It was 6th Grade, and I insisted upon doing my own hair for picture day–the oxford and blazer were part of the uniform, but the hair? All mine. I was arguing with my mother about it out the door, and I know what Lane-has-been-crying face looks like–that’s it. I remember standing in line for my picture and realizing that all the other girls, from the neck up, looked like they’d been styled for a wedding. From the neck down, we looked like a Green and White episode of Facts of Life the Middle School Years.
One of the teachers asked me if my mother had forgotten it was picture day. The photographer pulled out a comb and made a tent flap in my bangs so that my eyes would show. I felt a sting of regret. My mother had been right. I should have let her fix my hair. But, I wasn’t going down like that. Oh no. I held my wooby, little head high and said I meant to look that way, and that I liked it. Pride. Proud. Defiant.
When the pictures came home, my mother was grim. It was the only time in my life that she ever asked for retakes. She called the school and asked for retakes.
For what it’s worth, I look back on the day with pride. Still proud. Still defiant. I was twelve, and I had hot rollers. Don’t give a kid hot rollers, if you don’t want her to use them.
It’s also funny how dark the picture is. My hair looks auburn, and my blazer looks black. My hair was strawberry blonde, and my blazer was a medium green.
Today is picture day at Thor’s school. Last night, after telling me he’d like me to go buy him a black suit, white shirt, and fancy tie to wear (far too late in the day to even think of making that happen), and after going through several mental wardrobe changes until we got down to shorts and a polo shirt, he woke up asking for a tie. He had to wear a tie.
It didn’t matter that it didn’t match. It didn’t matter that it was too long. It didn’t matter that he was wearing it with a polo shirt. He. had. to. wear. a. tie.
I put one of B’s ties on him, and it was like turning on the Christmas lights. That kid was proud. Delighted.
He stood in front of the mirror for a long time, declared himself very cool, wetted down and tamed his own cowlick, then went to find his shoes.
Of all the shoes he could choose, he came out of his room with his plaid Vans. Proud. Delighted.
I did point out the problem with mixing a white, blue, and pink striped shirt, with a navy, gold, and olive dotted tie, and red, white, and blue plaid shoes. He said, “I think I look cool.” I thought, “He’s watched too much Doctor Who.” I said, “You are cool.” He said, “You need to call me Mr. B because of the tie.” I said, “All right, Mr. B, grab your backpack and let’s go. Your close-up awaits you.”
When he looks back at today’s picture in 30 years, I want him to be able to say, “That was such a great morning.”
It’s his school picture. He should be happy. We’ll be going to buy him a tie that fits.
LynDee Walker just came home from the Killer Nashville writers’ conference, where she was serving on panels and promoting her books. I asked if she would sum it up for us. What was the conference like? What was it like to be a panelist? What was the best thing to happen? Keep reading to find out!
Best moment of Killer Nashville 2013: I rushed down from lunch on Friday to get set for my panel appearance, and while I was fussing with the mic and getting water, an adorable lady walked up and totally made my week.
“LynDee, I just have to tell you that I read your book before I even knew you’d be here, and I loved it,” she said. “I can’t wait for the new one to come out!”
Amazing, right? I grinned and thanked her. “Only fifty-something more days!” I said.
“I’m so glad. And what’s after that one?” she asked.
When I floated back down and could focus, I said, “well, there’s a Nichelle novella (DATELINE MEMPHIS) coming up in a Christmas anthology (HEARTACHE MOTEL) in December and then the third novel will be out in the spring.”
She was very excited about that. I, of course, gave her one of every kind of Headlines in High Heels swag I had with me and thanked her for reading.
It was a great kick off to the weekend.
This was my first trip to Music City in *cough*almost 20 years*cough* and I had a blast. Killer Nashville is a mystery writers and readers conference held every summer at the Hutton Hotel in Downtown Nashville. Let’s talk about this hotel for a sec: it’s posh. One of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed. In fact, it’s where the cast of the TV show Nashville stays when they’re in town, if that gives you an idea. Big, gorgeous rooms, comfy beds, plush robes, turndown service. It’s … nice.
I got in Thursday and hung out on the room, trying to write. For months, I’ve been talking about how much progress I’d make on my new book in Nashville because it would be quiet and I’d have a room all to myself. Guess what? It was too quiet. I ended up turning the TV on the Disney channel. I worked until the conference registration opened, and then I went down to register and found the fabulous Terri L. Austin in the lobby. She is just as funny in person as she is in her Rose Strickland mysteries, and we had a great dinner and gabfest. Romance author Shannon K. Butcher was incognito, just hanging out for the weekend (she had two massages. I was so jealous.) But it was lovely to meet her, too. She’s awesome.
