moving sale

Blog entries going for next to nothing!! Hurry and save while inventory lasts!

Not too terribly well known author is moving her blog! All previous entries for sale at rock bottom prices! She must be crazy to let this stuff go so cheap!!

Visit her new blogshop at the above link, or type in lisasamson.typepad.com.

a big chicken, baby, stupid-head weenie

I don't know what's wrong with me lately. Maybe it's because I'm on sabbatical and trying to get away from the worries of being a professional writer. Maybe my guts diminish each year, like melting ice, or evaporating kool-ade that leaves just that dry skin of red sitting there like a circus ring at the bottom of the cup.

I can't log on and read my Amazon reviews anymore. I don't want anything to do with reviews in magazines. In fact, I think I've become allergic to critics-armchair and otherwise. And it doesn't matter if it's good stuff or bad. I just don't want anything to do with any of it. I've written on this here before. But it's getting worse. Am I just being a big chicken? Or do I need to remove myself from such influence to create in a more pristine fashion?

I'm hoping it's the latter. If you've got pros and cons of both, I'd love to hear them.

grace,

lisa

was it just me?

Yesterday, Will heard an interview with Judy Blume on NPR. Now, I have to admit, the woman wears moxy like a hand made suit. I mean, how many people could pen kids' books, one of them a series with a kid named Fudge, publish Wifey, and get away with it?

When I was about 12 years old, I read Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret? My sole excursion in the Judy Blume jungle. What follows here is not so much a critique on the book or the author, but more telling of who I was in that really hyper-vunerable, walking on marbles stage of female living. And did anyone else feel like they'd sniffed a magic marker potent enough to last from 6th grade through 8th? I swear the memory of that time period feels skinny and hyper and full of altitude.

I was explaining the book to Tyler last night. "So there's this scene where Margaret and her friends are sittin' around doing bust exercises."

I showed her the "We Must We Must We Must Increase Our Bust" maneuver.

She looked horrified.

I pointed at her. "So tell me, do you know one girl that would have done that?"

"No way!"

"Me either. It was so weird. And I totally couldn't relate when I read that. I would have rather been thrown into a hole with scorpions than have sat around a room and done THAT!"

Yeah, yeah, I know I employed a smidge of hyperbole.

"And . . . when Margaret gets her period it's like a religious experience. She's so happy!!"

Now, I don't come to this area without a few medals of honor. I was THE LAST GIRL in my class to get IT. Okay? I was embarrassed and hardly let anybody look into my purse because no feminine hygiene products ever lurked behind the zipper. In fact, even when I did finally get it, Lori Gorham, three months after the fact (a fact I didn't advertise) approached me in the girls' bathroom.

"I think I'm about to get IT. You don't have anything on you, do you?"

"Well yes!" I whipped out a pad. "I do!"

"Really?!" Shock, surprise, and a little smarm. But probably not smarm. I might have been a little over-sensitive.

"Of course!" Shock, disdain and an unspoken, "I've had it for months you twit!"

I handed her the pad.

So when I say that even I was not thrown into ecstacy at the sight of blood in my underwear that October day in 1978 it makes me wonder about Margaret. And boy was she in for a quick turnaround on the opinion of how great it is to have a period. At best I can say, "I felt glad I wasn't a freak anymore."

Nowadays I'm hoping for an early menopause!

So, did you related to Margaret more than I did?

And apologies to the guys. And Judy Blume. It wasn't your fault I didn't like the book. It was mine.

grace,

lisa

finally!

Ahem. The Samsons have hairbrushes.

i love that town

New Orleans is gearing up for Ivan. If it hits like they're expecting, the city will be submerged beneath floodwaters containing raw sewage, gas and chemicals from plants in the area. I'm sad. I love that town. And the two paragraphs below, from the article linked above, illustrate why.

'In the French Quarter, businesses put up plywood and closed their shutters. A few people were still hanging out at Cafe du Monde, a favorite spot for French roast coffee and beignets, and a man playing a trombone outside had a box full of tips.

"They said get out, but I can't change my flight, so I figure I might as well enjoy myself," said George Senton, of Newark, New Jersey, who listened to the music. "At least I'll have had some good coffee and some good music before it gets me."'

A really heart-rending portion of the article tells about a woman who has no car. "How am I gonna get out?" she asks. She lives on disability and supplements her income with housecleaning and babysitting. The flooding, if the storm surge rises to expected levels, will probably reach the rooftops.

for pity's sake!!

I dreamed I found a brush again last night! This time it was in a drawer and had red yarn wrapped around it. I'd say it might be a vision, but I've already been through that drawer ten times looking for a brush.

dog-gone-it. Okay, today I really am getting to the dollar store, if for no other reason than you all don't have to hear about my brushcapades on this blog.

lisa

what a loser

Yes, I'm talking about myself. I really need to get more exciting dreams. It all started when I lost the final hairbrush in the house around two weeks ago. Gwynnie looks like a scarecrow and I keep trying to brush her shoulder length, blonde hair with my fingers. It's horrible. And I refuse to pay full price at Target or the grocery store when I can get three for the same price at the dollar store. The problem is, when I'm out and about, I'm not thinking about brushes or the dollar store.

The night before last I dreamed I found the brush. There it was right on the bedroom floor, the one that was silver at the core with the black bristles poking out of holes. The blowdryer kind of brush. I know it's around here somewhere. But that dream was so good. There it was. The brush. The lovely, wonderful brush.

And then I woke up, forgot the dream, until later, when I remembered the dream and said to Tyler and Gwynnie, "I dreamed I found the brush last night!"

The sad thing is, it seemed perfectly normal. I mean, it's been a hair crisis here at the Samson abode. Dreaming about finding the hairbrush is akin to unearthing buried treasure or finding your name in the paper within the list of people who are owed money.

I'm such a dweeb. A brushless dweeb, still, at that. A brushless, mundane dreamer of a dweeb, actually. I need to get out more. Obviously. Maybe the dollar store would be a good place to start.

grace,

lisa

batman and the queen

This is too funny. Batman scales the walls of Buckingham Palace? Quite the creative protest by Fathers 4 Justice.

aretha at the samsons

Gwynnie just asked me how to spell "respect". I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

grace,

lisa

where were you?

I can't believe it's been three years since the terrorist attacks of September 11th. It seems like yesterday that I was pulling out of Dunkin' Donuts around 9 a.m. to go pick up Aunt Sis when I turned on the radio and heard about the first plane crashing into the tower.

Then the reports kept piling up, one upon the other. I kept up with Will on his cell, heard about the Pentagon, and listened to him as he stood atop his DC office building and watched it burn. I picked up my elderly aunt in the city, brought her out to Harford County and we watched the towers fall. I didn't care if schools were staying in session or not, and I'd heard no word, I needed my children so I went and picked them up at school.

It took Will hours to get home as the DC Metro was shut down as well as the commuter trains. He shouted out in the crowd, "Anyone else heading for Edgewood?" A beautiful African-American woman replied, "I am."

Long story short, Will and three sisters made the exodus from DC together. He's still friends with Donna who told him when she met him, "I was just praying God would send someone to help me."

It seemed harrowing enough, but when compared to the stories of the victims and the families, it was nothing. I'm praying for them today and already found myself crying. Some memories refuse to lay down like good dogs. And this is something to be thankful for because it memorializes the sacrifice of others, dignifies their suffering and rings the death knell once again for those who had no choice in the matter of their passing, and those, like the firefighters, policemen and the heroic civilians, who did.

grace,

lisa