feverish writing,
sure i won’t get it all done.
deadline comes: thursday.

inspriation flows
if time would cooperate
and kids sleep early

attempting poems
for the first time in eight years
(should be writing)

haikus bring release
from laundry and dishwashers
and girls who need baths.

writing these haikus:
fifteen minutes I wasted
not writing my book.

ten thousand words now
(I can’t believe it either)
spanning two projects.

conference is friday
i’m taking annie with me
(she’s the real writer)

When I was 25, my husband and I took a trip to France.

I spoke high school French and added a couple semesters at the university. It didn’t get me very far in the city except OUT of the metro station [I could read sortie and understand that it led out]. The Parisians (still my favorite city in the world) just rolled their eyes at me when I tried to order a pastry on the Champs Elysee. They’d rather me just order in English which they could understand better than my horrific French. They must be used to loud Americans in their shiny athletic shoes (not cool!).

But in the little towns, my little bits of French were extremely helpful. My husband, fluent in Spanish in Mexican towns, was at a loss in France and had to rely entirely on me.

And in these little towns the French people weren’t puffy Parisians at all. They were provincially kind and eager to meet Americans. They grinned at my terribly pronounced French and tried to speak slowly so that I would understand them in return. Even so, after two weeks there I still understood written signs much better than spoken language.

Back in Paris at the end of our trip, my husband and I took a sunset cab ride up to the Montmarte district. On the top of a hill its a tourist’s paradise because of the views, the souvenier shops and the artists painting on easels right on the streets.

In broken French, an obviously American woman approached me and asked for the time. I laughed and we chatted as I explained I was American too and she could ask me in English if she wanted. She was so relieved to find out I wasn’t going to bark back at her about her poorly executed attempt at “Quelle heure est-il?” and felt instantly comfortable with me, a stranger, because I spoke her language.

There is something comforting about finding someone who speaks your language. Or when I find someone who understands my own language. Because my language, my personal language, is more than just “English” or “American English” or even my Southern California spin on it including idioms, accents (we have none, by the way) and syntax.

My “language” is the language of time spent together, of regular affection, of meaningful words. I can only hope that I’m understood well within my family, that my own personal language isn’t “broken” and that I’m able to understand well those whom I love most.

I hope I get back to France someday, and the further I get away from my college and high school French, the worse off I am. But I’m not worried. I’m understood here.

I love to bake.

I’m not a pro, but it has been enough of an interest in my life over the past decade or so that I’ve tried and failed and succeeded more often than not at pies, cakes, tarts and crumbles. My family usually asks me to bring the desert to family dinners because they assume my 3 layer carrot cake will be good and won’t have fallen on the way over. And it usually is good.

Baking requires known ingredients (ones I didn’t create myself): flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs. And also a little of my own flair and creativity: maybe a little extra cinnamon, pecans not walnuts, dried cranberries instead of raisins.

I basically use what I have and then add a little of myself to it to make it better.

This is how I write.

I don’t create events in my life, and I certainly don’t create words (I hope; let me know if you see a new one). I use these things: experiences, emotions, thoughts that I have and of course, the beautiful words in the English language, and I add a bit of myself to it all.

This is creativity — using known ingredients in a new and different way. I think this is true with all artists. There is no new chord on a guitar that hasn’t been played or no new color painted on a canvas. All the ingredients are there; we just have to use our energy and ourselves to create something new and flavorful.

So maybe next time, I’ll add less carrots and more sugar in the cream cheese frosting to come up with a taste that is all my own, both in writing and in baking.

I’m no longer Wii-Fit. Sorry. Life got in the way in January. Don’t worry, my husband and I still compete in other areas, as it should be.

But I’m watching my eating and if we all just forget about the late night appointment I had with a day-old Sprinkles cupcake on Monday then I’m doing quite well.

However, my daughter, the Wii-Fit not withstanding, is currently becoming very skilled on the Wii. Maybe too skilled.

Quick digression and I will explain.

This same daughter, my champion speller seven-year-old, the kid who was reading at age four, the one who can pretty much look at anything and have it memorized within a five minute time span, the girl who has had sight words down before she entered Kindergarten (trust me, I’m neither exaggerating nor bragging), missed a simple spelling word in the car this morning.

The long “e” sound this week: words like “she”, and “bee” and “sheep”…easy for her. Then I asked her to spell “we” and I used it in a sentence…”We go to the store.”

Her answer? (remember, champion speller and memorizer)

“W, E, I, I?”

ARGHHH! Too much Wii playing, apparently. Too much exposure to the wrong way to spell something. I don’t blame her, or technology even, I am just now aware of all the minute details of life my kids will have to master that I never did. Like the difference between “we” and “Wii”, obviously homonyms.

I’m sure technology and all of its drawbacks will affect this generation of children in ways that we will never be able to measure until its too late. And the only thing I can do is stay informed and be a moderating element in my daughters’ lives. I can make wise choices for them now and help them make ones for themselves as they get older.

Spelling words aside, I guess if we are the Facebook Generation, my kids might be part of the Wii Generation. But who knows, one of her challenge words this week is “tweet.” I had no idea twitter was part of the first grade curriculum.

Oh…they’re talking about birds….

Adopt a Greyhound from Sarah Markley on Vimeo.

Re-runs of “Magnum, P.I.” make me smile.

When I was on bedrest for six weeks during my first pregnancy, I bought Christmas presents online, ate rice cakes and watched “Magnum, P.I.” Tom Selleck in all of his flip-flop wearing glory, prancing around like the James Bond of the Hawaiian Islands, just made me feel comfortable. Two episodes were on every morning, and I wouldn’t miss them. Then I would turn to “Murder, She Wrote.”

[Angela Lansbury makes me smile too.]

They feel like comfort food to me.

Lately I’ve been watching “I Love Lucy” episodes on DVD with my seven-year-old. Lucille Ball’s physical comedy (think vineyards in Italy, or wrapping candy from a conveyor belt) makes us both laugh. I watched them a lot growing up (and they were old then) and I still love them. Sometimes I will even put one on in the living room as I’m cleaning the house. Its as if Desi Arnaz’s familiar Cuban-flavored laughter and slang are comforting…the laugh tracks, all of it. In a strange way, it soothes me. And even though I don’t smoke cigarettes in my apartment and let my three-year-old play the bongos, I wonder if Lucy and Ethel aren’t my friends somehow.

They just make me feel like I’m home.

I planted spring flowers today.

Pansies and petunias, cosmos and bluebells.

And like a vegetable garden (my dream someday to have both the time and the soil), they will only last through the summer. And that’s if I’m lucky and I can keep them watered through the dry California heat that has already begun.

Pink jasmine and marigolds, fit for the “full sun” of my deck.

They have to be replanted every year and they only last for the season they bloom. And I like it that way.

Brilliant, fragrant color for the now…the current, and then both the scents and the hues will fade. But by that time, I will be ready for autumn again and won’t mourn the passing of summer.

My girls got upset last winter when they saw the rose garden at school trimmed down to the nub. The gardeners, like they are supposed to, cut back all the bushes so they’d grow bigger and more beautiful in the spring, I told them. They would have to wait through the season of “no roses.”

And this morning, as we walked into school and past the rose bushes, a few had begun to bloom. Naomi stopped to smell them as we passed. There is always the promise of the bloom even when the bush looks so ugly with its grey-green prickly branches.

And so right now, both on my deck and at school, we are in the season of blooming. I won’t mourn the passing of time because I know that next spring will bring new plants and new blooms.