I awoke this Mother’s Day morning on a docked World War II submarine.

My son and I had traveled yesterday to Muskegon to spend the night with his cub scout troop aboard the U.S.S. Silversides.  We arrived early evening under pleasant weather conditions.  There was a tour of the sub, followed by a pack retiring of the Colors, followed by free time.  Pizza was eaten, and much fun was had by all:  on shore, on deck, and down below (where it wasn’t as cold or crowded as I feared it might be, but where it did smell strongly of old fuel fumes).  The night was somewhat disorienting (thankfully I was in a cot rather than one of the three tiers of suspended bunk beds, but still it was hard to sleep on a sub; plus my appointed on-patrol half hour was 3-3:30 a.m., not my favorite time of day to be up), but the trip as a whole was a wonderfully memorable experience, declared by my son to be “the best cub scout event ever.”  I concur heartily.

The two of us did have a bit of an adventure en route, one that adds more proof to my theory that I’m incapable of making even a simple journey without encountering – or creating – a weird snag of some sort along the way.  We were running late; and near the end of the drive, a good 15 minutes behind schedule already, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn and that the beachside road I was on went on for many, many miles before there was a place to pull off and turn around.  (As you may have guessed, I was wrong on both counts, but haste doesn’t always make for clear-headedness.)  So I decided to turn around sooner rather than later, and chose to execute a quick three-point turn.  However, what I assumed was paved shoulder followed by sandy shoulder followed by sand was instead just paved shoulder followed by deep sand; so my front tires unexpectedly left solid pavement and dove into sand where I got S-T-U-C-K!  Luckily some good samaritans happened along and handily shoved my car back onto the roadway, without even asking how the heck I’d gotten myself into such a strange predicament.  (People of Muskegon, though I’m not demonstrative by nature, I hereby declare that I love you.)

The incident will most certainly be permanently filed in my memory bank under the headings “Blockhead driving maneuvers,” “Haste makes waste,” and “You know what they say about the word ‘assume.’”  But because I was traveling with my son, it also has another tag attached:  “Funny.”  As soon as we were back on the road, he declared, with a big grin on his face, “That was hilarious!”  And he couldn’t wait to tell people later about what he called “Mom’s dunebuggy incident.”  He helped me see the humor in what had transpired, and he folded it in nicely to the overall trip experience.  Which is a healthy and mature way to deal with such a happening, one that adds more proof to my theory that I learn more from my children than they’ll ever learn from me.

Very apt that I was reminded this as part of memorable Mother’s Day!

Boy, it’s been a week of firsts.  Tuesday was my first ever school visit as an author, and tomorrow is my first ever book launch (at Schuler Books Eastwood Towne Center, 11 a.m. – hope you’ll come!).  And today was my first-ever radio interview.  I think it went fine, although I have to say that if writing doesn’t work out for me, I don’t think the broadcast arts are a back-up career area for me.  But Karen and Jack at WLNZ were very kind and gracious, and I stopped feeling nervous about halfway through my on-air time.

However, I was nervous enough for long enough that I neglected to say something that I’d planned to include when I talked about my event tomorrow.  I wanted to express my sincere appreciation to Schuler Books for hosting my story time and author reception.  All the Schuler Books locations, here and in the Grand Rapids area, are full of top-notch booksellers, and Rhoda and Whitney at the Eastwood location have been supportive and encouraging about my debut author event.  In addition, my writing group has been meeting monthly at the Eastwood location for many, many years, and we’ve never been tossed out the café, even when we’ve managed to get a little loud.  So thank you, Schuler Books!!!  Can’t wait until tomorrow, and I hope lots of folks will come on out and say hello.  See you there!

The temperature has been dancing all over the thermometer lately.  This is troubling to the tulips, but it’s particularly perplexing to our resident cats.  One day, open windows and warm breezes, aka kitty heaven.  The next, it's closed windows and cold nights.  Our feline wonders are sure that if we would just open the windows back up, the warm air would return.  So they spend most of their waking hours running crazily through the house, ruing their lack of an opposable thumb and mewing “Open, open, open,” as best they can.  It’s the obvious solution, after all.

If it doesn’t warm up and stay warmed up soon, I might just try it.  There’s something to be said for cat logic.

• On my CD player right now:  Rodrigo y Gabriela.  A terrific album.  Highly recommended.
• Still making my way through my forest of digital photos, but I've managed to put a few new tree photos up.  See Trees II over on my Other page.
• A few inches of snowfall here overnight.  Looks like the new cross-country skiis might get a little use this week and weekend.

• Chicago Manual of Style Q&A.  Always interesting; often amusing.
• Conjugate Visits, the blog of June Casagrande.  A funny woman who would know whether or not I should have used "whom" in my first paragraph, as well as whether or not it should be "who" in the present sentence.
• Typo of the Day for Librarians.  A devoted bunch of librarians committed to keeping online catalogs free of errors.  Their entries are frequently fascinating, especially those by Carol Reid.

• At work, be more mindful of my word choice when talking to the copy machine about its job performance.
• At home, take the garbage out when it's full instead of trying to add one more item and then having a refuse avalanche.
• Stop chewing gum in public.  I've historically held the habit of gum-chewing in mild disdain, yet I've somehow over the years become a gum-chewer.  Go figure.  To make matters worse, I have an unfortunate propensity for bubble blowing, something which is So Not Appropriate for a forty-year-old.  This being so, I resolve to save my gum-chewing for home, and perhaps driving.  Never at major awards ceremonies.
• Determine whether or not the fact that my printer makes a pigeon-like noise for approximately 40 seconds after I power it off is something to be concerned about.  Ditto the similar noise emitted by my refrigerator.
• Stop tucking my hair behind my ears, as it looks pretty dopey that way.  Of course, it also looks dopey the other way, but a little variety (in hair and in life) is a good thing.
• Do a better job with compartmentalizing the various areas of my life.  This is, I believe, a pretty common concern and resolution, and not really a realistic one (it's a little vague -- kinda like "Be a nicer person") so I put it out there as more of a reminder to myself than a true resolution.

• Since my writing resolutions are resolutions I'd actually like to follow through on, I'm posting these to a separate page so that I can do monthly follow-up on whether or not I'm meeting them.  Nothing like a little public humiliation to light a fire under your muse!