Friday started with the most amazing blueberry muffin I’ve ever had (this weekend was almost as much about the food as the books) and the rest of my Hen House friends arriving: such fun to hang out with Larissa Reinhart and Gretchen Archer all weekend! My panel was up first, and it was great. Edgar-winning author (and former journalist) Steven Womack was the leader, and we were joined by three-time Pulitzer nominee Gwen Florio (she’s Nichelle’s new hero), along with Tom Wood, a 36-year veteran of the Nashville Tennesseean’s sports desk, and Eugenie West, a reporter-turned-fiction writer from Pennsylvania. The discussion spun from favorite stories to the rapidly-changing news industry to why we all decided to write fiction instead of true crime (1: too much research. I get a headache just thinking about it. 2: if there’s anything in the publishing industry that’s harder to get a deal for than novels, it’s true crime. Steve wrote one, and even with his resume, he said “I couldn’t give it away.”)
LynDee Walker (far right) and her Henery Press compatriots at Killer Nashville.
In the midst of the conference fun, I was also participating in a fundraiser for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society on my fab friend Colby Marshall’s blog. This cause, and this event, are both very close to my heart, so I dashed up to the room after my panel to reply to comments on my guest post. I was amazed to find more than 50 waiting. I took five pages of notes so I could answer everyone, wrote a long post, lost my wifi connection (thank heavens I’d copied the post) finally got it posted and dashed back down for a writing workshop and dinner.
We made a new friend, the fantastically talented Kourtney Heintz, who joined us for the rest of the week and is so smart, and such fun to hang out with, too.
We walked to a Mexican food place with dancing frogs on the roof and an Elvis shrine in the lobby and decided that with Terri, Larissa, and my Elvis-centric anthology due out for Christmas, it was a sign the place had good food. We were right. They had particularly good salsa, and this Texas girl knows good salsa.
More chatting ensued, and then I went back to the room and wrote some more. A really fun scene with Nichelle’s favorite sweet bad boy that I can’t wait for y’all to read. (I know. That’s mean. But I promise it’s worth waiting for.)
I spent Saturday morning learning so much about publishing and craft at various panels and workshops. Kourtney, Gretchen and I snuck away for lunch and sightseeing Saturday afternoon. We had a blast touring the legendary Ryman auditorium and walking along Nashville’s famed Broadway.
Saturday night I had the best dinner date: Larissa Reinhart, who is the only woman I’ve ever met who can snort gracefully, and is just as genuine and funny as her Cherry Tucker mysteries. We ate pasta and drank wine and talked until too late.
Sunday morning I got waylaid on the way to Kourtney’s cross-genre fiction panel by Tom, who regaled me with an awesome story of his early-80s interview with Stephen King. Talk about a writer’s dream! I’ve been a fan since I was in sixth grade. Definitely the experience of a lifetime.
In Kourtney’s panel I learned a ton about marketing and selling books that don’t fit into a niche, which might be very useful information someday. I laughed my way through Terri and Larissa’s panel, Funny Business, and scrambled to get last-minute signed books from the wonderful authors I met.
Ris and I capped the weekend with lunch and another gabfest, about our mystery heroines and story arcs and where it’s all going. It was great fun.
I’m glad to be home with my babies (where I can actually write!), but it was definitely a weekend to remember. Many thanks to the readers and friends old and new who made it special.
You know, I very rarely just make one mistake. Usually, when I goof something up, it is a snowball effect of doom as I go into overdrive to try to correct the first error and end up destroying the space around me in true sitcom style. Just ask Jamie and Wes, whose brand new beige sofa, barstools, and light colored walls I baptized with a large coffee.
I can’t even remember what triggered it, but I sloshed my coffee, and in scrambling to keep it from getting on anything, I splashed it out of the cup, slipped on what I had splashed, managed to toss the cup up in the air and somehow catch it by the handle as I swung in an arc around the living room that slung coffee from the breakfast bar, all the way across their new sectional. Coffee in the floor. Coffee on the cloth barstool seats. Coffee on the sectional. Coffee in my hair. Coffee all over the place. If I’d just stood still, there would only have been a small mess.
This morning, at 7:44, I realized I had missed the special parent/teacher conference that Thor’s teacher had asked us to attend at 7:15. I panicked. I waited until I got to a red light, then fired off an email apologizing and asking to reschedule. The teacher wrote back and I couldn’t really read the whole email as I was driving, but some words popped out at me, including the words “field trip.” I panicked again.
“Today is Thor’s field trip!” I yelled aloud at myself. “And you didn’t pack his lunch! AUGH!!!”
What could I do? I was halfway to work, it was 7:55, and I couldn’t get back to his school with a lunch in time to beat the busses leaving. I called the school and talked to the secretary, sounding like a crazy woman. She assured me that they would send him down to the cafeteria to buy a lunch, and that they wouldn’t let him miss the field trip.
