So sorry I haven’t been blogging much this week, but I’m hot and heavy into edits on my second book. I finally finished editing the first part enough to have my first beta reader — Superman!

It’s always nervewracking to have someone beta-read your book for the very first time, but I think it’s especially nervewracking to have your spouse read.

I get more nervous about Superman reading my manuscripts than anyone. I just want him to like them so desperately, and I worry he’s going to think they’re corny or too over-the-top, or raise his eyebrow at the love scenes, or … I don’t know. I just get really nervous.

So I’m working hard this week to give it one last polish as I feed him sections. So far I think he’s on Chapter 7. … And he keeps asking for more, so I think things are good. 

How about you? Do you let your spouse beta-read for you? Does it make you unbearably nervous?

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My oldest son combs back his hair and adjusts the collar on his new McDonald’s uniform. It’s his third day of work. His first job. He’s 17.

I’m really proud of him for going out and finding this job. We gave him my old car this year and agreed to pay for his insurance (which doubled ours, incidentally – ayee!). But we didn’t agree to pay for gas. Or much gas, anyway – we give him about one full tank per month to get to and from school, but beyond that, he’s on his own.

And he’s got a girlfriend.

(Girlfriends can be expensive.)

And he’s got a big group of friends who like to go out and do stuff.

So off to find a job he went. …

Of course, watching him look for a job made us all talk about “first jobs” around the dinner table a lot in recent weeks.

My first job was in a sandwich shop when I was 16. Superman’s first job was in a snack bar at “Gemco” (remember that store?) when he was 16. He also worked at a gas station and a Christmas tree lot. My mom’s first job in high school was in a dress shop in Downtown Akron. She always talks about taking the bus there and how she’d have to change her shoes after slugging through the snow down the sidewalk. My dad’s first job was technically as a newspaper boy, but his first “real” job with a regular paycheck was at a gas station. He likes to tell us how, in the 1950s, the attendants used to pump the gas for the customers. (!) The gas station he worked at is still standing in Ellet, Ohio, and he drove us by there to look at the old pumps a couple of years ago.

I think these are all great experiences. …

I was thinking about this the other day, and how all my friends in high school who had jobs seemed to go on to have a really great work ethic all their lives. I don’t know if it was the job creating the great work ethic or the work ethic creating the desire for the job, but there’s a definite correlation.

I was also thinking about the fact that everyone should have at least one of these jobs sometime in his or her lifetime:

• Working a food counter
• Working retail
• Being a waiter or waitress

Why?

Because working one of those jobs creates a huge amount of sympathy and respect for the people who work those jobs now. And, forever after, you will always treat waiters/waitresses, retail workers, and food-counter workers with respect. You know what they’re going through. You’ve been there. You watch them struggle with a cash register that doesn’t work or juggle too many customers because someone called in sick and you think, “God, I remember how awful that was. …” And you become one of those people who is more patient and gracious in the world because you’re more sympathetic that someone else might be having a bad day.

How about you? Did you have one of the “Classic 3” jobs?

What was your first job ever?

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Ready for some fun music today?

Have you heard Mumford and Sons? My son told me about this band and gave me his CD to borrow, so I’ve been listening to it in my car. And I can’t get these songs out of my head. …

Apparently they came out of a recent English folk movement and have been popular in the UK since about 2007, but they just released their single in the U.S. in February. Since then, they’ve been on David Letterman and are getting some big-time radio play here. So different. So fun. Sort of a fusion of Irish folk/Bob Dillon/raging banjo. And check out the lead singer pounding that bass with his foot. …

If you want to hear one more, this is my favorite song:

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Yay to “Mad Men” for winning another Emmy! I really look forward to Sunday nights. No, I’m not in love with Don Draper, but I’m really in love with his story, and the story as a whole that Matthew Weiner is telling.

