I’m wondering what other things that plague me might be more universal than I ever thought before.  I mean, obviously there are universals (unless you know someone who LOVES being stuck in traffic), but I want to think more about what weird phobias and issues I might have in common with all my readers.

Like . . . anyone else hate going out at night?  I’d rather be in jammies watching a TiVo’ed show than go almost anywhere, including fancy elegant soirees.  Especially fancy elegant soirees.  Anyone else?

I’ll keep fishing.

Meanwhile, for those who are interested in the Me who Writes about Autism sometimes, check out my interview with the very nice and talented Hartley Steiner on her blog today.

Caller ID was invented for people like me, people who would sooner cut their little fingers off than answer the phone to find a–gasp!–stranger on the other end of the line.  When the phone rings in this household, my husband and I play a game of chicken.  Who will give in first?  Sometimes it’s not until the beginning of the fourth ring (voice mail picks up at the end of it) that one of us actually grabs the phone and peers at the little screen.  If it’s a child, we pick up.  I mean, if it’s one of OUR children.  Other people’s children we’re not so interested in.

Of course, some people block their numbers.

I hate those people.

I have no problem letting them go to voice mail and then deciding if we’ll pick up or not once we know who it really is.  You need to sound like you’re out of breath if you pick up after the voice mail does though–like you were RUNNING for the phone and almost didn’t make it.  Otherwise people will think you’re screening your calls.

You don’t want people to think that.

I’ve tried to get the message across.  People leave voice mails for me.  I email them back.  They call me on my cell.  I email them back.  They run up to me in stores or restaurants.  I email them back.

“You cannot have a playdate with anyone whose mother doesn’t do email,” I tell my kids.

Why do I hate the phone so much?  I don’t know.  I guess it’s the negative reinforcement from those times I DO pick up and it’s a telemarketer or, you know . . . my mother in law.  Not that I have anything against either.  There’s just something about having to make small talk on a phone that drives me nuts.  There are so many other things you could be doing with that time, like writing twenty emails or a clever facebook status.  Or weeding the garden.  Or writing a novel. Or flossing.

And you have to be so NICE on the phone.  Watch someone on the phone talking to someone he doesn’t even like.  He’ll smile the entire time because you’re supposed to be nice when you talk to people and you smile when you’re talking in a nice voice, even if you’d happily plunge a fork into the other person’s eye for calling RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MAD MEN.  What kind of person calls during MAD MEN???  Admittedly we watch it on TiVo so it’s only on in our household, but even so . . . they’re ruining our lives.

So if you want to reach me, email me.  In fact, just to make this point perfectly clear, I’m thinking of switching our current friendly voice mail message to something my friend Ann Brown said she’s going to put on hers:

“I am home right now, so please email me and I’ll get right back to you.”

Yeah.

I’d be the first to admit I don’t dress or look like I read those magazines but I do read them–every chance I get.  Trips are a good excuse.  There’s nothing like a long airplane flight to give you the excuse of running into a Hudson’s News and grabbing the latest Glamour (why DO they spell it that way?) or Marie Claire. Meanwhile, my pals at Amazon are always sending me these amazing promotions for magazines: who can say no to a buck an issue?  It’s tempting.  And sometimes I give into that temptation.  But deep down, I know I shouldn’t.

You see, a number of years ago, I made a vow.  My vow was to keep all women’s beauty magazines out of my house once my daughter was at an age when she would actually start looking at them and paying attention to what they’re selling.  These magazines are incredibly destructive to young women, and I know it.  The whole goal is to make you feel insecure about your own looks–you’re not thin enough, not fit enough, not well-dressed enough–and then essentially sell you articles, clothing, and make-up that will maybe, if you’re lucky and spend enough money, make you not as horribly unfit to be seen in public as you are now.

Her issues all stemmed out of insecurity.

The last thing in the world I want is for my daughter to question her own looks or body.  I happen to think she’s beautiful.  I’d like her to think so, too.  But Madison Avenue and all the major magazine publishers don’t want her to.  Because if she’s comfortable with who she is, she won’t spend future earnings trying to change herself, and buying magazines that promise to teach her “How to Lose Ten Pounds in Ten Days!”  or “Which Bikinis to Buy to Hide Your Body’s Flaws!”