I hung up, starting to cry because a) I had forgotten my son’s p/t conference and I feel awful about that, b) I was afraid he was going to feel thrown away because I had forgotten to pack him a lunch, c) I was afraid he would feel weird because the field trip bus was waiting for him, and d) because my mistake had delayed an entire school full of 2nd graders. I mean, that’s 100 kids on busses who are delayed because one mother forgot a lunch. Have you ever been on a bus with a 7 year old? Have you ever been a 7 year old on a bus?
I was just getting to the point of really worrying about my mascara when my phone rang. It was the school. The wonderful secretary had called to tell me she had spoken with Thor’s teacher, and the field trip is not until Thursday, so I hadn’t missed the boat entirely. I laughed a crazy person. She laughed like a concerned person. I said, “Thank goodness! At least I’m not THE worst mother in the world.” She laughed again, uncomfortably, and we said our goodbyes.
Then, I was laughing and crying at the same time, and making like Alice Cooper with the mascara. I crazy laughed for a solid minute before shaking out of it (when I missed my exit.) So, while Thor might not know how close he came to 2nd Grade level trauma, his teacher absolutely, 100%, without any question knows where all of his shortcomings originate. Maybe we don’t need a conference at all now? Maybe she’ll just look at his tendency to forget things and feel sorry for him, given that it is a genetic flaw.
I left work early today, and I was home before Mom brought Thor in from their excursions. I was more than two hours earlier than I ever get to the house. When I heard them coming in the front door, I told B, “I’m going to hide.” So, I threw a blanket over myself and sat on the sofa–hiding in plain sight works on 7 year olds. It works on Grandmas, too because I had to wave at Mom to get her to notice me, and put a finger over my lips to keep her from exclaiming.
Thor was standing not 3 feet from me, and B said, “Hey, I think there is a lump over there on the sofa that might want a hug.” Thor paused, then walked over to me and started laughing. And he laughed, and laughed, and laughed until he had tears in his eyes, hugging me, then leaning back to look at me and laugh some more.
It’s amazing and wonderful how something so simple and silly can bring so much joy.
My mom called me later to tell me how happy it made her to see how much the boy and I love each other, and to say, “And that’s how much I love you, too.”
You guys…I am humbled and grateful every day of my life. It isn’t possible to do enough to deserve the love I’ve had around me, and it pricks at the most latent parts of my spirituality. Critics talk about how the desperate and the downtrodden invent gods to make themselves feel better, but it is when I am at my happiest that I most want one. I just want to say thank you and express my gratitude to someone–I need to say thank you*! I’m after God’s heart because mine gets so full. I miss my old zealotry and surety the most when I am bursting to say thank you.
Thor wanted to show me one of the Bibles my mom has bought him–it’s verse style, not story style, so he’s very impressed. I asked if he’d like to see my favorite verse, and he said yes, but he certainly hoped it was in the New Testament because the Old Testament sure is boring. He was in luck.
Romans 8:38, 39 reads, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
He read that out loud in whatever translation his was, and I said, “That’s my favorite verse, and that’s how much I love you. Nothing can ever separate you from how much I love you, or change that you are mine.”
It’s always been the “because He first loved me” aspect of Christianity that attracted me to the faith.
At this point in my life, I have a thousand more questions than I will ever have answers regarding God, but that’s okay. Because if the god I chose loves me anywhere near the way I love Thor–anywhere near the way my mother loves me, then the questions and uncertainty won’t bother him at all. Not even my disbelief could separate me from that love. (Sacrilege! I know. But not even his willful refusal to acknowledge me would make me turn my back my son, and I am an imperfect being. It is possible [I think not probable, since he doesn’t show any tendencies toward serial killing or despotism] that he could do things to horrify and make me not like him, and possible that he could distress and disappoint me, but there is nothing that could quell the love I have for him. Maybe that’s part of the imperfection of humanity–if it is, I prefer it to deity.)
Anyway…it is in every sense of the word a blessing to be married to my husband and into his family, and to belong to the family I was born into, and to have the family of friends I’ve made, and especially to be the family that we became when we had Thor, and I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has made even an ounce of it possible.
Here is Thor, having bored himself to sleep, reading Genesis.
*This is a real issue for me. I have sat on hold for 15 minutes waiting for a store manager, just to say thank you for good service. I have a compulsive need to show gratitude that can manifest in a slavish devotion depending upon the level of thanks I am giving. I guess there are worse compulsions?
Start with your crock pot. On the bottom, layer half a large onion and 2 minced cloves of garlic. Cover those with salt, pepper, cilantro, and parsley, and whatever else you like. Nestle 3 large chicken breasts (skin on, bone in) on top. Layer the other half of the onion and about 1/2 lb of carrots on top. Season again. Turn it on high for an hour or two, then turn it down to low and go to bed.
