knows that baking goodies at home is math.
Wacky Mommy, are you really going to homeschool? I think the homeschooing community would be honored to have you join it’s ranks.
April 18th, 2007 | #