My Fun Life

This post is just to gloat about how cool my life is.

March is typically my busiest month visiting schools. Last week, I logged in almost a thousand miles of driving to and fro, hither and yon from southern Massachusetts to waaaaay up in Maine. On the same day!

I am incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I do for a living. I'm thankful for it every day (except when I'm sitting in traffic on my way to a school - then my thankfulness is sorely tested, I admit).

Here is a photographic essay of some of my thrilling adventures in the past few weeks.

Authorfest 2013 at Greenwood Elementary. I'm in good company at this cool event!

Some awesome stories created by Mr. Cormier's class at Sanbornton Elementary. Mr. Cormier was even working on a sweet blues version of this book.

And the kindergarten classes at Sanbornton Elementary made the cool trees based on Fall Is Not Easy.
And, if that weren't enough, the principal made me a delicious lunch.Yup.

The librarian at Sanbornton Elementary made a great looking bulletin board with a familiar face on it...

I rocked the house at Tupelo Music Hall in White River Junction, VT with Steve Blunt and Joe Pierog. And a stuffed dinosaur. We also rocked out at Tupelo in Londonderry, NH (sold out show!) and at Oyster River High School in Durham, NH. We're planning our world domination tour soon. Be warned.

My space at the Massachusetts State Librarian Association conference in Sturbridge, MA. It looked good for a few minutes.

Then this guy showed up. This is Jef Czekaj (pronounced "Jeff") a hilarious author and illustrator who may have the most amazing sweater in the universe.

Seriously. That is not normal. It was a fun morning hanging out with him.

Next week is another full week of visits and I couldn't be happier.

Fall Is Not Easy at Swayse School

You know what's great?
This is great:

Laura Yacek, from Swayse Central School in Brentwood, NH sent me these pictures when the school chose Fall Is Not Easy as the Book of the Month last October. How amazingly cool is that?

The librarians and the kids worked on some terrific projects that lined the halls of the school. Art, science, writing, and it all looks so fun, doesn't it?

I'm flattered and delighted to see how people use my books and make it such a wonderful experience for the students.

Thank you.

Gift Swap of Horror - 2013: At Least the Food Was Good

You know how sometimes, no matter how much you like all your friends, no matter how great they are and no matter how many wonderful things you do with them, sometimes you want to install a huge moat around your home and fill it with fire-breathing, jet-propelled sharks with freakin' laser beams on their heads so your friends cannot come anywhere near your house?

I feel that way about all my friends every year at the Annual Gift Swap of Horror. I know they feel the same way about me, so it all evens out. I'm sure that we can all be friends again someday. After the pain has passed.

A typical greeting, when people arrive for The Swap goes like this:

"Hi. Come on in. I'm so happy to see you. For now."
"Thanks. We brought some delicious food. It's good to see you, too. For now."

Because we know that, no matter how happy we are to see one another, within a few hours, we will be calling unholy plagues down upon one another for the horrible art we inflict on one another.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Swap, you can click here to learn of its shadowy origins because I don't want to have to write that all over again every year.

We eat and drink and chat amiably, but throughout the evening, there is an underlying current of apprehension and suspicion bordering on animosity. It is nearly palpable at times. You see people taking furtive glances at the pile of gifts, making mental calculations about how much horror each package can contain and offering up silent prayers to the gods of good fortune that they do not get stuck with that one. 

Each year at the swap, there is a that one. That gift that is so large, or so awkwardly wrapped, or so asymmetrical and ominous looking that people shudder involuntarily upon beholding it.

This year there were two gifts that fell under that heading.

One was the gift brought by Tim and Katie. It was obviously a triptych, a set of three, identically wrapped items, festively bound in a lively, hot-pink ribbon that assuredly belied the ugliness beneath. Each piece was nearly 4 feet tall and two feet wide, meaning that whoever walked away with it was looking at covering a lot of wall space in his home.

The second one was the awkward bundle that Ben and Ann both lugged into the house and set down with a thud that shook the living room. It appeared to be a wrapped plastic storage bin large enough  to hold the remains of a moose that you ran through a blender. The fact that the gift needed that sort of containment hinted toward something dire, indeed.

After the eating and the drinking and the stealthy inspection of the gifts, it was time for the drawing.

Names were drawn, fates were sealed, lives were ruined.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, I'll save myself a lot of writing here by simply getting it over with.

Ben and Ann drew our name and will be spending the next year living with this lovely portrait. Ben is laughing to hide his broken heart. You can see the joy that it has already brought to his entire family. His son, Caleb is not in the picture because he was in the kitchen, washing his eyes with steel wool.

