AN END TO "VOLUNTEER WORK"

I've done a lot of volunteer work in my time, and it fills a good portion of my days even now.

I've directed school videos, edited and written them, too.  I've compiled databases with literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of data, and crunched the data to make them make sense.    I've taught classes, mentored students, designed curricula.  I've written so many auction catalogs I can whip out a description of a trip to Disneyland without even thinking. 

I've designed flyers, produced fundraising dinners.  I've shelved books, wrapped gift baskets, chauffeured VIPs and kids alike, sat through interminable meetings, made centerpieces, planned menus, made Costco runs, collected money, sold thousands of boxes of cookies.

For me, volunteer work is just what I do because some task needs to be done and I have the skills needed to do it.  It's part of being a part of a community, be it a school, a church, a professional organization.  It can, during certain seasons, take an enormous amount of time.  But that's not something I've ever minded.

But it's not particularly valued.  I certainly couldn't put any of this work on a resume.  I mean, it's just volunteer work, right?  And none of the other women I work alongside in these tasks are putting their volunteer work on their resumes, either, I feel very confident.  

And yes, it's almost always women.  A handful of men volunteer for a handful of specific tasks in any group I've ever been in -- and they get highly praised for showing up at all -- while the women in the background keep everything functioning.  

I have been amazed at the talents of some of these women, producing massive events for no pay and no glory, showing skills that are worth a lot of money in the marketplace, and giving it all away.  I have been proud of their work, and frustrated that all they get for it is a thank you note (if that).

I experienced a paradigm shift about volunteer work the other day.  I was reading an article about non-profits in the recession, about all the work going in to trying to raise extra money to keep various school programs afloat.  And a man commented on just how much "pro bono" work was going in to the effort.

"Pro bono"?  I never thought of volunteer work in that way.  Pro bono work generally refers to work done by professionals, such as lawyers.  Not to a bunch of moms producing a school carnival.

But so much of the work I've done -- and that I see other women doing for free -- is professional work.  Not all of it, of course -- almost anyone can cut felt or pack food for the homeless.  

Not everyone, however, can plan a fundraiser hosting 500 people and raising over $100,000.  Not everyone can write professional-quality press releases.  Not everyone can produce or direct a video.  

I indeed use my professional skills -- especially my skills as a writer -- in so much of my volunteer work.  If the organization -- be it a school, church, whatever -- had to pay for some of my services, it could cost them a pretty penny.

So, from this time forward, I have decided to talk about volunteer work in a wholly different light, and I will encourage all the women I work alongside to do so as well.

Never again will I discuss my "volunteer" work.  Nope.  It's "pro bono" work, all the way.

Maybe I'll even put it on my resume.

MULTIPLE-SCHEDULE DISORDER

I am finding myself torn these days.  Torn between two schedules, and it's surprisingly hard to deal with.

For years, I have carried around a leather-bound hard-copy schedule.  Way back in college, I used a little day-by-day diary and kept my to-do list in it.  I graduated to using Day-Timer schedules -- currently the indexed two-pages-per-day variety.  

My schedules have been my extra brain for years.  The first time we were audited by the IRS, as part of a giant audit of the entertainment industry (with screenwriters and stuntpeople going first, for some reason), we sailed through the audit because I had every single deductible expense written down by hand in my schedules, going back for years.  I can tell you exactly what day I made a phone call, mailed a letter, got together with a friend.  I have notes scribbled 

showing fax numbers, directions, assistants' names.  I have my list of books to read, my Christmas present ideas, and of course, I always have my list of quotes to draw on.

My schedules and lists have worked for me for years.  But now... along has come my iPhone (which you may recall, I truly heart).

Now, when I'm out, if I make an appointment, I punch it into my iPhone.  But this means I'm now keeping two schedules.  Sometimes I have an appointment in my iPhone but not my written schedule.  Or vice versa.  (The good thing is, because of the double listings, I'm not forgetting anything -- so far.)

I really like the calendar app on my iPhone.  I like the way I can enter an address or a studio gate for a meeting, like how easy it is to move a meeting that gets bumped (with no ugly scratch-outs left behind), like how it lets me repeat things that happen regularly (kids' church activities, say, or guitar lessons) without the tedious writing of the same thing over and over.  I like that I can slip it in a pocket.

