All The Lovely Losers

Someone told my daughter this week that without a college degree and a full-time professional job, she’s going nowhere in life. Translation? She’s a loser. Oh, and her parents, the dad who works at the family restaurant and the mom who writes? Losers, too.

While the comments must have stung, she handled them with grace, knowing that at least she joins a long list of famous losers:

Abram, aged and childless, who left his family and country without knowing his intended destination after receiving a promise from God that he would be the father of a great nation - and believing it.

Naive loser.

Moses, who turned his back on his wealthy, royal Egyptian upbringing only to find himself tending goats in the desert, who then went on to lead every man, woman and child safely out of bondage in the land of Egypt relying only on a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire to guide and protect them.

Trusting loser.

James and John, sons of Zebedee, Sons of Thunder, who left their father’s successful fishing business to follow a rabbi named Jesus.

Double losers.

Paul, a respected, educated Jew, zealous for God and successful in all things, who gave it up to travel the world making tents and preaching Christ, enduring beatings, shipwrecks and prison for his beliefs.

Misguided loser.

And perhaps the biggest loser of them all, Jesus himself, the Son of God, born in a manger to a single mother and raised to be a manual laborer, who spent three years of his life homeless and in charge of a rag tag band of misfits, only to be crucified on a cross, ridiculed and penniless.

What a waste.

I guess the problem is that we’ve always taught our daughter to pursue a life committed to glorifying God and loving her neighbors, and while she’s taken some detours over the past few years, at the age of 22 she’s beginning to realize that a life spent pursuing the world means nothing if you lose your soul in the process.

So if that means she’s a loser, then she’s on her way to success. And we’re pretty proud of her.

Flying kittens

When I brought Murphy home from the Humane Society, all he wanted to do was snuggle and purr and cuddle. Then the doctor gave him some medicine to get rid of his worms, he also got over his cold, and suddenly he became a completely different cat. He's still snuggly and cuddly and purry, but he's also emerged as a sort of fearless Feline Flying Wallenda.

Last week I came home from the store and was greeted at the door by both Scout and Murphy. They were both licking their lips, Scout with a slightly ashamed countance. Turns out the cat had gotten onto the counter and thrashed around in the sugar bowl, tossing down a bit so the dog could join in the fun.

Then I found Murphy in the kitchen sink licking the dirty dishes. When I turned the faucet on him he sat there until his head was soaked. Then he jumped down to lick himself dry.

A day later, I was washing the dishes (not the same dishes, just to be clear) and he leapt up and splashed into the sink.

Later, I was cooking dinner and he suddenly sprang from a sitting position onto my back, digging his front claws into my waist and using his back legs to scramble up. (Ouch)

The next day, I was sitting at the computer when I heard a thump and turned to see that Murphy had jumped onto the stove, snagged a lovely tomato that I'd just cut one slice out of, pushed it onto the floor and was dragging it around the kitchen. (Ick)

He's gotten into the garbage. He's climbed onto the stove and torn apart shortcakes I'd just baked. He's climbed the bookcase like a ladder. Like a bolt of lightning, he flies out from nowhere to thrust his paw into the middle of my dinner plate.

Scout has grown into a great dog. I can leave a bowl of dog biscuits out and he won't touch them, even if I'm not in the room. Murphy found an unopened bag of cat treats, dragged it under the bed to the farthest corner, ripped it open and ate every treat.

He's afraid of nothing -not the vacuum, a spray bottle, the dog. He's content anywhere he is. He's never scratched anyone, although he's constantly staging surprise attacks on Scout, pouncing out from under the couch to hang onto his tail or back leg and gnaw on him like a turkey leg.

I can train a dog. Scout's a good dog. But I don't know how to train a cat. Is that normal? Or should I put Murphy in the circus?

"World Changer" article, Breakaway Magazine June 2007

My article on "World Changer" Willie Wick for the June issue of Breakaway Magazine is now online. Check it out here.

Guest blogger at CAN!

I was recently a guest blogger at the Christian Authors' Network (CAN!), where I talked about networking. Check it out here.

I do some of my best writing in those moments just before I fall asleep, when my physical body has succumbed to the pending slumber but my mind is still active and energy is flowing rapidly as the mental walls I work so hard to keep in place during my waking hours come tumbling down.

Trying to harness the ideas is like trying to harness the wind. The moment I awaken the ideas vanish and I'm left with the faintly unsettling feeling that I've just experienced something other-worldly and it's still there, lingering just outside of my sight, and I can hear it giggling as it floats away.