We were next. The Kelley family had the good fortune to draw Tim & Katie's name. The one attached to 2,460 square inches of ugliness, spread over three tasteful panels.

Although the photo does not show it well, the dark gray band running throughout the piece is actually raised and textured so even if I am struck blind over the course of the next year, this piece can still make me unhappy with its awful tactile unpleasantness. Please feel free to drop by and feel it anytime you'd like.

Naturally, I was delighted to know that Tim and Katie would be the next ones to suffer.

And suffer they will.

They were sentenced to the gift brought by Ryan and Nicole, two relative newcomers to The Swap. Typically, us old hands love newcomers because they just don't get it. They will arrive with some mildly tacky bauble and leave, crushed beneath a breathtakingly awful, life-altering, steaming slab of horror. It's delightful to actually watch their will to live leave them.

No so with Nicole and Ryan. They did very well last year and eclipsed themselves this year with a brilliant piece that is in such staggeringly poor taste that Ryan actually apologized to the group in advance of it being opened.

Of course, we were giddy with anticipation as Katie opened the package to reveal...

A certificate of authenticity certifying the authenticity of this limited edition, genuine faux-metal commemorative bust of Princess Diana, tastefully displayed in a handsome, certified, authentic frame.

Please take a moment to contemplate the true, tasteless unpleasantness of this piece.

But take heart in the fact that it IS authentic and limited to 8,254,775 pieces.

And now, perhaps a moment of silence for Katie and Tim, who will be looking at that every day for the next year or so.

And so, it was time for Ryan and Nicole. Still buoyant from his recent destruction of Tim and Katie, Ryan jumped into the fray with an admirable, manful cheeriness that was richly rewarded with Julie and Scott's contribution.

An exquisite picture of Snoopy, hand-painted on the finest imported Mexican black velvet. Although it came with no certificate of authenticity, the words "Hecho en Mexico" stamped into the frame attest to the fine craftsmanship of this piece.

Classy and whimsical, all at once. It speaks to the very depths of the soul, screaming, "NOOOOOOOO!"

This is Julie and Scott's second piece on black velvet, hinting to the fact that they must have a secret supplier of paintings on black velvet. Scott, it is rumored, may actually be a lieutenant in the dreaded Mexican Pinturas de Terciopelo Negro Cartel.

Throughout all this, Julie and Scott sat stoically, alternately glad that they had not gotten Tim and Katie's triptych and deeply morose about the fact that they had drawn Ben and Ann's bucket o' love.

Scott approached the container bravely, like any good Mexican Painting Cartel member would. With Julie at his side, they opened it

to reveal

an authentic (although non-certified), wooden beaver, lovingly hand-carved with a chainsaw by some master artisan.

Julie is thinking of how she can convince the members of Scott's cartel to have the beaver get "lost" in a "fire" that doesn't look too suspicious.

Note the attention to detail and almost lifelike texture on the tail. Not to mention the eyes, which seem to look directly into your soul as it contemplates how best to kill you while you sleep so it can build a dam with your still-warm bones.

Ryan suggested that the beaver be named Justin and, no matter what Scott and Julie might say, that is the beaver's name. Justin Beaver.

After that, there was nothing much more to say.

Former friends sullenly packed up and trudged out to their cars to head home to begin recovering so they can spend another year scouring the earth, searching for a gift for next year.

A Cloud of Axe, a Cup of Rum, and Ben

The other night, I squinted through the swirling miasma of Axe body wash clouding the interior of my car. The semi-formal dance at my son's school was obviously an occasion that required him to smell like some sort of mid-range, 13 year-old gigolo.

"The girls love this stuff," he assured me. "Could you close your window? It's kind of cold in here."

This question, by the way, from the boy who is–I am not kidding–allergic to cold and absolutely refuses to wear anything warmer than a sweatshirt, no matter what the temperature.

I gagged, wiped my eyes, and tried to focus on not breathing for the entire 35 minute drive to his school.

If the girls do indeed love the musky, manly, overwhelming aroma of Axe, then I can only assume it is because it deprives their brains of oxygen, thus muddling their thinking. Perhaps the boys are confusing the effects of oxygen deprivation with olfactory delight.

Whatever the truth, everyone within a half-mile of the dance was able to inhale several lifetimes' worth of the heady aroma at the dance. Huge, billowing clouds of Axe swirled dangerously from the entrance to the school, roiling in oily, undulating waves across the parking lot, enveloping everything it reached.