I've switched other things to my iPhone, too.  I've always kept running shopping lists in my schedule -- Costco, Target, etc.  Those are all on my iPhone now.  And they work much better there.

I felt a little guilty when I started to switch my calendaring, etc. to my iPhone.  After so many years with my written schedule ("Schedgy" Lee calls it), I feel like I'm being unfaithful.  Seriously.

Yet there are things my schedule can do that I haven't found a satisfying way to do on my iPhone.  I can see a whole month on one page, without having to tap to open individual days.  I have all those other lovely lists (Christmas, books, etc.).  And the to-do lists.  I have a truly anal list for each day, usually 20 to 30 items.  It feels good to check them off.  I never have to worry about a battery running down.  And I have not found a truly adequate to-do list app for the iPhone at all.

So I am caught between two worlds at the moment, jumping back and forth from one to another.  It will have to resolve itself at some point, I know.  But I feel mildly schizoid over it all.  And again, a little unfaithful to the system I've used for over 20 years.

The other night, I went looking for my schedule and couldn't find it anywhere.  Not by my bed.  Not on my desk.  Not in my purse or computer bag.  Not even in the odd places it sometimes turns up -- the kitchen, the bathroom, between couch cushions...  Nowhere.  I went to bed mildly discomfited.

When I woke up, I knew I had to find it.  I enlisted Lee, thinking a second set of eyes might help.  Nowhere.  

And then I looked behind the bed -- We have a narrow shelf behind our bed, and every now then a chapstick or the like falls off it.  But never something as big as my schedule.

There it was.  Upside down, on its head, half open, sprawling and ungainly.  It had indeed fallen off the shelf.

I picked it up, tidied it up.  I was relieved.  And yet I had to wonder.

Did it fall?.... Or, knowing of my unfaithfulness, did it jump...?

REREADING HARRY: CHAMBER OF SECRETS

I first read Chamber of Secrets the same long weekend I read Sorcerer's Stone -- the Y2K weekend we took with our writers' group down in San Diego.  I already wrote about how I responded to Sorcerer's Stone -- clever, fun, but not something that made me say, "Wow, I've found a series that will be one of the faves of my whole life!"

Chamber of Secrets was something different, though.  It seemed less cutesy, more serious.  Halfway through I knew I was going to be following Harry through his entire journey.

Rereading Chamber also had the same effect on me.  I finished Sorcerer's Stone wondering if I was going to be disappointed as I read forward.  By the time I got through Chamber, I knew that would not happen.

In Chamber, we go to the Weasleys for the first time, and meet Molly.  I can't tell you what a powerful effect Molly had on me this time around.  I noticed how, from the very beginning, she's almost obsessed with the idea that one of her family could die.  

In her very first rant at her sons, when Fred, George and Ron spirit Harry away from the Dursleys' in the flying Ford Anglia, look where her mind automatically goes:

Have you any idea how worried I've been?.... Beds empty!  No note!  Car gone -- could have crashed -- out of my mind with worry --...You could have died--

Molly's greatest fear, which I began to watch for at this point, will of course recur again and again in the story.  It's as if we're being promised that one of her children will die -- foreshadowed here when Ginny is the one taken hostage by Tom Riddle, dead if Harry didn't save her.  I don't know why I didn't take all these warnings seriously when I've read the books before.  Maybe I wasn't taking Molly seriously.  But I do now.  And I truly love her.

(And I think, by the way, there is a great essay to be written on the topic of fear in HP.)

I remember reading Chamber for the first time and realizing pretty early on that the monster was a basilisk (all that D&D playing in college finally paid off!).  Somehow the basilisk, lethally dangerous as it is, always seemed like the true monster of the piece.  But this time, I was surprised at the jolt I got when Harry first opened the diary.  My eyes literally opened wide as I realized -- this is a Horcrux!  Harry is messing around with a Horcrux!

Suddenly the danger-to-come in future books flooded backward into Chamber of Secrets.  Already Harry is on his final quest, the quest to destroy the Horcruxes, even if he doesn't know it!  (It made me wonder, how often have I set foot upon a journey without realizing that's the journey I'm taking.)