Let me count the ways:

1. This presentation of the 1950s and 1960s seems real to me. We’ve long had romanticized versions of the 1950s. Many of us have parents or relatives who tell stories about the “good ol’ days,” or we’ve all at least read some e-mail quoting George Carlyle about how stand-up all the kids were from back then. We’ve seen “I Love Lucy,” or maybe “Leave it To Beaver” or “My Three Sons.” That era has been romanticized forever because of its postwar country-wide deep sigh of relief. (And, granted, the boom in stylized architecture/ clothing/ appliances/ etc. was truly spectacular.) But here’s the thing: The era was great if you were a white, middle-class man. If you fell into any other category (black, Jewish, poor, homosexual, woman, child, etc.), you were kind of screwed. I think Mad Men is the first time I’ve ever seen that fact portrayed on the screen. And the show takes a person from every “other” category and throws them into the world so we can see how they had to sink or swim.
2. The show is taking a moment of great change and showing us change on an individual level. We’ve all seen shows or movies about how the assassination of JFK changed the world. Or the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Or of Bobby Kennedy. But those shows focus on those events alone and show the massive change they caused in the people involved with the events. How those events changed the everyday person, however, was probably much slower. A thought here, a mention there. I love how Mad Men has those events going on in the background.
3. We see this change take form in various types of characters. Mad Men has every type of person represented: Peggy is the young woman (unattached) who is able to go with the changing times most easily; Pete and Trudy are the children of upper-middle-class families who still cling to the old family way of doing things (they did the Charleston at Roger’s daughter’s wedding); Roger is the older man who fought in the war and wishes things could be like they used to be; Ken Cosgrove is one of the young men who seem open-minded enough to note changes and go with the flow; and Don Draper – he’s the best one, because he carries the characteristics that should make him privileged (white middle-class male) but he didn’t come about those characteristics legitimately (he stole the identity) and so has no family roots to ground him. So he’s the most malleable person, really. Watching him embrace or reject change is the most interesting because he has the most choices.
4. The symbolism is always pretty. After noting that Kennedy “never wears a hat” on TV, we slowly see how the men stop wearing hats. We slowly see how the women stop wearing gloves. We slowly see the women becoming more enlightened. In a recent episode, the more enlightened (hatless!) young people are standing on one side of a glass hallway, waiting for Peggy, while the slower-to-change people (wearing hats) are on the other side of the glass, waiting for an advertising meeting. It’s always done gorgeously and symbolically.

Do you watch the show? What do you like most about it?

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My friend (and fellow word-nerd) Marla just sent me a link to this Cake Wrecks post called “Perfectly Punctual” and said it made her think of me. …

I try not to overanalyze why a post about bad punctuation on cakes made her think immediately of me, but … well … I guess I know. …

I love punctuation.

And I love cake.

And I love jokes.

(What’s confusing about all that?)

Have a peek if you love punctuation jokes as much as I do:

Perfectly Punctual – Cake Wrecks blog

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Wow, can you believe it’s Aug. 23 already? Where has the summer gone?

I was moaning about this to Superman the other day — But summer’s almost over! We haven’t even had dinner at the pool yet! We haven’t gone to the art festivals! We haven’t made s’mores! We haven’t been to an outdoor concert! – but he calmed me down.

In a strange case of role reversal, HE actually thought positively before I did, but we both started to talk about all the great things we did do this summer: spending a great weekend in Palm Springs, taking an awesome road trip, having our nephew Justin over, having a few great hamburger-grill-outs on the patio, entertaining our parents with summer fare on the weekends, spending one afternoon at the beach club, spending fourth of July at our lake, taking an evening stroll around the lake. Fun stuff. And the kids – man, they’ve had fun. They got to spend time with grandparents, eat sunflower seeds all summer while watching baseball, play in the courtyard with friends until it was dark, sleep over at friends’ houses, visit with their cousin Justin, etc., etc. …

So much fun, really.

So I focused on all of the things we did do and tried to let go of the things we didn’t.

It’s a much happier way to be.

(And, really, I have a few weeks left, right? We can still get in the outdoor concert, possibly, and still get in the dinner at the pool. … And still swing another bbq with my parents. … And a few more evening walks at the lake. … and … hmmm. …)

What about you? What are the things you feel you MUST do each summer to make it really feel like summer? Roast a marshmallow over a fire? Jump into a pool? Dip your toes in the ocean? Go to the fair?