I once wrote an entire story in my head, a beautiful and funny story about a man and a woman, about life and love, creation and death, the scenes so vivid, the dialoge so sure, the plot so engrossing that even in my half-conscious state I knew I'd created a masterpiece. When I woke up all I could remember, "There's this guy, right? And he hires someone to kill his wife. I think."

Can we ever learn how to capture the wind?

Why I Work From Home

I crawl onto the couch, my head pounding and my shoulders twitching with tension. I hear the dog sigh from behind the recliner and listen to the cat purr as he curls himself into a ball in the space behind my knees and the back of the couch. The gathering clouds are preparing to bring some much-needed rain, and a blue jay squawks as the wind rustles the trees just outside my window. I feel the sofa's cool pillow on my cheek and the breeze from the fan blowing softly across my tired body, and I am reminded once again why I love working from home.

Random Musings on the Freelance Life #102: The good and the really frustrating

The benefit of having a real job is that you get a real paycheck on the same day every week. Even if your hours vary every week, you have a pretty good idea of how much money you have coming in on payday. If you work 30 hours this week, you can pretty much be assured you'll be paid for them the next time you're scheduled for a paycheck.

The problem with freelancing is that you're at the mercy of the publications you write for, who tend to send your money after they've paid everyone else, including the exterminator. Which means that if you work 30 hours this week writing an article, it might be 60 or 90 or 120 days before you see that money. Even if you're supposed to get it in 30 days.

Hence the reason why we've had to cancel our trip to Wyoming.

While we had plenty of money saved, about $1,000 in payments I'd been expecting since May still hadn't come in by July 1st, meaning that we had to spend the Wyoming money in May and June to cover normal expenses and conference fees. When it came time for us to take off on our trip the first week in July, the money we'd saved was spent on other things and it's replacement was nowhere in site

I got check a couple of weeks ago; apparently the magazine had a computer snafu and lost all of their invoices, and mine was one that got lost in the shuffle. I can live with that. This magazine usually pays very quickly and mishaps happen. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for us to still take our trip.

And the rest of the money is still tied up at publications who have ignored by repeated requests for payment, who have give me myriad excuses ranging from "we don't have any money" to "we're waiting for payment from someone else so we can pay you."

It's a frustrating business, freelancing. I love it, don't get me wrong. I have freedom and flexibility, and get to be creative and interact with lots of different people every day. I couldn't take my dog to a real job.

But it's extremely frustrating to do the job for which you've been hired, to turn in your work on time and to the editor's specs, and then wait for 3 or 4 months past the invoice date to get paid because they're running short on operating cash.

So a piece of advice for newbie freelancers: remember that there's more to your career than writing. Freelancing is a business. You not only do the work but you're the accounting department, marketing department, and chief operating officer. Work with those people who help make your job easier, not more difficult.

Merriam-Webster adds new words to dictionary

A few weeks ago, when I turned in my entertaiment column, my editor emailed me to ask what "crunk" meant.

I'd included a blurb about the group Family Force Five, who describe their music as crunk. I fudged some sort of answer; I think I told her it was rap, but not urban rap, but more like some Southern white guy rap, mixed with rock. While I've heard the word tossed around in artist bios, let's face it. "Crunk" isn't a household word.

Until now. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Desk Dictionary has added the word "crunk" in its latest edition (who knew? Crunk is a style of Southern rap music) as well as "ginormous" (a combination of gigantic and enormous) and other new slang words now in daily usage.

I was fairly certain that I made up the word "ginormous", but according to the AP press release Merriam-Webster traces the word back to it's 1948 appearance in a British military dictionary.

At least I knew what crunk was. Kinda.

Mysterious stranger (meow)

The vet called the other day with the results from the tests they did on Murphy's ... uh, "litter box presents". Turns out the little stinker has something called whip worm.

Being the dedicated (and neurotic) pet owner that I am, I immediately did a Google search on whip worm and found out that while it's a common parasite for dogs to contract, it's almost unheard of for cats to get. One website said that feline whip worm isn't even found in the U.S., saying that lung worm is often misdiagnosed as whip worm. (Lung worm does cause respiritory problems, and he does have an upper respiritory infection.) But the vet said that indeed, he did test positive for whip worm, and negative for lung worm.