I was absolutely riveted when Harry finally reached the Chamber of Secrets and faced Tom Riddle.  Before reading Deathly Hallows, the idea of facing a "memory" didn't feel all that dangerous.  It certainly felt as if Tom's danger to Harry lay primarily in his ability to control the basilisk.  But now every moment between them felt fraught with peril, as if Harry was walking along the edge of a sheer cliff, thousands of feet of certain death below him, but in the dark, not realizing that one misstep could end everything.  I wanted to yell at him, "This isn't a memory!  This is part of Voldemort's soul you're talking to, just as dangerous as meeting Voldemort himself!"

The sheer power of the Tom Riddle scene, now that I know what I was actually seeing, reading, living through, completely blew away all the silliness of Gilderoy Lockhart.  When I first read the book, I thought Lockhart would matter somehow.  Now he just seems like a trivial distraction.  Not surprising, since that's sort of what he is in real life.

And while I have found the various revelations about Dumbledore, primarily in Deathly Hallows, a bit disturbing, Chamber of Secrets made me get back to the Dumbledore I always loved, and confirmed why I loved him.  Frankly, the Dumbledore of Chamber does not feel like the same character as the Dumbledore of Deathly Hallows.  I prefer this one (as I prefer the late Richard Harris to Michael Gambon).

That weekend in San Diego, I ended up at times wrapped up reading Harry Potter even while my friends were around me hanging out.  I even have a picture somewhere of me lying on the living room couch of our friends' condo reading Chamber.  Because even back then, I knew I was now hooked.

Next, thoughts on the reread of Prisoner of Azkaban.

BOOKS, BOOKS AND MORE BOOKS

Thank God, our kids are all settled with their future schools (and yes, Sabrina is also going to Harvard-Westlake)...  And it is time for us to get settled as we prepare to move to a new house next week.

While we were visiting various schools, I sometimes found myself surprised at how small school libraries can be.  When the student or parent giving us a tour would boast that their library had 7000 volumes, I found myself thinking "But we have 3000.  How can our pe

rsonal library be almost half the size of a library serving a whole school?!"

Having 3000 books is a wonderful thing... until it's time to move.  Then all those books just amount to lots and lots of boxes.  Heavy boxes.  

But I am ready.  I have made my lists (I always feel better if I can make a list).   I know exactly what books we have, and what goes where.  Here's how it (ahem) stacks up:

8 boxes of Sabrina's books

7 boxes of Cory's books

4 boxes of fiction

4 boxes of fiction

3 boxes of art books

3 boxes of books about film

2 boxes of cookbooks

2 boxes of science books

2 boxes of history books

2 boxes of reference books

2 boxes of books about screenwriting

2 boxes of travel books

2 boxes of science fiction

2 boxes of books about language

1 box of comic books

1 box of biographies

1 box of atlases

1 box of (young) children's books

1 box of books by C.S. Lewis

1 box of books by J.R.R. Tolkien

1 box of books by Madeleine L'Engle

1 box of Agatha Christie mysteries

1 box of Harry Potter (and related) books

1 box of books about money

1 box of books about parenting

1 box of Bibles

1 box of books about Stanley and Livingstone

1 box of books about fringe science

1 box of books about Hollywood

1 box of James Bond novels

1 box of plays

1 box of books about music

1 box of books about Broadway

1 box of books about The Beatles

1 box of books about gambling

1 box of published screenplays

1 box of poetry

The Oxford English Dictionary

and 4 boxes of miscellaneous books

And now I'm happy, because I've managed to make a list about a list...

All I have to do now is find shelves on which to put all these books!

HEY FACEBOOK, HERE I COME

Well, here's one New Year's resolution I've managed to keep so far!  I've got myself onto Facebook.  

I originally told Cory, when he asked if he could go on Facebook, that he could go on if he friended me.  Of course, that would imply that I would need to go on Facebook, too.  Cory beat me to it by some six months or so... but finally I have found the time to get started.  (The real question is, will I find the time to keep up with it all?!)

So if you're on Facebook, come visit me there.

Meanwhile, I will sit here waiting for Cory to actually accept my friend request.....

A MOMENT OF CLARITY

It's been hard to talk to my mom reasonably for a while.  Even this time last year, when she was still living in her own place and still fairly functional, we had quite the discussions about the election primaries.  She was very concerned about this Arab man who was Hillary Clinton's boyfriend, and traveling with her all over the country, who had suddenly decided at the last minute that he wanted to run for President, too, and stabbed his own girlfriend in the back to steal her votes.  (Um... okay...)

It's gotten worse, of course.  By the time the election actually happened, she didn't know it had occurred at all.

