I Want to Be in Their Club!

Well, it finally happened.
Two of my favorite authors got together and interviewed each other. It was all I could do to keep from yelling "I WANT TO BE IN YOUR CLUB!"
And I am in a writing club. (I am not in any other clubs. Clubs don't want me. I was briefly in a sorority in college, and one time somebody mentioned I might want to join a book club, but they did not offer theirs. I am in Bunco, which is kind of like a club, but it's mostly for drinking, and that I can do alone.) The writing club let me in because they had to. I paid the money, and now they send me e-mails. I get together twice a month with folks who critique my work, but most of them are either (a) memoirists, or (b) traditional fiction folks, and I am YA.

(YA, for the uninitiated, stands for "Young Adult." It comes in many forms--supernatural, James Bond-y, chick lit for teens, or angst-ridden prose. I don't write any of those. I write weird stuff about kids who are a little different.)

YA doesn't have a club here.
YA has a very cool club somewhere else, too inconvenient for me to join. Like Pheonix, where Stephanie Meyer lives, or Northern New York (Laurie Halse Anderson), or Vermont (Karen Hesse), or 'islands up and down the east coast' (Judy Blume). Hell to the yes (!) for Judy Blume! Islands up and down the east coast?? How much money did a book about a girl who wants her period MAKE you, Judy Blume?? I can write a book about a period--I had thirty-nine years of those mothereffers!

So, because I can't join a YA club (is it because I'm too snarky?), I'd like to join the "funny girls who drink too many Flirtinis and do a little facebooking under the influence" club.

Do they have one of those??

Let's torture our old people!

In the past four months, I have filled out over a dozen job applications and sent out several dozen resumes. I have not received one. single. response.

I know times are tight. I know we're in a recession. And I know that there are thousands of middle-aged folks out of work. Middle-aged middle management has taken a swift knee to the b@lls, and there's no real chance for those folks to recover. After all, we can only absorb a certain number of pompous a$$es.

But please hear me out.

*we won't get pregnant and be out for ten weeks' maternity (or paternity, for that matter) leave.
*we are pretty boring. You don't have to worry about us coming in all hungover, unless you expect us to work Saturday morning. Even then, it's unlikely.
*we are pretty responsible. There's not much chance that we'll do anything stupid; we need the job.
*we won't be wearing inappropriate clothing. Mainly because that kind of stuff no longer fits.

So, if you need to hire someone...you may want to look into hiring someone older. We don't have the sense of entitlement that younger folks do.
We know better.

Okay....apparently I am no longer an asset, but a liability.

I have never been one to believe I was anything other than average. (My parents made sure of that!) But there's one thing I always knew, whether anyone wanted me to know or not--I could write.
In kindergarten, Helen Countryman told me I was a good writer. (She might have meant my printing, but who knows? Let's pretend she believed I was Pulitzer-caliber.) In fourth grade, Mrs. Russell told me I was a good writer. This was after I'd written a story based on a magazine photo. Mine was about a birthday party. In high school, Norma Gunkler encouraged my writing, and Betty Coman (despite the fact that she initially believed I was an idiot) finally came around and admitted I was the best writer in my class. (Sorry, Stuart.) Years later, she said she was sorry for both giving me a lousy grade the first semester of my Junior year with her, making me forever ineligible for National Honor Society, and for not giving me the English prize at graduation. I figure she paid for those grievous errors by having to drag around an oxygen tank like a dachschund with no legs, but I digress.

(Those of you who know me can skip the next part, because you've heard it all.)
So when I turned forty-nine, I decided I was done caring what other people thought...I would do and say exactly as I pleased and blame it on old age. So I "cut off my hair and grew a pair." And ignoring everyone who ever said I would never write...I wrote. First I wrote "Kirb Appeal"--both the videos and the blog--and I now have 41 subscribers--six of whom read regularly! Now, it's "New Thirteen" which is basically my journey through (old) age. Then, I joined a writers group, and I learned something about myself: compared to other folks? My writing is GOOD. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the serial romance the group is writing. Some of it is--well--pitiful.) Then, I went to programs that were led by writers and asked questions. Do you know what I heard?
That I am too old.
Too old to write.
Too old to have anyone interested in publishing anything I have to say.
Publishers are looking for hot young women who can write, not old farts who can write. They want either Sex in the City or Mommy Bloggers. Better yet...Sex WITH a Mommy Blogger.
Believe me, back in the day when I was a mommy, I would have been a Mommy Blogger. But there wasn't any such thing back then, and so I wasn't.

So I am planning something new: Post-Mommy Blogging. For Moms who used to be mommys but are now way cooler. Won't you join me?
You don't have to have sex in the city or anywhere else. Old age has it's privileges.

One More Rant Before I Go...

When, as a society, we talk about education reform, I want to laugh.
Because we really don't need education reform...
We need education revolution.

I have been digesting "Waiting For Superman" for months. If you haven't seen this documentary, you should. If you are a teacher, it will leave you feeling frustrated and guilty. If you are a parent, you will leave feeling angry. If you are a citizen of the United States, I hope you will leave feeling like you want to do something. (Of course, if you are a lawyer, you will leave wanting to sue people and make a ton of money, but that's another story for another day. Kind of an "I hate lawyers except for my sister and Perry Mason and Matlock" story.)

We've tried all kinds of things to 'fix' education: Public Law 94-142, which guarantees a public education for all students in the least restrictive environment...tracking students according to ability... standardization of curriculum...incorporating technology..."new" math...
and none of them have worked.

