RIP Bernie Macbook, Jr. #mac

Bernie MacBook Jr. passed away the evening of Sunday, January 6, 2014 in his home, surrounded by loved ones. MacBook Jr. is survived by his owners, the FamiLee. He is the son of the late Bernie MacBook Sr. MacBook Jr. arrived to the home of the FamiLee in Boston in 2010. He was adopted by the FamiLee through the Macintosh Refurbished program; his birth family remains unknown. As one of the first iterations of the MacBooks, he was proud to have served as a heavyweight champion of his class, crushing the likes of iPads and MacBook Airs. MacBook Jr. served in the U.S. Armed Forces against Malware and never retired from active duty. He earned his master's degree in Facebook and also scored three virtual golden trophies in the final round of Princess Enchantment Castle on GirlsGoGames.com. He served as a portal for countless awkward conversations with in-laws via Skype and his reserves for awkward family photo documentation were boundless. By far his crowning achievement was allowing Kendra to write her memoir, FamiLee on his software; MacBook Jr. will no doubt smile from Compooper Heaven once the book is published.

Many tears have been shed at the untimely demise of Bernie MacBook Jr.; the FamiLee is still experiencing great waves of grief. A quick scan of their web searches indicate the FamiLee is still soundly in the first stage of denial. Arrangements have not yet been made for MacBook Jr.'s burial. In lieu of flowers, please send Kendra a chai latte as she copes with the loss of her beloved Bernie MacBook Jr.

Chai Latte for Kendra

Caring for the Grammar Purist in Your Life

The Holidays are the hardest time of a year for a grammar purist. It can be especially exhausting to care for the grammar purist in your life as he/she copes with descriptive grammar everywhere. The omnipresence of improper punctuation is also a trigger.

For example, have you ever considered "Season's Greetings" if improperly punctuated? To a grammar purist, this is pure psychological warfare. What if the card were to say Seasons Greetings? As in a plural set of seasons are busily greeting. The grammar purist immediately embarks upon the following journey of images:

As you care for the grammar purist in your life, you may want to note common places where grammar impurity is tolerated, in order to help your purist not have a conniption fit. You may see him/her writhing in pain at the simple opening of a letter. SO many Christmas cards with, for example, "The Higgenbottom's" as return address. THE HIGGENBOTTOMS. PLURAL. NOT POSSESSIVE. You may hear him/her muttering, as he/she reads another Christmas letter ad nauseum:

"It's 'This year was special for my family and ME.' ME. I is not a direct object pronoun or even an indirect object pronoun!!!"

Understand that mumbled grammatical lessons to an unsuspecting or even an invisible audience is normal behavior for a grammar purist, particularly for this time of year. As long as the grammar purist stays in a healthy zone of the didactic, rather than the preachy or even violent, he/she should emerge from the holiday season with sanity intact.

Although difficult to avoid, you should try your best to steer your grammar purist away from shopping malls where signage with grammar impurities run rampant. Lest your grammar purist be compelled to correct every sign hastily printed:

Loving your grammar purist can be a thorny business as you endure their spastic, oftentimes inconsolable tantrums over seemingly inconsequential  matters. However, your abiding is appreciated and will reap plenty of rewards in the new  year when he/she is back to helping you edit your cover letter for that new job you're about to snag. Yay, grammar purity!

Re: that book that I'm not really talking about

I am still in the phase where Nothing is Happening with my book. And by that I mean, we aren't ready to shop it for a publisher yet because we are still fine-tuning my proposal, which has gone through at least a dozen revisions. This is not a bad thing. In fact, I would choose the agency all over again, if given the chance to choose the agency all over again. My agent Heidi is incredibly thorough and dedicated to my project. She understands my heart for this book about the family we don't choose, but whom we choose to love, and the God who still chooses to love us. She understands the dilemmas I have as a writer shaping this book about my own life. She has read the manuscript a bazillion times, not because she's making a huge fortune by doing so. In fact, she hasn't yet made a dime off this work. That sort of blows my mind that someone who isn't yet paid cares so much about the quality of this whole package deal.

Let me tell you about the revisions, though. They pull all my guts out and stuff them in the dryer on a superfast spin cycle. Then they pack them back into my body bag and sew me up with twine. These revisions are a special operation. I usually love editing: other people's writing and even my own. This task of revising, though, holds some serious gravity. I've got a revising complex because these are words for a publisher to read and flirt with and fall into like with and maybe fall in love with, ultimately. For example, this one sentence that serves a sort of preamble to the proposal? I have stared at it for hours. This is not usually my m.o. Inspiration will usually strike me any old time, like while I am brushing my teeth or reading a book or while I am driving my kids home from school and listening to an old Hall & Oates song and then BAM! That's it! I'll just say, "I can't go for that (no can do)!" This one proposal sentence, though, just paralyzes me.

I am sincerely glad to be going through this exercise, though. I am learning to market my writing which is something somewhat new for me. I am also learning to appreciate this process that makes a believer out of oneself in one's own work. I used to think that all was an automatic residual: that one's confidence in one's work, if one had spent considerable time on it, was pretty much assured. So! Utterly! Untrue. I can work forever on my manuscript but if I'm not able to identify the key reasons why it is valuable, and will prove valuable to a readerly audience--then what? Big fat nothing is what.

So I push on, believing that we are closer, believing there is value in the process and in the product.

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And just for ol' time's sake, here's my toss into the #ThrowbackThursday ring.

Baby Girl's first Red Sox game - Sept. 2008