But last week I had a lovely talk with her.  I called her up:  "Mom, guess what?  We have good news!  Cory got into Harvard-Westlake!"  And I explained what that meant, how hard it was to get in, how good the school is.  

And, miracle of miracles, she understood.  She kept saying how proud she was of Cory, kept saying "Harvard-Westlake.  Ha

rvard-Westlake.  I have to remember that!"  And she did remember, at least for the whole rest of the conversation.  (Pretty remarkable for a woman who often doesn't remember what she said 10 seconds ago.)  When we signed off some 15 minutes later, she said "Cory got into Harvard-Westlake!  I'm so proud of him!"

That may end up being her last lucid conversation.  The next day, I thought, hey, let's let her relive the good news again.  But this time, she didn't understand what I was talking about at all.  

And a couple of days ago, she woke up (if that's the right word) semi-conscious, barely aware of her surroundings, of anyone around her.  She was hospitalized, treated for some pretty bad infections (which apparently can affect mental state in the elderly), and as I type this, she is being transferred to a nursing home.  Supposedly this is for rehab, but the social workers have started dropping the word "hospice" into their conversations.  (And let me take a moment to sing the praises of hospital social workers!)

I'm glad she at least got that one moment to rejoice over her grandson.  I can hope that, if we get good news for Sabrina this weekend (the acceptance dates are staggered by grade level), she'll come out of her detached state to understand another flash of good news.

But I can't hope too much.

HARRY POTTER IN ONE WORD

Travis Prinzi over at The Hogshead had, about a month ago, a very fun Harry Potter-themed exercise which I found fascinating.  The goal was to describe the Harry Potter characters in one word.

Having just re-read the books when I came upon the exercise, I really enjoyed it.  Sometimes it was hard to think through a given character, or to decide if the word should describe, say, Neville at the beginning of the story or at the end.

Here's my list.  Or you can click over to see the original exercise and all the lists here.  You'll see lots of well-reasoned and fascinating responses.

Harry -- Seeker

Ron -- Wannabe

Hermione -- Brains

Neville -- Triumphant

Ginny -- Fiery

Draco -- Supercilious

Dumbledore -- Puppet-master

Snape -- Secrets

McGonagall -- Professor

Slughorn -- Brown-noser

Molly -- Lioness!

Arthur -- Distracted

Sirius -- Imprisoned

Lupin -- Inhibited

James -- Star

Pettigrew -- Ratfink

Lily -- Perfection

Voldemort -- (Self-)Destructive

Lockhart -- Mirror

Fred -- Comic

George -- Ditto

Percy -- Pompous

Dobby -- Servant

Hagrid -- Devotion

Aberforth -- Grudge

Fudge -- Politician

.........................Let me know what you think, or add some one-words of your own!

BOOK THOUGHTS: GIRL MEETS GOD

I do not speak "church" as a native language.  

I was raised by a Jewish mom and an atheist dad.  My mom had never been allowed to practice her religion growing up -- she was a red diaper baby, and her socialist mom kept her from all religious influence as much as she could, against the wishes of her own family.  My mom did sneak a few Jewish tidbits to me, singing the dreidel song to me as a little girl, for instance, but she couldn't do much, because my dad was quite anti-Semitic.  He had been raised in the Church of Scotland, and always told me to write "Presbyterian" on school forms, but he left all religion early on, and remained hostile to God (and to my own Christianity) until a few days before his death.

So when it comes to "church," I have always been an outsider.  Always had to observe how things are done so I can try to slip in under the radar.  Always had one foot in one world, one foot in another.  

Maybe that's why I enjoyed Lauren Winner's  Girl Meets God so much... finding it fascinating, even as I found it frustrating.

Lauren is raised half-Jewish, half-Baptist, and all-nothing.  Yet she finds herself from a fairly young age drawn toward the spiritual, toward God.  She first turns toward her roots, immersing herself in Orthodox Judaism, throwing herself into the studying and ritual required for conversion (because her mom was

 the Baptist, she is not considered Jewish from birth).

Yet her spiritual search doesn't end there.  She finds herself drawn inexplicably toward Jesus -- through dreams, through reading Karon's "Mitford" books, through various encounters with people.  And when she leaves the U.S. to study in England for a couple of years, she is baptized as a Christian -- news that is purely shocking to the Orthodox community and friends she left behind, and which causes her to become deeply estranged from them.