All that we've managed to do is point fingers at the most convenient scapegoat, and currently the scapegoats are teachers.
Another teacher once wrote that there is no other profession where you fail EVERY SINGLE DAY, and yet you keep going back to fail again the next day. And maybe once every month or two, you see a glimmer of success. THAT'S what keeps you going. Not the money (ha!), not the respect (double-ha!), not those awesome health benefits (that actually are pretty good, if you are single...but forget insuring your family, because you could be in the red after all those kids you decided to have are added to your plan).
And you know what? I agree. I see lousy teachers all the time. I see adults in schools who SHOULD NOT BE THERE because they really don't care whether the kids fail or not. I see folks who look at a day of failure as just one more day, instead of as a challenge. I see teachers who EXPECT kids to fail, so they naturally do. They don't believe they can do any better.
But let's not point our fingers only at teachers. We're not the only ones to blame. Some parents have given their kids the idea that we are the enemy, because they want to be their kids' friends. Some administrators don't want to take a stand because they're afraid of litigation. Some kids are just being kids--because there are kids who will always be rebellious, and will be buttheads just because it's who they think they need to be at that given moment.

We've instituted programs in education reform in order to solve 'problems'--many of them specific problems which affect a very small number of students, some of them larger, nationwide pushes to address issues that affect all kids. Studies are done in order to (a) figure out what should be done next, and (b) keep people who have their PhDs in education employed. These new programs might work for awhile, but then it's onto the next boat that comes along.**
Here's my complaint: these programs cost money.
Here's my other complaint: when the current multi-million dollar program no longer works, you throw it out and spend a few million more on a new one.

I believe we throw them ALL out. All of them. And we all work together--teachers, parents, administrators, kids...maybe a token PhD and one governmental official (but he/she is a non-voting participant)..to decide on a comprehensive program to help all kids in the public schools. With all the money we're not spending on bull$hit programs, we can mount the revolution.

Who's bringing the pitchforks and torches? Please sign up on the sheet that's going around.


**Career Start, ALCs, Writer's Workshop, Balanced Literacy, Instant Recess, Problem-Based Learning....

Welcome to New Thirteen!

For my birthday, I decided to resurrect myself. Not in any religious way, because I am pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool Heathen, but in a metaphorical sense.

Those of you who have read my blogs in the past, know that the last two years have been an internal struggle--my kids have left home for real, finding their own lives in which my role is peripheral. So now that I'm not a mom anymore--what am I? And then it dawned on me...I am who I was before I was a mom, just older. (And more wrinkly, and heavier, and more tired, but pretty much the same INSIDE.)

In discussing this with friends (both real and imaginary) as well as complete strangers, I found that there are an awful lot of women out there who feel the same way. We love our children and (for some) grandchildren, but we are also jazzed about not having complete responsibility for anyone else's lives...just our own. And while we can't get back the twenty-plus years we've spent putting other people first, we can move forward putting ourselves at the forefront. We can choose how we spend our time, and most of us want to spend it doing things that make us happy.

These observations led to the birth of "NewThirteen." What is it? Right now it's a domain name attached to a website that's not only incomplete, but a total mystery. I'm glad that my $50 investment comes with the toll-free number of a guy who will, in the special language of computer geeks, tell me how the heck to set the thing up. After that, NewThirteen will be a website dedicated to all things fun for women of a certain age. It will be a clearinghouse of information about cool things to do, see and join...without having to worry about being judged. Eventually, there will probably be advertising, and I hope that someday there will be guest blogs. And if this website helps just one woman (or man, for that matter....this is not a "no boys allowed" club) decide that who she was is really still who she is, then that's a good thing.

So, for all you women who don't want to go gentle into any dang good night...welcome to New Thirteen!

Here's an interesting premise...

http://blogs.tvland.com/prime/137-make-a-complete-and-utter-fool-of-yourself/?xrs=synd_facebook

Sometimes the "Old Thirteen" Comes Back to Bite You in the A$$.

I think that if you have been a follower of "Kirb Appeal" (my other blog and video series) for awhile, you probably have a pretty good idea of what I'm like. (And, if not...why not? I'm FABULOUS!) And I probably come across as being smart and funny and confident. And most of the time, I am.

But every once in awhile someone says something that socks you in the gut and all the self-doubt and bad feelings are there again, just like they were in eighth grade.
The other day I was reading a blog that a younger, hipper woman writes (of which I am insanely jealous, mainly because there were no blogs when I was younger and hipper--oh, who am I fooling? I was never hip.) and of course it resonated, because we annoying girls are always annoying, irregardless of how old we are. And we tend to become solitary over time, because no one wants to hang around with the annoying girl.

Annoying girls keep their fingers crossed, hoping that ONE DAY someone will want to date them and marry them and maybe, if they're lucky, the boy will have a sister and she will feel compelled to be a friend to annoying girl, just because her brother will beat her up if she isn't.

I never had any trouble dating, mainly because guys don't find me annoying. Apparently there are different standards, like as long as a girl has two X chromosomes, she's datable. And I thought, as I grew older, I would make some friends. REAL friends, like the kind who will visit you in the hospital if you're dying. But that hasn't happened yet, and now I know why.

Yesterday, sitting at a restaurant having martinis with colleagues, I was told that I would never be invited to a girls' weekend at the beach because I am annoying. The term that was used was "high maintenance," but the translation was "annoying." And that I would never be included.

In a flash, as if by magic, I was fourteen years old again, targeted by "mean girls." And not one of the women at that table went to bat for me.

I have moved on from being annoying girl to annoying woman. Maybe I need to reconsider the title of my other blog.
Maybe I'm not so appealing after all.