I can feel my pulse racing just thinking about this stuff.

It’s too late for me.  I’m already insecure about my body, my looks, my ability to keep a man (which is weird since I’ve been with the same guy for the last 22 years).  I rail at my thighs and stomach, hate the way I look when I’m trying to get dressed up, refuse to wear a bathing suit in front of other people.  Apparently I absorbed the message I was being sent: I’m an unattractive, overweight mess.  And I guess on some level–even knowing that–I read these magazines for the solutions they offer.  (And for the pretty pictures, too, of course.)

Anyway, it’s not really about the magazines per se.  It’s a much bigger problem.  Ban the magazines and you still have the same message being beamed out by every TV show and movie–the actresses get skinnier the more famous they get and their breasts get bigger.  And then there’s all that advertising.  Break the TV, forbid the cinema, and there’s still the online media which tears into any celebrity who gains a few pounds or looks her age.  Destroy the computer and there are still billboards and posters everywhere.  This stuff is all around us.

How do I save my daughter when I can’t save myself?  And why do I still like to read these magazines, even knowing how very wrong they are in so many ways?  Any thoughts?  I could sure use some advice here.

Really.  I’m a glass half-empty kind of person (as my kids keep pointing out to me: “Mom!  You’re being so glass empty right now!”) but even I can’t find anything wrong with the weekend we just had.  Tons of free time (after a couple of super-frantic weekends earlier this month), a good movie (Despicable Me which was totally fun), a trip to the thrift store to drop off bags of old clothing (what a relief), a brunch with good friends, an afternoon spent lazily paddling around the pool (or sitting around it, in my case, since I never swim), and hours upon hours of playing games.

We like games in our family.  I know that hopelessly marks us as nerds, but I think we’re all okay with that.  Sunday night we played bananagrams (AKA speed scrabble and infinitely better than your father’s boring old slow Scrabble game–or your husband’s, for that matter).

Saturday night, though, was even better.  My niece taught us this amazing new parlor game: Bowl Full of Nouns.

First everyone writes several nouns down, each on its own scrap of paper.  The nouns can be as general as “pie,” as specific as “Will’s last slice of pumpkin pie,” as weird as “Leslie Uggams,” and as complex as “Johnny and Leslie Uggams’ relationship.”  (Yeah, we’re a little obsessed with Leslie U.  You will be too if you watch this video.)

Okay, so you throw all these words into a bowl and divide into two teams.  Taking turns, one member of each team tries to get his teammates to say the nouns he plucks from the bowl.  Anything goes at this point except actually using the words on the piece of paper.  Both teams need to pay attention because at the end of this round the papers go back in the bowl.  Round 2: taking turns again, players try to get their teammates to say the word they’ve heard earlier but may have forgotten, but this time they can only say ONE word to try to jog their memory.  For instance, if you’re trying to get someone to say “Leslie Uggams,” you say “Fez” or “Bejeebers,” which only makes sense if you watch the video I mentioned above.

Round 3, the words go back in the bowl and once again you’re coaxing them out of your teammates, only this time you have to do it all in pantomime.  Eating pie is easy to mime.  ”Johnny and Leslie Uggams’ relationship” is harder–but not impossible.

We played game after game of this.  The kids didn’t want to go to bed and didn’t ask to watch TV.  We let them stay up late.  We were a family of happy silly nerds.

It’s the actual signing that’s tricky.

I mean, you’re at this event, everyone’s talking at you, the adrenalin is pounding, you’re wondering why so few people showed up (okay, maybe that’s just at my signings), and the person who’s thrusting a book at you looks so freakin’ familiar that you KNOW you know her name but you just can’t remember it and so you say, “What would you like me to write?” and she says brightly, “Oh, just make it out to me,” and now you’re totally screwed because you can’t risk writing the wrong name but as soon as you ask her what her name really is, she’ll know you don’t remember her, and she’ll turn out to be like your sister-in-law or something.