The story as Lauren tells it, though, isn't so straightforward.  Modeling her journey roughly on the liturgical year, she jumps back and forth, fracturing the time line, and letting us deep into her feelings and reactions throughout.

Clearly I relate to her background and her search, given my own background.  (While I have certainly never been as Jewish, one might say, as Lauren, I'm Jewish enough to have been eligible for a concentration camp during the Holocaust... and as a friend likes to point out, I'm ethnically as Jewish as Halle Berry is black.)

As I said above, Girl Meets God is fascinating and frustrating.  It's fascinating because it's beautifully written, and because Lauren gives us such a rare view from the outside.  She walks us right into her spiritual and emotional dilemmas and, because of the fractured time line, often doesn't resolve those dilemmas for us right away.  It's fascinating because she dives so deeply into both her religious choices -- not just Judaism, but Orthodox Judaism, with the long skirts and the kosher kitchen and the intense studying.  And it's fascinating because she clearly yearns for God so strongly through her entire search.

And it's fascinating because of Lauren's status as an outsider looking in, both as an Orthodox Jew and as a baptized Episcopalian.  She sees her religious worlds differently from someone who grew up in those worlds, and her perspective, her outsider's point of view, lets us look at our own worlds a bit askew, seeing them from a different angle.

It's frustrating at times, however, because she's just so into herself.  At times one wants to scream "Get over yourself" at the pages -- moments when her introspection isn't leading us anywhere interesting but just making us stand in front of her mirror, watching her examine her soul for blackheads interminably.

Yet the fascination outweighs the frustration in the end, as the beautiful writing outweighs the narcissism.  If you want to take an intriguing walk along someone's else's inner spiritual journey, a walk with unexpected detours and stops along the way, I heartily recommend Girl Meets God

WOO-HOO!

Two years ago this weekend, we had a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad weekend.

Cory had applied to private middle school, and not only did he get rejected from his top choice, he didn't get in anywhere.  

It was very rough.  I cried.  Cory didn't cry (that I know of) -- in fact, he took this rocking of his world, of his expectations, incredibly well.  (Some of his friends cried just because they got into their second choice school instead of their first.)

We had to scramble, looking for a school -- public or private -- that would give Cory anything even close to what he needed as a smart kid who would get bored (and beat up) at many of our local schools.  We looked at everything.  He auditioned (and was ultimately accepted to) a performing arts middle school.  And we looked at every other possible option, even ones we knew were dead wrong for him.

He finally ended up at The Mirman School, a school for highly gifted kids.  Mir

man has been an incredible blessing to us, a school where Cory was surrounded by kids just as crazy smart as he is, where he could make a film for a science project, where he was held to incredibly high standards (good for a kid who can slough off at times), where he could let out his inner geek.

But Mirman only goes through middle school.  So we knew we had to go through it all again.  And this was the year.  He wrote his essays.  I wrote the parent essays.  We arranged for the letters of recommendations, the transcripts.  We went to visiting days and interviews.  We did everything we had to do until all we could do was wait.  Wait for the big envelope (yes!), or the small envelope (sorry...).

Cory has been nervous, though handling it well.  Heck, all the kids at his school have been nervous.  This is the moment that tells them what their future is like, the moment that, for many, tells them whether they're "good enough."

Today was the day.

And we got two big envelopes.  One of which, (oh joy!  oh praise!) was from his first choice school, the Harvard-Westlake School, considered by many to be the best high school west of the Mississippi.  A school that will give him all the things my quirky son w

ants to pursue:  music composition and fencing and drama and Latin and hard, hard academic challenges.

And now the real work begins.  (For Cory, the actual work.  For us, paying for it!)

We are so relieved, so grateful, so happy.  It has been a long road.   Thank you, God.  

DRUGGED INTO HAPPINESS

The problems with my mom continued for most of last month.  They got so bad that her caretakers said they didn't think they could handle her any more.  The swearing, the yelling, the biting and hitting -- all of it was continuing.  And looking around, it seemed as if it was going to cost another $1000 a month (on top of the hefty amount we already fork out) to find a place that could handle her.

And then I called yesterday to talk to her and check in with her caretakers.  And the caretaker I talked to (someone new to the place) couldn't stop talking about how pleasant and polite my mom has been.

Huh?