We've been trying for the past couple of weeks to figure out Murphy's past. The Humane Society said he was a stray picked up in Geneva, but we're pretty sure he had a family at one time. He didn't flinch when I put a collar on him. He is intimately acquainted with a refrigerator and gets especially excited when he sees the milk jug, even though we've never given him milk. He sits, purring loudly, while I brush him. He gets along swimmingly with the dog (although he often chases Scout's tail for him).

And yet the only name he responds to without hesitation is "Kitty Kitty", the moniker given to every stray cat that's ever lived.

Dr. Hawkins said that the medicine Murphy's on for the whip worm also treats lung worm, and if in a week he's still coughing and sneezing to bring him back in. But as long as he's eating and drinking she'd rather let the virus run its course and let the medicine do its job.

So we add another piece to the Murphy's Past puzzle. If whip worm isn't found in the U.S., where did he pick it up? Is there some family who moved to the U.S. from another country, bringing this little kitty, and lost him along Seneca Lake? If so, do they miss him?

And even if whip worm IS found in the U.S., there didn't seem to be any argument that it's a pretty rare thing for a cat to have. Where has he been and who has he been hanging out with?

Meow-sterious.

New column in the Christian Voice Magazine

I'm happy to announce that, beginning with their September 07 issue, I'll be penning a column for the Christian Voice Magazine. This monthly, full color, national magazine covers the gospel music industry and includes faith, family and lifestyle articles. My column will be a slice-of-life humor column, which is great, since I don't know anything about Southern gospel music. I'll be writing about, among other things, parenting, my dog, office supplies and the mysterious cat that I adopted from the Humane Society who has contracted a parasite worm almost never found in the U.S.

For more information and to see a PDF sample issue of the magazine, visit http://www.christianvoicemagazine.com/.

The down side of cleaning

I spent much of this weekend cleaning. I know, and it didn't even trigger earthquakes, tsunamis or the apoloclypse.

The last time our house was "spic and span, invite the neighbors over" was when Cassie graduated from high school and we had her graduation party. That she's turning 22 in September will give you an idea of how long that's been.

It's not that the house is completely unpresentable. It's just that things kind of took on a life of their own, and after a while it was easier to let the clutter take over than fight it.

When Cassie went to college, I decided to paint and add shelves in my office, so I moved my computer in to the dining room. Soon, the office became the "someone's coming, quick, throw the junk in the office" room. The dining room became my office, which doesn't really lend itself to dinner parties, not that we ever had dinner parties anyway.

Each of Cassie's returns from college - for breaks and finally for good - brought a few more boxes of stuff. We set her computer up in the dining room with mine, and viola! Instant double office mess, and boxes stored in the spare room and her bedroom (and the hallway ...)

When she moved to Florida, I did clean the spare room and was just contemplating moving my office upstairs when she came home. With a lot more stuff. Stuff that's been sitting in my foyer and dining room for a year.

Making probably the biggest mess is all of the review materials. I have crates (and crates and crates) of CDs, DVDs and books, a lot of which can be given away. But there's a lot in there I want to keep. I just need to spend a day going through it all.

The problem is that when you let a mess grow it gets harder and harder to know where to begin to start cleaning it up. Just the thought of diving into piles of files or boxes of household item or stacks of old bills is exhausting. Much easier to simply shove it in a closet - or the office.

So yesterday, I started to tackle the mess. I put together two new filing cabinets, and spent hours sifting through file crates of old papers, folders, notes and other stuff. I organized missions stuff and magazines. My desk area is looking much neater. We're getting the garage roof done next month, and David has taken a week off to supervise the project and help me haul everything out of my former office/junk room, and paint, put up shelves, and move me back in there.

But for now, my makeshift office in the dining room looks pretty good.

The problem, of course, is that now I can't find anything.

Sitting at my nice, neat desk I was holding some notes for my dog book that I needed to file. Only I couldn't remember what I did with the dog book file. Normally, it would be on the right hand pile on my desk, the one the cat loves to topple on his way to the window sill.

Except now I'm an organized writer. Where would an organized writer put a dog book file?

It wasn't in the filing cabinet (actually, there's not much in either cabinet yet). It wasn't on my desk. It wasn't in the wire rack on my desk. Any of those are place that a dog book file should be, at least that's where they should be in a clean office.

After a bit of searching, I found it in my book bag.