I’ve actually inscribed a book to the wrong person.  My father had two friends who were brothers and who looked and spoke alike, at least to ME.  Years after I signed a book for him, one of them informed me I’d written his brother’s name instead of his.  Great.  And that’s only the one I know about–I’ve probably messed up a dozen more times and not found out.

One common trick authors trot out at these moments is the “How do you spell your name again?” line, pen poised above title page.  This works well if you’re signing a book to a Kristine, Ke$ha, or Meghan.  It does not work so well when you say to a 9-year-old boy–as a friend did to my son last year–”Remind me how to spell your name,” and that 9-year-old boy’s name is spelled, “W-I-L-L.”   Busted.

And even if you get the name right, you’re still on the spot.  You want to come up with a different inscription for each person, but–if you’re like me and have my anxiety issues–you panic that by sticking your neck out and writing a personal, “So glad our kids are in school together!” you’ll realize too late that wasn’t one of the moms from school, it was the childless teacher.  Because I get nervous about making mistakes, I tend to write, “Best wishes!  Enjoy!  Hope you like it!” and other scintillatingly brilliant bon mots.  Dorothy Parker I’m not.

One very funny guy I knew would write, “Thanks for paying retail!” to everyone who bought his book at the reading.  That’s a good solution.

Another one is to throw the problem right back at your reader and let her cast around for a good idea.  ”What would you like me to say?” is a classic exhausted author line.  It works best if you’re signing a book that’s going to be a gift for someone else.  But I’ll write anything anyone tells me to.  One friend asked for her inscription to be, “You’re the inspiration behind everything I do,” and I obediently wrote it down in ink.  Hey, it meant I didn’t have to come up with anything.

This week I went to see the luminously brilliant Maile Meloy read from her much-admired collection of short stories (now out in paperback) Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. My sister Nell was also there and had already worked out what she wanted Maile to inscribe in the copy she was about to purchase:

“Dear Cashier, This one’s on me.  Maile.’”

Admittedly I never want to work.  I mean I do in an intellectual sense.  I’m always going around saying, “I wish I had more time to work,” and I spend a lot of effort trying to clear some time so I can work, but then when I actually do have the time to work, I’ll do anything to avoid working.

But I digress.  (I always digress.  You could even argue that for me writing a blog post is a simple act of digression.)

The point is, it’s summer!  No one wants to work in the summer.  (I know this because if I try to contact anyone in the publishing world about some work-related question, she’s probably still away for the weekend even if it’s, you know, Tuesday.  I find I can still usually reach people at around 11 am on a Wednesday.   Wednesdays don’t count as the weekend even during the summer.  But any other day of the week can transform itself into a weekend day during the months that don’t have an “R” in them.)

Digressed again, didn’t I?  If life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, then a blog is what happens while you’re busy digressing.

When I was a kid, I’d walk out of school on the last day and be basically free to do whatever I wanted until whatever day in September I was due at the next grade.   Because we had a lake house, we’d just go there and stay there all summer long, enjoying the water, our books, our games, (lots of card games.  Lots of them.  Mostly Old Maid. Oh, and cribbage which I’ve forgotten how to play but wish I remembered–anyone out there know how to play?  Oh, lord, I’m digressing again) and dealing with the ten million relatives and friends who descended each weekend to eat the food my mother prepared.  (Guess her summers weren’t all that free, come to think of it.)

My kids do more organized activities than I did (although many fewer than most of their peers) but I still leave as much time as possible for us to just be lazy together because that’s what I think a summer should be: lazy, long, hot, and happy.

The only problem?   I’m getting behind in my work.  Having a book deal hanging over your head is a nice problem to have, as people always point out to me when I try to complain, so I won’t whine about it, but still, here I am at the computer and the sun is out and the grass is green and I hear kids splashing in a pool in the distance . . .

Ah, the hell with it.  Toss me a popsicle and save me a space in the shade.  It’s freakin’ summer!

We’re such devout Simpsons fans here (for obvious reasons: the show puts food on our table) that I don’t tend to watch other prime time animated shows but my son watches Family Guy and at one point made me watch this clip which made me laugh so hard that I figured I should share it with all of you.  Who DOESN’T have a novel hidden away somewhere that’s, well, maybe just a bit autobiographical . . . ?