Turns out they changed her medications yet again.  And these, it would seem, are working.  Really working.  When I talked to her, she was as cogent in the last couple of months, she remembered her grandchildren (though she couldn't track the concept of their applying for high school and middle school).

I'm very glad.  Mostly.  Part of me, however, is 

a little freaked out at the vast personality changes my mom's gone through over the past months, and at how greatly her personality and especially her emotions are affected by 

the drugs she's taking.

It's made me aware of how fluid my emotions are, how easily they can be affected by outside factors.  If I have an uncomfortable phone conversation with someone, I can be suddenly anxious about everything else in my life.  If my kids are late to school and I know they'll get a tardy, I can be mad at people who have nothing to do with the tardy (and even madder if I was the reason for it!).  If I bump into some unexpected kindness, I can be relaxed and happy even if the circumstances around me would say I should be otherwise.

I realized a long time ago that my emotions aren't trustworthy, that they don't tell me the truth about a situation (as witness the above examples).  But when they hit, they so often sweep away reason.  And watching my mom's emotions be completely manipulated by a tiny pill, I feel even more suspicious of taking my emotions seriously.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad that the problems with my mom are, at least for the moment, under control.  I'm glad that there's a pill to take away the sheer horrors her deteriorating brain was leading her through on a daily basis.  

I'm just more aware of the things that act on my emotions without necessarily having a solid grounding in reality.  And maybe that's a good thing.

SHOPPING BY PROXY

It wasn't that long ago that I slipped on a short skirt, then was overcome by the realization that I was really too old to wear something like that anymore.

Since that time, I've wandered through my favorite stores, looking wistfully at all sorts of beautiful clothes, and wondering whether I can still get away with it.  Usually I just look at the price tag and that decides the issue!  But it was just a tiny bit sad to lose the fun of shopping for clothes, to be relegated to the practical.

No more!  I got the joy of shopping back this weekend when I took Sabrina out to buy an outfit for the father-daughter dance she was attending up at church.  She wanted, in her own words, a dress that was "a sophisticated mix of a party dress and a dressy dress."  Sure.  Works for me.

So off we went to the mall, no longer relegated to the kids' stores, as Sabrina now wears adult sizes (okay, she wears XS or size 2, but still...).  And all of a sudden, I got to go back to thdepartments that I always thought were the most fun.  In particular, Sabrina had a terrific time (and looked terrific) trying on lots of Free People outfits (though most were too big).

We ended up getting her a little strapless black-and-white number that she wore over a black tank top and black leggings -- she looked terrific!  And we found a pair of Sam & Libby black-and-white tennies reduced from something like $80 to $7 -- how could we not buy them?!

It was so fun to watch her try on clothes, watch her admire herself in the mirror (watch her realize that there was something there worth admiring).  I didn't even care that I couldn't get the same clothes for myself.  

I realize the day will come when she'd rather shop with her girlfriends.  But as long as I have a credit card in my purse, I think this is one pleasure I will get to enjoy for a while still!

Sabrina had a terrific time at the dance.  But not half as good a time as I had shopping for the dance!

WHAT GIRL SCOUT COOKIE ARE YOU?

For the first time in YEARS(!), I am not selling Girl Scout cookies.  By which I mean, Sabrina is not selling Girl Scout cookies.

She's still a Girl Scout (her last year).  But cookie proceeds are delivered in June or so, and her troop will have disbanded by then, as the girls graduate and move on to different schools.  So 6th graders simply don't sell at our school.

What a relief!  No e-mails to send, no door-to-door, no standing in front of a grocery store reminding girls to say "thank you" to their customers.  And especially, especially, no deliveries to make!

I realized how ingrained the whole Girl Scout cookie thing was in January, when I had to make an announcement at a meeting of The Alliance of Women Directors, and before I sat down, someone in the back of the room called out, "What about the Girl Scout cookies?  Aren't you selling Girl Scout cookies?"

No.  I'm not.  (Woo-hoo!)

But we bought some cookies anyway, from a 4th grader this year.  And in honor of cookie freedom, I post the following quiz results.  (The name of the cookie is actually Samoa -- quiz fail.)  Part of me wonders if I ended up a Samoa just because I clicked purple as my favorite color.... Hmmm...

