A Few of My Totally Random Favorite Things (in NO particular order)...

So, I think I may have talked about how fickle I am before. *rolls eyes*

Not so much with people (thank goodness... i am a pretty loyal soul) but with things. Objects. Books. Art. Music. Entertainment. Clothing. Oh, lord, clothing. What was I thinking when I bought that last year?!

My tastes can change from moment to moment; what appealed to me so much last winter, this winter not so much.

So instead of doing any sort of year end list of new things I love, I thought I'd just do a top ten list of totally random things I constantly love. Never get sick of. Find myself craving, day after week, after year. . .

Why? No reason. It just occurred to me as I was updating my private facebook page* with the photo you see above and a wonderful cover photo that I illegally lifted, but totally credited to, the stupendous Maira Kalman:

Maira Kalman: New York, Grand Central Station, 1999

Oh, how I love Maira Kalman.
By love I mean, covet.
As in, wish I could be her.
Wish I had written her books.
Wish I could spend many hours of every day reading her books.
Wish I could... well, you get the gist.



Maira Kalman: What Pete Ate From A - Z
we read this so many times aloud. . .  

My younger son, especially, and I would spend hours reading her picture books together. The whimsy and sophistication never ceased to entertain, and still don't. There's just something about her art and prose that fill my soul.

So, Maira Kalman is #1 of Things I Don't Get Sick of (TiDGSo); 


While we're at it, #2: birds. Birds and Botanicals. Botanical, aviary-type birds. And their cages. I love pretty bird cages, too.

Like the birds I put on my photo up there. Or, say, these (notice the botanicals on my chairs and table! I never get sick of my table. You should see how pretty my table is... if you bug me to, I'll go take a photo...):



yep, see, birds. . .

 



Oh, don't fail me, YMI jeans...

#3 YMI jeans. Cheap and well-fitted.




Need I say more about that?

 

#4 listening to my husband sing...



and play his shakers and guiros! :)


And, while we're stating the obvious #5 Water in general,

and open water swimming... in particular. . .

photo credit: Carol Moore

#6  Cherry blossoms...

And, some more obvious, but, oh, so true:

#7 Listening to Sam play guitar:

          or, #8 watching Holden play basketball:

photo: courtesy Rick Kopstein

 #9. This store, Heartichoke, in Northport, NY... (ah, the baubles and trinkets... even lots of birds and botanicals ;))

and,

come on, guys, the number one

(or, um, #10)

totally random (shiny) thing I (almost) never get sick of... even when I wish that I would?

facebook!

oh, how you distract me with your blue and white hypnosis. . .

That's it. My totally random, highly incomplete, no-order top ten list for all time and/or 2012.

Hope you're all having wonderful holidays. See you for some resolutions or wishes in the New Year.

xox gae

* if you are a lovely, wonderful YA reader and want to follow me on fb, please follow me HERE and not there. :)

Sunday Shadowing on I-94 - Part 3: No love lost for Nick's Dad?

Colby Sharp & Jen Vincent pretending to fight over my book.

So, here's Sunday #3 in Jen and Colby's series on The Pull of Gravity. You can meet Jen and Colby, and read an introduction to the series, by clicking right here.

During week #1, Jen and Colby discussed Nick's relationship with the Scoot and the general themes of friendship in the story.

During week #2, they talked about Nick and Jaycee's romance.

This week -- oh boy! -- they talk about Nick's Dad.

By far, the Dad is the most controversial character in the book. He's the most obviously flawed -- outwardly and inwardly.

To me, he is also sympathetic. But not all of my readers agree.

For instance, while finding the dad's actions wrong, Colby struggled to relate a little:

"COLBY: If I lost my job as a teacher, I could totally see myself ending up like Nick’s dad. It would be so hard to lose your identity like he did. I’m not sure if I would gain 100 pounds or lose 100 pounds, but it would not be pretty."

 while, we had to, um, delete Jen's cusses:

"JEN: WAIT! I have to clarify something before we go on... (spoiler deleted from here but not from the actual post) . . . Because after that I can only think of him as a really big (use your imagnation). I know people make mistakes but some things are just wrong. I don’t see that as being Nick’s fault..."

And, both are great with me! Really! I love it! That's part of what makes reading so personal. We bring to it our own values, our ideas of what's right and wrong.

We also read things into the text that often aren't there. We make assumptions. We read these assumptions into the story as rote.

And, I love this too: that, as a writer, we don't know what a reader will bring. We take a reader as they come to us, and we must give them room to breathe. But it's an interesting thing to see play out. It makes each reader-writer experience we encounter richer and more unique.

Continued thanks to Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Colby Sharp at Sharpread for the tremendous honor of this series.

- gae

Fresh Start, Excitement and the Inevitable Melancholy

This morning, August 4, at West Neck Beach

I woke up this morning at 5:30 to swim, and was somewhat shocked to walk outside and feel the distinct chill of fall in the air. Aw, come on!!
>:( It feels like summer JUST started.

And, yes, it's only early August -- and yes, the last few weeks have been hotter than a witch's pitootie -- but still, there it was confirmed by my car's dashboard thermometer: a meager 64 degrees.

