the week(s) ahead (please join me at .... )

I have a big week on tap, and if I am less the blogger than usual, I ask for your forgiveness in advance. 

First, my students are back from their spring break, and I'll be in my city reviewing their first three memoirs tomorrow.  They have written spectacularly.  They have gone deep. I need to give them everything I've got.

On Wednesday another beautiful thing is going to happen—I'll hop a train and head to New York City, where I'll be meeting Tamra Tuller, my Philomel editor, for the very first time.  Tamra read my Berlin book this weekend (the first two-thirds, all that I've written).  With her kind early thoughts she returned the essence of the book to me, in the way that only the most generous of editors do.

On Thursday I head back to Philadelphia to spend the morning at the Public Library Association conference, to be held at the Civic Center.  Please let me know if you'll be there.  By noon I'll be back on a train and headed to Chesterbrook, where one of my favorite clients is located.  You know who you are, Charlene and Mike.

Late Thursday night we'll pick our son up from the airport (he's in Las Vegas as of this hour).  I hope to spend a lazy Friday with him.

Saturday, I'll be at the Musehouse with April Lindner at a special event hosted by Doug Gordon.  I'm so excited about this and I hope that those of you who live in the Germantown/Philadelphia area will consider joining us.  Find out more by double clicking the poster.

Sunday we'll sadly be saying goodbye to our son as he heads back up to college to finish off his final semester.  I'll cry a little, eat chocolate, no doubt, then start getting ready for the week ahead, which will include, among other things, Teen Day in Manayunk, which is shaping up to be a super event.

I hope your weeks ahead are full and rich.

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the week that was; my son is coming home; and the last chance to sign up for Teen Day!

Only lately (it feels like months ago) I was rambling on, on this very blog, about the importance I have given over to sleep.  My desire to be healthier.  My wish for less freighted, angsted days.

Well, there's only so much one can do when a flu takes over, and by Wednesday afternoon I was under the Mean Bug's spell.  You know how it is—you can't breathe, you can't talk, and you can't go to Zumba.  You can't even learn the jive kick with Jan.  Strangely (a sure sign of grave illness) you don't want chocolate.  (What?  No chocolate?, all right, all right, I'll have a piece of chocolate.)  You just sit, and as you sit, things pile up.

Creakily, barely, things still got done—a 1,000-word review of a complex book, the final touches to an annual report, the glassy-eyed acknowledgment of three of the Project Runways All Stars editions I'd lately missed (that was high on the list; go Mondo), correspondence with my memoir-writing students, and all the behind-the-scenes-work that goes on as we prepare for Teen Day in Manayunk.  It looks like we'll have quite a crowd of young writers and readers on hand that March 24th at The Spiral Bookcase, and we're getting excited.  Please do get in touch with me or the store if you are interested in this chance to meet great YA writers and to show us, too, what your own words are made of.

(And to get published!!)

But in the meantime, I have not prepared for the most important thing—the arrival home, late tonight, of our dear son.  He'll spend the weekend with us before heading out to Vegas with friends.  I want to be my whole self for the few hours we'll have together.

Time for a little Zen.

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