Get up a little early and turn off your crock pot. Remove the carrots and set aside to cool. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. Pour the broth through a strainer to catch all the grody bits, and set broth aside to cool. Go put on your makeup, fix your hair, and wake up your kid. While he is looking for his socks (they are in the bottom drawer, where they are every day) dish your cooled carrots, chicken, and broth into separate containers and refrigerate. Tell your child if he can’t find his socks, he can never play Wii again. He will find them instantly.
Take the boy to school, go to work, go to the grocery store and pick up 2 squash, 2 zucchini, more onions, red grapes, pecan halves, chicken broth (15 oz or so), 2 cans of white kidney beans, 1 can of corn, 1 can of diced tomatoes, some light sour cream, and some Peeps for the boy’s Easter basket. And a giant, stuffed duck that you thought was a chicken. You will realize your mistake when you sit down to write a blog entry.
Go home, unload and put away groceries, and help the boy with his homework, do laundry. Fold the boy’s clothes and put them away (remember that you left your own clothes in the dryer when you are partway through a blog entry. Curse having thought you were finished for the night.) Accidentally rewash husband’s clean clothes because they are sitting on top of the washer and you are feeling helpful. When your mother says, “You look tired,” do not snarl. Send mother home with hugs and kisses (no snarling), then move living room, dining room, and patio furniture around to be able to drag old sofa to the curb (with aid of husband) to accommodate new, improved sofa which will be delivered tomorrow. Discover that the time the boy barfed on the sofa Christmas day, the reason you thought the volume seemed light compared to the sounds he was making is because all of it had run down the side crack of the leather seat, to congeal in a disgusting disc on the carpet beneath is. Run the sweeper.
Return to kitchen and wash hands, find cutting board and proceed to slicing a large onion. Use the finger guard on the mandolin slicer so that you don’t slice through your thumb and bleed into the onion. Or, ignore that advice, and find band-aids. Utilize. Return to slicing.
In a large stock pot, warm 1 Tbs of olive oil. Toss in your diced onions and 2 cloves of minced garlic. While that gets going, open all your cans. This will be difficult to do while bleeding profusely, but you will manage. Once onion is translucent, pour in your drained cans of beans (both cans) and corn, and your whole can of tomatoes. Add your chicken broth and simmer. Salt and pepper to taste, then dump in about 1Tbs of chili powder. Accidentally. Or serendipitously. Depends on how spicy you like your chili.
Remove cold chicken, carrots and stock from the refrigerator and grab a grocery bag. Debone a breast of chicken, tossing grody bits into bag. Remove skin and any remotely inedible yarf and discard into bag. Dice chicken and shred, then add to pot. Bring to a boil. Taste broth and season as needed. Decide to toss in some cinnamon–about 1tsp. Mmm! This will yield you about 5, 2-cup containers of chili, worth about 6 WWPPV each. Serve or freeze for lunches.
While that is going–simmering about 20 minutes after the boil, add another stock pot to your stovetop and empty out the refrigerated chicken broth. Use your mandolin slicer (properly this time, you learned) to slice the squash and zucchini directly into the pot. Add the carrots, then prep another chicken breast, this time only dicing it. Drop all that into the pot, add 2 chicken bouillon cubes, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 15 minutes. This will yield you about 4, 2-cup containers of soup, worth about 2 WWPPV each. Serve or freeze for lunches.
Finally, prep your last chicken breast and halve the meat. Chop up about 1/2 a cup of red grapes, crush up about 1/4 cup of pecan halves, add 1TBS each of mayo, dijon mustard, and light sour cream, then stir half the chicken meat into that. Season to taste. Refrigerate and serve on top of greens as a salad, or in pita bread as a sandwich. Yield is 2 large servings a 6 WWPPV each, or 4 small servings at around 3 points each–you could make it lower with low fat mayo, but that stuff is more disgusting than the 4 month old vomit you found under the sofa, so why bother?
With the last half of the meat, make chicken quesadillas with diced jalapenos, about 1/4 cup of cheese (your choice, I like Jack) each, and some Bacon Bits if you’re fancy. Serve those for dinner. Screw the WWPPV–you’ve worked them all off already.
Put boy to bed. Put boy back to bed. Put boy back to bed a final time. Let dog out. Let dog back in. Wonder vaguely where husband got off to almost 2 hours prior.
Sit down and enjoy a bowl of soup. Write a blog entry as a means of avoiding the dishes still needing to be done.
Get up. Get your laundry. Put it away. Take a bath. Go to bed, secure in the knowledge that at least you don’t have to cook tomorrow.
The Outside Lane 