Not wanting to be the next victim of Axe-phyxiation™ (I just invented that word. It's MINE.), I slowed my car and instructed Alex to jump as I drove by. "Tuck and roll!" I yelled over the thumping bass rumbling from the bowels of the school. "You'll be fine. And don't rip your new pants!"

Alex jumped from the car and, I can only assume, rolled into the parking lot, relatively unharmed. Just as I gunned the engine to make my escape before the hungry cloud of Axe could envelope me, a shadowy shape flickered through the fog and my buddy Ben dived through the still open door of my car.

"GO! GO! GO!" he screamed, slamming the door shut as the tires on my super-charged Camry exploded on the Axe-slick pavement. We raced from the parking lot in a desperate attempt to save ourselves.

As we pulled out onto the road, Ben sniffed tentatively at his coat and rolled down his window. "I think some of it is clinging to me. There's only one thing that can overpower the smell of Axe. Indian food."

I nodded and stomped on the accelerator.

Ben has been my best friend since we were 10 years old. He knows me better than anyone. He knows about my weakness for Indian food. He knows everything. Except the exact location of the great new Indian restaurant he heard about.

"It's somewhere over by the mall," he told me with assurance.

That narrowed the possible location down to a few hundred clustered strip malls that swarm around the big mall like ramoras clinging to the belly of a shark.

This is how directions from Ben work and, through some mystery of the universe, they are enough. He once gave Kerri and me directions to a lake house he was staying at. The directions included the phrase, "When you go through town, there's a place where a bunch of roads come together. You'll find the right one. It will just feel right."

And we found it. Just as, after missing it only once, Ben and I found the stark, florescently lit Grand India, or whatever it was called. We snaked our way through crowds of Christmas shoppers and pulled to a stop in the parking lot, the last wispy tendrils of Axe swirling harmlessly off my car and into the night.

We opened the door and a cloud of desperation, tinged with curry wafted out to greet us. Or, possibly, to warn us. Not heeding that warning or the warning that the restaurant contained a sole, depressed-looking customer on a Friday night in the busiest part of town in the busiest shopping season of the year.

We marched in and stood there for a few moments wondering how to proceed. There was a buffet set, with enticing, hand-written signs announcing a variety of dishes, all of which looked vaguely soupy and similar. The sole customer hung his head low over his plate an sullenly moved food to his mouth. No restaurant employees were to be seen anywhere.

We stood for a minute, wondering what to do. "Let's take a seat and see what happens," I suggested, my mind obviously still under the pernicious hold of Axe-phyxiation™. What I should have said, of course, was, "Shall we seek another establishment in which we may find sustenance?"

But alas, we sat down and waited patiently until an angry face popped out of the kitchen door and eyed us suspiciously. "Buffet?" he growled.

I looked at Ben and shrugged. "Sure," he said to the angry face.

Our kind host irritably jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the buffet table before disappearing back into the suspiciously silent kitchen.

We made our way to the buffet and, with less enthusiasm than should have been expected on such an occasion, filled our plates. I will not bore you with a review of the individual dishes, but neither of us will be returning there.

With 2 hours left to kill before we had to pick up our kids at the dance, we decided that the only reasonable option available to us was to head to the Chinese food place across the street from the school and use alcohol as a solvent to wash the taste of dinner from our mouths.

We pulled into the parking lot and Ben pointed to another restaurant in the same building, which, I feel compelled to point out here, is only 1,000 yards from the school.

"That's a really good Indian place," he said.

Once in the Chinese restaurant, we pushed through the crowd at the bar and settled in at a table for 8 in the back of the lounge. Once the Mai Tais were delivered, we scoured our mouths and talked.

And talked

And talked

And talked.

Although we have been friends for over three decades,  we usually have a lot to talk about. And when we don't, the silences that settle upon us are comfortable. I've found that the older Ben and I get, the more different we become, but those differences do not separate us. If anything, they make us closer.

The talk spiraled from art to food to old friends to stuff I'm not going to write here because it's none of your darned business.

As the evening wound down and the time to gather our kids came upon us, we sucked the last of the rum from the ice cubes in our sweating glasses and walked into the cold parking lot.

"Have you ever noticed how talking to other adults is usually really boring?" I asked Ben.

"Yeah!" he laughed.

Then I launched into a mind-numbingly boring story about repairs I had recently performed on my car's exhaust system.