I was too cheap to spring for the wordpress upgrade that would let me embed video in a post, so you’ll have to click on this link to view it–but that wasn’t all THAT hard, was it?

Have a terrific weekend.

Sorry.  If I sound a little testy, it’s because I’m exhausted.  Once I gave up coffee and started eating really healthily (yogurt and berries for breakfast, salads for lunch, heavy on the veggies for dinner, one small glass of wine before dinner and one small piece of chocolate for dessert . . .), I stopped sleeping.

It wasn’t exactly what you’d call positive reinforcement.

For about a week, I lay awake in the wee hours of the night, trying to calm my brain (stoopid uncalmable brain) and will myself into feeling tranquil and sleepy.  Sometimes I got up to read for a while.   Back in bed, I tried slow breathing exercises and those muscle-clenching then relaxing methods that are supposed to relax you.

The fourth or fifth night that I watched the room fill with light as the sun rose, I cried.

I tried sleeping pills.  Sometimes they even made me sleep.  But they never made me feel rested.  I just kept feeling worse and worse each day, more and more irritable, more and more depressed, more and more afraid of going to bed each night and lying awake.

And then one morning I felt so groggy I knew I needed coffee to be alert enough to drive my daughter to camp.  So I had some coffee.

It’s a slippery slope.  What isn’t?  One cup led to more.   “Just this one, because I need it,” I told myself.  But I always felt better after drinking the coffee, a little more alert, a little more energetic, a little more like my old self.

And what’s coffee without a pastry?  One day, too tired to get real work done and craving something delightful to take my mind off my lack of sleep, I baked “yeast cakes,” an old specialty of my mom’s, puffy little mini sweet breads made with sour cream, butter and chocolate chips.

Guess what they go well with?  Coffee.

Guess who slept well last night?  Me.

Shove over and pour me a cup.  Let’s talk.

Due to a number of requests, here’s the yeast cakes recipe.  I have no idea where it originated–I copied it over decades ago.  It’s a fairly rudimentary recipe, since I didn’t bother copying most of the directions, just the amounts.  Enjoy!

Boil together 1 pint of sour cream, 1/4 lb stick of butter, 8 tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.  Cool and add 1/4 teaspoon baking soda.

Dissolve 2 packages of yeasts in 1/2 cup of warm water.

Add two eggs then mix everything together and add 5 to 6 cups of flour.  Keep warm and covered until doubled in bulk.  Punch down, divide into 5 pieces.  Roll each out either into a rectangle which you then paint with melted butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mix, then raisins or chocolate chips, roll into a fat log and slice, OR into a circle, which you paint with butter, sprinkle with the cinnamon and sugar mix and raisins or chocolate chips, then cut into triangles, like a pizza, and roll up like a croissant, big end to little end.   Let rise a few inches apart on baking sheets, 45 minutes to an hour.  Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 350.  (Oh, you can do the rolled up log-ones in a round cake pan and they’ll come out looking like cinnamon rolls.)

Mom used to dip the rolled up ones into more butter and cinnamon and sugar before baking, but I didn’t bother, just sprinkled the cooked cakes with powdered sugar.  They’re wonderful warmed up in the microwave until the chocolate melts a little.  (I only did choc chips–my kids hate raisins).

Let me know if you have questions.  Happy baking.

(It’s making me wonder whether I ignored them too much as toddlers while reading Robin Hobb and George R.R. Martin.  ”I know how to make Mom love me!  I’ll write a fantasy novel!  She’ll finally pay attention to me!”)

Anyway, they’re both having a ball and I’m very jealous since they get to do all these totally fun writing exercises and work on stories all day long–THEY don’t have to stop to throw in another load of laundry or cook dinner or pick someone up in LA traffic.  (Hey, Angelenos: anyone else feeling like there’s construction on every single freakin’ street in LA right now?  Took me an hour to get home from Hollywood today.  Geesh.)

