Today, I Was A Parent

Which is my big excuse for not getting any writing done so far today. Instead of writing, I visited my son's kindergarten class. Mason has been having a little trouble adjusting to the new teacher/new routines. In art they did a project about their favorite part of the day, and Mason drew a picture of going home. After that, I thought, "Hmmm, maybe I should check things out," and since the teacher made an open invitation for us to stop by any time....

It was fun, and honestly, I'm glad I did it because it assaged many of my fears.

I still have concerns, but now I have more concrete information to base them on, which will help when it comes time again for parent/teacher conferences.

Then Shawn and I went home for lunch, and I'm only now getting around to "starting" my usual day as a writer.

So, I Guess I'm Teaching...

By chance, I happened to log-in to LJ last night around 6:30 pm and one of the readers of my blog casually wrote, "Hey, see you tonight! I'm taking your class at the Loft."

As A. A. Milnes might write: "!... !!... !!!"

The last thing I had heard from the Loft was two weeks ago, when they very kindly informed me that my class VERY LIKELY would be cancelled because they only had four people signed up at that time. My assumption (and you know what you get when you ASSume) was that they would give me a call or an email telling me if it WAS a go. Guess not. I'm just really, REALLY grateful for LJ right now and the chance that someone made an off-hand comment, or, as I told my students last night, I'd have been sitting home in my pajamas watching "The Closer."

Feeling Old...

... because I just discovered that Mason's kindergarten teacher is on Facebook.

You Say TV Like That's a Bad Thing

Over at the Wyrdsmiths blog, Kelly McCullough is talking about how he has been without a TV since 1983 and how this confuses people.

He doesn't actually say that thing you often hear from English and creative writing instructors say, which is "Turn off your TV" with the corresponding implication that people who watch TV waste their brains and all their creativity pools on the floor at their feet, but this implication lingers in between the text.

And I want to refute that.

If it weren't for TV, I wouldn't be a writer.

Let me say that again so that I'm perfectly clear: if it weren't for TV, I wouldn't be a writer.

I was inspired to write Archangel Protocol (under my other name) after watching an "X-Files" episode and watching the entire run of "American Gothic."

If the TV eats your brain, you should turn it off. But it's not all the evil-to-creativity that people imply that it is.

That's all I'm saying.

Foiled by Faeries!

So I wrote my usual Monday morning blog over at "Something Wicked," but let me tell you, girl, it's hardly worth the re-direct. I'm very uninspired today, and I blame that on my inability to drive through Minneapolis without getting lost.

A little background to explain the above: I'm currently a Saint Paulie, and have been for over a decade now. I lived for six years on the OTHER side of the river in Minneapolis (think Oakland vs. San Francisco. St. Paul = Oakland), but apparently the faeries of the place no longer recognize me as one of their own.

St. Paul and Minneapolis have a long and sordid rivalry. At one point, I'd hoped to write a novel that "explained" the profound differences between the two cities via magic and/or faeries. (Turned out the research overwhelmed my ability to make forward motion.) The thing is, Minneapolitans always complain about St. Paul -- they think it's impossible to find things in our town. Our former governor/former pro-Wrestler Jesse Ventura once infamously snarked that he thought the streets of St. Paul must have been planned by "drunken Irishmen." St. Paulies often feel the same way about Minneapolis (only I supposed we'd have to insert "drunken Norwegians"). After all, it's not a joke that in Minneapolis you can stand on the corner of Hennepin and Hennepin (it turns a ninety degree angle under the highway) and parallel streets will sometimes cross and flip sides.

After moving to St. Paul, I've become a rabid supporter of my town, and I think that the Minneapolis faeries are on to me. Because, I SWEAR, every time I have a reading gig in Minneapolis I get lost. (With the notable exception of gigs at either Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven, but both are located on the evil lay line of Lake Street, which may negate the faeries' ability to excert their magick on me.)

To this end, I spent much of my usual writing time this morning driving aimlessly through the southern suburbs of Minneapolis trying to find a Home Depot I've been to a thousand and six times.

It's definitely a Monday. Damn faeries!*

--------------------------------- * Note: before you alert my doctor that I'm apparently off my meds, this whole St. Paul/Minneapolis faerie thing is the product of my well-documented overactive imagination.