And you want to know what a good friend Ben is? He didn't even comment on how boring my story was and the bitter, unpleasant coincidence of the fact that I had just commented on how boring adults are.
At least, he didn't comment out loud.
That's what kind of buddy Ben is.


We pulled into the parking lot of the school, the Axe fog now diluted by swirling puffs of exhaust from parents who–it appeared–sat in the parking lot, diddling on their cel-phones with their engines idling for the entire dance.

Ben jumped from the car and made a dash for his truck before the fumes could overwhelm him. We collected our kids and made our separate ways home.

It wasn't until the next morning that I discovered Ben's hat in the passenger seat of my car. I would hate for him to have a cold head and think that we'll have to get together again so I can return it to him.

After I wash the Axe smell out of it, of course.

Even Less Fun Than It Appears

Here is how it went:

This always seems much funnier in cartoons.

Me: Whoa... oh, oh, AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! [Incredibly foul word, yelled loudly and emphatically with great passion and volume.]

Kerri: What was... Holy [slightly less foul word, because she is a lady]!!

Me: [Piteous moaning, punctuated by repetition of the same word, but with less passion and volume.]

Kerri: Are you okay?

Me: I think so. I can still feel my toes. They hurt. So do my knees. And my butt. Does the ceiling look really bad?

Kerri: It doesn't look as good as it did before. Are you sure you're okay?

Me: It's only an assumption at this point, but aside from the incredible pain and the blood seeping through my pants, I appear to be okay.

Kerri: You're sure?

Me: Yes.

Kerri: Then, can I take a picture?

Me: [More moaning, a few more oaths and foul words.] Yeah. I guess. This will probably be funny later. I'm glad I wore pants today.


My generous neighbor–whom I now hate–gave us 100 square feet of very nice hardwood flooring that she had leftover from a job at her house. So, I had to install it. The only place that seemed reasonable, and was under 100 square feet, was in the upstairs hallway of our 200 year old house where nothing ever goes smoothly or without bloodshed.

I considered just leaving it like this, but the blood-stains clashed with the walls.

Naturally, this simple flooring project evolved into an elaborate horror show of ripping up old flooring and then, in a surprise turn of events, slipping on the nail-studded exposed floor joists and falling through the ceiling in a hilariously painful manner. I didn't go all the way through thanks to a strategically placed stud that allowed me to break my fall with my crotch.

See how hilarious my knee looks?

Warning, you just looked at a disgusting picture. Sorry. I should have warned you sooner.

So far, the free flooring my neighbor–whom I used to like a lot–gave us, has cost us over $250 in materials, not including medical supplies. And we're just getting started.

Next time, she can keep her left-overs.

Heavily Salted Lake & Lightly Salted Peanuts

Come on. Gather 'round and I'll tell you a story. A story full of intrigue, excitement,  full body searches, and lightly salted peanuts.

A long, long time ago, my buddy, the author and illustrator Dave Biedrzycki (pronounced "Smith"), sent me a top secret email that contained email addresses for some of his favorite author visit contacts. As instructed, I read the list, committed it to memory, and ate it -  which was more difficult than you might think and resulted in me having to buy a brand new computer, thank you very much, Dave.

After I got the new computer up and running, I sent out emails to those people on the list, detailing the many wonderful reasons they should have me come to their school and talk to their students about how to be an author. Just a few days later, I got an email from Donita Hughes at Grace Lutheran School in Sandy, Utah asking me to come visit.

Thanks, Dave!

Donita told me about their annual Author Festival and said that they'd fly me out there to talk to the students at the school.

I thought, "How cool is that? I can get one of those full body searches from the TSA that everyone seems so keen on these days. And probably some peanuts on the plane! I'm IN!"

I made my arrangements, packed my bags, and headed off to the airport. Then I remembered that I still had several months to go before the visit so I went home again.

Last Sunday, all my months of eager waiting were finally over. I headed off to the airport all atwitter with anticipation. And a small measure of dread. I haven't flown in a LONG time and I'll admit that I was a bit concerned by all the horror stories I'd heard about TSA screening. I didn't want to go through the full body scanner (Public Service Announcement: The scanners are OPTIONAL. Anyone can opt out. You don't need extra radiation in your body, people.)  and I had heard that the TSA folks made the opt-out process unpleasant.  I'm happy to report that all I did was ask to opt out, they took me around, gave me a quick, polite pat down and sent me on my way. No problem.