"The problem with cleaning," I told my husband later, "is that you can't find anything. Even though this looks like a mess, I know exactly where everything is. Or at least I did before I started cleaning. That's why I don't clean."

What's a day without one good rationalization?

Meet Murphy

Last Saturday, I did something I thought I'd never do: I got another cat.

I didn't intend to get another cat, at least not yet. But Lollypop farm, our local Humane Society, was running a "summer special" on cats and kittens ($50 off, and they were spayed or neutered, had shots, were flea'd, wormed and microchipped, and came with a vet visit and 30 days of pet insurance) so I figured it was at least worth checking out. Any cat more than 5 months old was only $25.

The process at Lollypop Farm is long. I mean, reeeeeally long. There were hundreds of people there to see the cats and dogs, and I spent about 4 hour deciding which cats I wanted to see, then filling out the adoption paperwork and waiting for my turn to see 3 cats (the max they'll let you see).

I sat on the floor in the "meet and greet" room as Joy, the adoption counselor, showed me first two 9 month old cats (cute, but busy with each other), then a cage full of playful kittens (cute, but they didn't even realize I was in the room) and finally a 4-year-old cat named Jasmine. The cats crawled under the bench, scratched at the walls, chased a ball around, and tumbled over each other. Jasmine was probably the best match, temperment-wise; she was calm but a bit unsure of me. I wasn't sure I wanted a cat that old.

Let me state for the record that I am not a cat-person. I loved MY cat. And if I was going to get another cat, it had to be the right cat. Not a nice cat or a cute cat or a pretty cat but THE cat. Penny had a difficult temperment, was moody, and sometimes not the most pleasant cat to have around. That's why I loved her so much. She was just like me. And while I was eager to rescue a cat and Lollypop Farm had a great deal, it had to the perfect match. And so far, I wasn't feeling it with any of the cats I'd seen.

After I'd seen my alotted three cages, Joy said she was very happy to spend a few more minutes with me, so she went to put Jasmine back into her cage and get one more cat that another attendent, Katie, insisted I see.

While Joy was gone I started tearing up a bit, because I was really missing Penny and it was looking like I'd never find another cat I could bond with the same way. I asked God that when the time was right to send me the right cat, and I started to gather my purse, ready to tell Joy I didn't want to see any more cats. Then she came back in with a cat they called Zoro.

Zoro was about a year old, and had been brought in as a stray. They'd randomly picked a name from a book so they could put something on the information card. He was snuggled in Joy's arm's, purring, as she carried him in. "This one's a lover," she laughed.

She put him on my lap, where he immediately settled in and started kneading his paws on my arms. I sat on the floor and took him off my lap, thinking he might like to check out the room, and instead he climbed back onto my lap, licking my arm and kneading his paws. When I reached under his chin to scratch, he stretched up and rubbed his face on mine.

"That's the way cats mark their territory," Joy said with a smile. But I already knew for sure what she was trying to imply: this was my cat.

After filling out paperwork, I brought the cat home - I already knew we were changing his name - and prayed that he and Scout would get along. I had been torn about getting another cat because I thought maybe Scout was enjoying his time as the only pet in the house. Then again, he'd lived his whole life with us with a cat and if we were going to add another one now was a good time.

When we brought Scout home last year, Penny high-tailed it for the basement, where she stayed for a month. Gradually, she made her way up and joined the family, and while she and Scout find a way to co-exist there was always some tension between them. Scout was constantly scratched across his nose from Penny's attacks.

This cat, on the other hand, popped out of his carrying box and settled in quite nicely with the dog. Once, when Cassie was holding the cat, Scout lunged at them both, causing the cat to scratch Cassie. But he never fled and soon they were both tolerating each other, if not happily enjoying each other.

We named the cat Murphy. He's been with us for four days, and except for the first night, when we locked him in the kitchen (with basement access) until we were sure he knew where his litter box was and that he was using it, he and Scout have slept in our bed. Right now, they're curled up about two feet from each other, sound asleep. Scout's accidentally entered Murphy's personal space a few times, usually trying to retrieve a ball, but hasn't bled even once from the experience.

Murphy seems quite content in his new home. He's eating, cuddling, purring, using his litter box, and generally making it known that living with us is much more enjoyable than the streets.

The balance of fur in the household finally feels normal again.

(PHOTOS: Cassie bonds with Murphy the cat. Let me assure you - he's most at home when part of his body is lounging on part of your body. Or when he's eating. If he can do both, he's in cat heaven.)