A Smattering of Things

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a while.
I have been writing, though! You can read my August column in The Lamplighter here on page 13.

Some friends of mine recently made a pact to enter the Memphis Magazine short story contest this year. Like the oppositional defiant personality that I am, I declined to write my story, even though I knew what I wanted to write about, until two days after the deadline had passed. I'm actually pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Maybe once I finish tweaking it and polishing it up a bit, I'll look around for some other contest to send it to. I'll let you know how that goes.

Meanwhile, the kids have been back in school for two weeks now. They're adjusting remarkably well to being back in the routine, and Genevieve is doing great back with her sitter from last year. I had a harder time than usual going back to work for some reason, maybe because I had such a great summer. It would all be so much easier if I could wear tank tops and flip flops to work instead of having to look at least semi-professional in the 110 degree heat. So as much as I love summer, I'm finding myself longing for fall.

Other than that, I'm just trying to figure out what happened here at my house Friday night. As near as I can tell, a pack of drunk, evil elves broke in. I'm not sure what their purpose was, but while they were here they seem to have done their best to take every toy in the house and reposition it as far as possible from its proper place. They also played at least one round of Twister, used all the clean pillowcases as sleeping bags, and went exploring under the beds. As far as I can tell, their diet is comprised entirely of different kinds of dips, chips, crackers, and soggy lime wedges. However, this did not stop them from dirtying every dish in the house and then loading the dishwasher according to some bizarre pattern in which the objective is to fill the maximum space with the fewest pieces. This Friday I'm setting up the nanny cam.