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So did you guys see this story on MSN this week about Huguette Clark, the mysterious heiress?

This story fascinates me. It has all the elements of a great novel: romantic settings (Paris, NYC, Santa Barbara), strange history, King Lear-like father, multiple family deaths, the mom who started out as the teen ward, the bizarro mansion on 77th street in NYC, the “friends” and “family” all having snippets of the story but not the whole truth. In fact, I love the fact that most of the story is gleaned from workers, gateskeepers, antique repair people, etc. — the people who “know” Huguette best are people she hired (sadly).

I stayed up late last night reading all this. (The slideshow is really good, too!) …

Classic case of real life being stranger than fiction. …

At 104, Mysterious Heiress Is Alone Now

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We sit at the dining table, passing potatoes and vegetables, and my 10-year-old son suddenly announces that Bryan and Maya* are having a baby. …

We all stare at him across the table.

“Who’re Brian and Maya?” my husband finally asks into the silence.

“Our neighbors,” my son says, exasperated. “The ones at the end, facing that way.” He makes a fluttering motion with his hand. He looks from one of us to another, waiting for a light of recognition, but when we all continue to stare blankly, he shakes his head and goes back to his potatoes. …

My son has become like the cruise director of our neighborhood. He knows who lives in each house, how many kids they have, what their dogs’ names are, and even when and where they go on vacation. He knows what all the adults do for a living, when they’re home, what kind of car they drive, and, in some cases, what they have for dinner on any given night.

At first, when he was 7 or 8, I used to tease him that he was like Dennis the Menace. Back then, he was the only young child in our little courtyard, and he’d go from garage to garage and say hi to all the adults who seemed to know him. Our neighbor at the end – a 19-year-old kid who always drove his car too fast – would actually stop at Target on his way home and buy Nathan sidewalk chalk from time to time. Another neighbor at the other end would let Nathan sit in his garage and wear his motorcycle helmet while he was tooling with the machine. The young marrieds next door would invite him into their kitchen, where Cate would make guacamole for him and Justin would let him watch the work he was doing on an old BMW he was refurbishing on the weekends.

This summer, however, we have an explosion of new families and new children, and now the courtyard is filled with kids who are all in single digits, all riding bikes and scooters and squealing with water balloons and sidewalk chalk. Nathan is actually the oldest. Now he’s less like Dennis the Menace and more like the cruise director. If he’s inside, our doorbell rings every 15 minutes with another child asking if he’ll come play. Last weekend, one adult neighbor came over and brought our family a Tupperware container of salsa “that Nathan always likes,” and another came over late on Saturday to bring us an entire pan of barbecue ribs “because Nathan missed the neighborhood cookout.”

Chris and I have been woefully uninvolved neighbors for the last several years. We were really friendly and active in courtyard barbecues in the early days – when we first moved in 13 years ago, and every family on our street had a child under 5 – but since then, the old families have moved out, and we just haven’t had the energy to keep introducing ourselves to the new ones. I’m truly happy for the other young marrieds on our block when they become friends with each other – I think it’s important when you’re first starting out. But now we’re like the “old ones” at the end, and just keep to ourselves. (Our oldest child says, “We’ve become that family.”)

But Nathan changes that for all of us. He’s our good-will ambassador. Everyone knows him and, by association, they’re all really nice to us. We’re Nathan’s mom, Nathan’s dad, Nathan’s brother and Nathan’s sister. …

But the kid is always teaching me something new about myself. And now I’m learning that I’ve become pretty unfriendly over the years. I fall into the comfort of old friends, family, former coworkers, friends from high school – people I’ve known forever and who fill my life. But that familiar comfort also makes me closed off to new acquaintances more often than not, and I really should knock it off.

Maybe I’ll go introduce myself when I return the Tupperware container and rib pan. … Maybe we’ll even join the next courtyard barbecue. …

How about you? Are you less open to new friends as you get older? Or maybe more?

*All names changed to protect the don’t-want-to-be-Googled. …

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