It’s all lovely–except I’m a little worried that I’m encouraging them down a road that won’t lead anywhere.  Is there really a future to writing books now that entertainment of all sorts is provided free at any time of the day or night on the ‘Net?   I feel like I just squeaked in as the door was closing and am lucky enough to get paid (a little) to do what I love (a lot).  But I honestly don’t get what the future model is for the book business.  Books are being published in their entirety on the web and beamed electronically to handheld devices for mere pennies.  I’ve given up on hoping the bound book as we know it will survive: now I just want the concept of a book, written by an author and nurtured by an editor, to survive in any form, in such a way that it can support both.

But I’m not convinced it’s a realistic hope.  People are getting more and more used to pressing a button on their computer and getting a TV show or a movie or a–yes–book for FREE.  Why would they pay for that?

Anyway, this is the subject of a much longer discussion and I’m still the new improved Claire who only writes (moderately) short posts.  But it’s something I’m thinking about.  Are my kids wasting their time?  It doesn’t matter all that much when it comes to summer camp of course–that’s just about having fun and being engaged and happily they’re both having a ball and there are thousands of kids in baseball camp who won’t ever turn pro–but when the time comes to choose a college major or graduate program, should I discourage them from pursuing the career both their parents have felt lucky to have?

I guess in the end it’s up to them.  And on the plus side, they’re both leaning toward fantasy writing: a lucrative genre with kick-ass covers.  That one may outlast all the rest.

But in the same way I’m sure my house is messier than anyone else’s, I’m positive my memory is worse.

Case in point: my husband took my daughter to the bank to stow something in the safety deposit box.  (For the record, we have the smallest safety deposit box that exists and even so it’s mostly empty.  We were all musing on what people put in those enormous, file-drawer-sized boxes.  Bags of gold coins?  Ropes of diamond necklaces?  For some strange reason, the bank employee refused to share any specifics with us.)

Anyway, they met up with me later and my daughter told me with great excitement that there was a beautiful ring in the safety deposit box and asked why I didn’t wear it.  I stared at her blankly.  I said, “I had no idea I had a ring in there.”

We went back to the bank.  I opened the box and stared at the ring.  It looked familiar.  I was pretty sure I had seen it on my mother’s hand.  But I couldn’t remember anything else about it.  I put it on and it looked great.  So I left the bank with the ring still on my finger.  Later my sister confirmed it was my mother’s “good” wedding-band.  I then felt like I had a vague memory of wearing it for a while.  But no memory of putting it in the box (or asking my husband to).  And we’re not talking ancient past here–my mother only gave me the ring six years ago.  (I know this not because I remember when she did, but because she distributed her jewelry to her kids right before she died.)

Anyway, it was a good thing the ring ended up in that security deposit box.  With my memory, if I had stowed it for safe keeping somewhere in the house, I’d have forgotten all about it and probably never found it again.

In the past, I’ve done some little memory tests and so far my lack of a memory seems to be indicative of either exhaustion (check: lots of insomnia) or depression (semi-check, mostly of the PMS variety), and not anything more serious.

But then this weekend we went out to dinner with a neurologist friend who showed us one of his tests for Alzheimer’s: he hooks his fingers together and asks the patient to imitate what he’s done.   He ran through several finger positions for us.

And I couldn’t do them.  Seriously.  My husband and the doctor’s wife were blithely keeping up, but I was staring at his fingers and twisting my own together and trying to get them to do the same thing his were . . . and failing.  He kept coaching me and showing me the fingers from different angles, but mine wouldn’t go together like that.

Eventually his wife patted me on the shoulder and kindly told me not to worry about it and we stopped the exercise.

I’m not sure what to make of that.  I’m hoping the week of no sleep and glass of wine that preceded our dinner had something to do with it.

Meanwhile the kids lose patience with my bad memory five times a day–”Mom, I TOLD you about that already and you said it was fine”; “You promised me like three times you’d get that today–how could you forget?”; “What do you mean you’ve never seen that before?  You were with me when I bought it” and so on.  It drives them crazy.

And forget my childhood.  It’s gone.  So is everyone I knew up through college whom I’m no longer in touch with and any school parent I’ve met fewer than a half dozen times.  Sorry, by the way, if I meet you one day and I don’t remember you.  It’s not personal or malicious.  I really don’t remember you.

A mysterious clue to my forgotten past

On the plus side, I continue to find the same old jokes funny because I don’t remember the punchline.  See?  A silver lining.