Once in the airport, I was free to wander around aimlessly until my flight was ready for boarding. My quick flight to Detroit was made even more delightful by two packets of complimentary "Lightly Salted Peanuts - Warning: Contains Nuts".

Detroit Airport, for those who have never had the pleasure, is a garden of earthly delights for the weary traveler. I began my adventure by traveling through the eerily green, throbbing Tunnel of Love.

Many fellow travelers did not appreciate the disco party I tried to organize.

I'm not certain that the airport officials actually refer to it as the Tunnel of Love, but I enjoyed it so much that I can think of it in no other terms. The lights along the tunnel changed color in time to the music thumping through the speakers. If not for my dedication to my job, I may have skipped Utah entirely and spent 3 days sitting in the tunnel, lost in its transcendent beauty.

But I had a duty to uphold and a school to visit, so I forged onward to the next terminal so I could find my gate. Rising from the tunnel, I beheld...

A mall.

At least, I assumed it was a mall. It had all the mall requirements: fast food, stores full of overpriced stuff, and hoards of people wandering aimlessly, staring at their phones. I was distressed by this until I saw a flash of red zip past over head. See it in the picture? Look closely. That's right. A little train zips endlessly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth high above the heads of the ordinary peasants forced to labor on their own two legs.

With several hours until my flight, guess who spent quite some time riding back and forth on the train?

Zoom!

Woosh!

Oh yeah, baby. Reaching a dizzying top speed of maybe 9 miles per hour, I felt like a superhero racing to and fro in the airport, searching for bad guys.

I didn't find any, however. Probably because the TSA guys were busy patting them all down.

Delta also has a help center that graciously provides temporary housing for people who have missed connecting flights.

I napped here for a few minutes.

In my wanderings, I also discovered that Detroit is nothing if not generous with its water supply.

After a half hour or so of flushing, I tired of standing around in the stall and wandered off to my gate where I was whisked away to Utah on another flight featuring even more lightly salted peanuts.

Utah–for those of you, like me, who have only been over or around it before–is really, stunningly lovely.

Here's the sunrise view out my hotel room window.

Have you ever seen prettier lights on a Wendy's restaurant?

No, but seriously. Look.

 My delightful hostess, Donita  picked me up and took me to Grace Lutheran School where I was greeted by even more amazing views.

Has your school got a view like this from the parking lot? If so, hire me so I can come to your school to verify your claim.

And here I am with Donita. Please note that she is much more photogenic than I.

A brilliant picture of up my nose and the lovely Donita.

Everyone in the school was wearing tattoos of Twelve Terrible Things in a brilliant, but slightly flawed attempt to win my "Free Books For Life" Contest.

It was hilarious, but I had to disqualify them because the winning tattoos cannot actually peel off.  I'm a stickler like that.
Donita said that she suspected there might be some upset parents if they tattooed all the kids without permission.
I say you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
We have agreed to disagree on the matter.

They had also created a wonderful bulletin board.

I seem to have hit a nerve with my dislike of Wal-Mart and cell phones. Sorry, guys. I'm not sure why they object to my barnyard pets, however. Probably because I didn't buy them at Wal-Mart and supply them with cell phones.

I particularly enjoyed this child, stranded in this locker in his undies.

And this brilliant rendering of a scene from Fame, Fortune, and the Bran Muffins of Doom.

My new friend Lilly also had me sign her cast.

Maybe someday she can hock this on eBay.

The kids and teachers were a lot of fun and I had an awesome time, but all good things must come to an end - though I've never been sure why that is.

The day wound to a close and I staggered back to the hotel (and by "staggered" I mean that Donita drove me) and I suffered through a few grueling minutes in the hot tub. Nobody said that being an author is easy.

Donita picked me up for dinner and reported that I had managed to displease at least one student because I had yet to post anything on my blog about their school. It had, after all, been nearly an hour.

But now it's written. Here it is. So, you happy now, kid? Huh? Huh?

I dragged Donita, possibly against her better judgement, to a great Indian restaurant where we enjoyed a toe-curlingly delicious meal. She then gave me a brief tour of Salt Lake City where I saw, along with the mind-bogglingly huge headquarters of the LDS church, the most amazing spectacle I have witnessed in my entire life:

A single street corner with 3 separate taco carts on it. THREE!!!

I could be wrong, but it appears that Salt Lake City may be the new taco headquarters of the universe.

There was also a Himalayan Restaurant that I'm dragging Donita to if I ever go back to Utah. At least, I'll go there if lightly salted peanuts go well with yak milk.

I saved some from the flight home. Just in case.