I'm not ready, I tell you. I AM NOT READY FOR SUMMER TO END.

Certainly, this one is flying too fast. Of course, lately, it all flies too fast (can you feel my melancholy as I type?). I mean, my older son, who is small for his age, now towers over me, and turns 16 this month! That's driving age, people!!! And my younger son, who is also small for his age, well, let's just say his feet suddenly look huge when I wake him up in the morning.

I AM NOT READY FOR THIS AT ALL. NOT READY FOR IT, I tell you!

Having said all that, I can tell you what I am ready for. The summer is a notoriously slow book business time, and in that regard only, I am ready for the fall. The good news is, I'm making a fresh new start: I have a new agent representing me, Jim McCarthy of Dystel & Goderich, and he took me on just on the strength of my option manuscript, Frankie Sky (okay, and the existence of TPoG although he hasn't read it yet and didn't ask to see the other manuscripts he knows I have) and, better still, he didn't want huge revisions to Frankie Sky. Given that my old agent, and now this agent, both feel Frankie has huge promise, I'm feeling confident that, after this next revision, it will sell. Of course it's been vastly revised (VASTLY) since my editor orginally turned it down (mostly as too commercial compared to TPoG). And as much as I love her, I still don't get that one at all. My readers, prejudiced as some of them may be (and there have been a few non-prejudiced ones as well), have loved the manuscript a lot! So, yes, I am hopeful.

The best news is, the revisions Jim did ask for make total sense -- like hit-the-nail-on-the-head-so-I-now-love-you TOTAL sense! They will take some time, but I'm excited about them, and already in as much as a groove as I can get in with my son's heavy baseball schedule requiring me to run all over Long Island every day.  

My son, the centerfielder, who the team has nicknamed, "The Vacuum."

                                                 
The other totally EXCITING NEWS is that my first high school (in Michigan!) has picked up THE PULL OF GRAVITY into their curriculum along with Of Mice and Men! They didn't teach either, and now they will teach both. I will be taught alongside Steinbeck. Next time I'm whining about low sales, someone remind me of this and slap me. A second school has included it on their summer reading list and I'm sure it will be an unofficial part of their curriculm as the teacher LOVES, and has long taught, Of Mice and Men. And yet a third school in upstate NY had included it on the summer reading list, and one of the English teachers contacted me about learning more about it in the fall. Which leads me to this last bit of excitement: The fabulous Sarah Andersen of Y.A. Love Blog has finished my TPoG Student Study Guide and, if you ask my humble opinion, it is totally awesome. My younger son looked at it and said, "this looks just like the stuff we do in school!" I mean, you can't beat that as a compliment, can you? The guide is up on my website under Young Adult --->Teachers & Resources here: http://gaepolisner.com/html/teacherguides.html if you want to take a look! And I'd love you forever, if you'd pass the word on.

And that's it. I haven't swum my full 5K yet, let alone the 5 miler I'm itching to do, so I need summer to stick around a little longer. I mean that with all my heart. I need more summer. So, do a dance or say a summer prayer or something, would you?

Thanks.

xo - gae

After a 2+ mile swim at West Neck Beach, with the girls. :)

Driving and Zipping and Rafting, Oh My!

I was home, and then I was home again.

In between, over the course of 5 nights and 6 whirlwind days I was captive in a car for a total of 17 hours dipping our wheels in four different states; I minigolfed, badmintoned not-too-terribly (did I mention I have no hand-eye coordination so, yes, this was actually one of the more difficult of all the "feats" for me), ziplined and whitewater rafted, and in between all that, I had a few gloriously-quiet and relaxing swims.
Of course, it was only the latter that felt like the traditional definition of vacation, but I'm not complaining.

I am neither an athlete nor a daredevil, and I am the only girl in the house. One of the main reasons I plan these "non-stop, on-the-go" vacations is to give my two boys -- 12, and about to turn 15 -- a true chance to bond.

The truth is, they are very different boys with very different interests, and at home, with other options at their fingertips, they don't always spend the kind of quality time together I had hoped they would.


But shoved in a car with new things on the horizon, there is truly the need and opportunity to bond. To cuddle up together. And to find common ground.

And, yet, despite the dollars spent on ziplines and raft excursions and 40 ft. ropes courses, this vacation that opportunity was found in the simplest of places: in the car (okay, only on the ride there) and on the badminton court at our hotel.

There were silly, fun, exhausting matches of us against them (we lost, we lost, and, er, we lost), and, more importantly, there were Federer-Nadal quality matches between them that lasted more than two hours.

In the end, the older son bettered the younger son by a few mere points, which in our house is a very good and important thing.

But most of all there was good sportsmanship, a sheer joy at playing with one another, and, most importantly, talks about wanting to find a badminton league here where they can be a team and "destroy" everyone else TOGETHER.



For me, the vacation had high highs (I am now officially a zipline addict) and low lows (sometimes, in a family of three men, I am the only one to rally to do anything and everything, and yet, still, the far less appreciated and, -- harder -- the less "wanted" parent).

But the knowledge that my boys, for a few short days, bonded and admired each other, was well worth the money, the heartache and the trip. And, my own personal exhilaration was a bonus.

-gae