You Are Caramel deLites / Samosas

You are blessed with a brilliant, dynamic mind. It's sometimes hard to figure out what your focus should be. You're the type of person who does almost everything well. You are very competent but also unfocused. You're not an easy person to pin down. You are vibrantly complex. You have many facets to your personality, and they're often in competition with one another.

What Girl Scout Cookie Are You?

REREADING HARRY: SORCERER'S STONE

It's been a long time since I've opened the door to Harry Potter.  I read Deathly Hallows, of course, in July 2007, then sat down and read through again immediately, then spent the next few weeks reading it out loud to my family.  And since then... that's about it.  I hosted our Harry Potter party.  And I've logged on to Harry websites (Hogwarts Professor, The Hogshead, etc.), had some nice chats.  But I haven't read the books.

Maybe I was just Harryed out after such obsessive focus for so long.  Maybe I was turned off by some of what Ms. Rowling did after the final book was published ("Dumbledore is gay..." and the HP Lexicon lawsuit, which saddened me greatly on many levels).  Maybe I just needed to read something else.

But around the end of last year, I found myself looking at that beautiful stretch of books on my shelf (I do love the colors of the dust covers) and wondering if it was time to jump back in.  Part of me worried that I might be disappointed to read the stories when I knew the ending:  Would they still hold up?  Would I wonder what had made me so devoted to the books originally?  Would I be bored?

Well, one day last month, I finished what I was reading, looked around and spotted Harry on the shelf.  And, with just a smidge of trepidation, I picked up Sorcerer's Stone.  

The first few chapters, I thought of making notes.  My fingers twitched toward a pen... toward my iPhone...  Then I thought -- No.  I was not going to observe myself re-reading.  I wasn't going to chart set-ups and payoffs.  I wasn't going to take notes of any kind.  I was just going to read.  The result is that I had thoughts and reactions that I'm sure I won't remember, moments where I thought, "Oh, I'll have to post that!" that simply won't appear here.  But I'm glad I just read.

So...  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I first read Sorcerer's Stone over the Y2K weekend of 1999/2000.  Lee bought the first three books for me for Christmas, and I took them along on a grand millennial celebration trip we took with our writer's group to San Diego.  I read Sorcerer's Stone before most of the other folks arrived.  I remember thinking it was cute.  Fun.  Certainly readable.  But I didn't abandon my friends to dive into the next book.

Re-reading, I feel much the same way.  The opening few chapters feel very young and "cute," maybe a little lightweight.  It's definitely a kids' book.  A captivating one, all the same.  Harry's oddities, culminating in his discovery of who he really is, played well, and are a nice foreshadowing of the "who am I and what am I her

e for" questions that will come to a culmination in Deathly Hallows.

I found myself really watching Neville as I read.  The poor schlump, with his Remembrall and his clumsiness.  I realized I was just like Harry, who had never thought about Neville's parents until Dumbledore told him Neville's story.  Why didn't I wonder what Neville was doing in Gryffindor, and look for clues?  Why didn't it occur to me when Neville mentioned that he had his father's wand that maybe this was why Neville's magic was so woefully poor?  ("The wand chooses the wizard," after all.)  At least this time I practically cheered for him as he stood up to the trio at the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, finally recognizing the flash of Gryffindor courage for what it was.

The final test -- past Fluffy, past the chess pieces, etc. -- felt a bit formulaic to me.  And I didn't quite get, as I never really have, how Voldemort managed to be inside Quirrell and on the back of his head.  Yes, I saw it in the movie, and that helped a bit, actually, but I still don't really understand it.  Frankly, the obstacles protecting the Sorcerer's Stone seemed tougher than the actual encounter with Voldemort.  (Maybe Rowling herself didn't know yet just how evil Voldemort would turn out to be, if this was the only real encounter she'd had with him yet?)

As I finished reading Sorcerer's Stone this time, I found myself just a tad worried.  It's not that the book was disappointing.  But it didn't grab me, move me, make me have to read the next book (the way, say, The Fellowship of the Ring did the first time I read it, unfortunately without the money I needed to buy the next book, leading me into a torturous couple of weeks).  I ended Sorcerer's Stone with just a twinge of "Oh no, I hope I won't be disappointed as I go on."

Next, my journey back into the Chamber of Secrets.

IN L.A.? COME SEE US SPEAK!

Lee and I haven't done a lot of public speaking lately.  I think we just got burnt out, tired of hearing ourselves tell the same stories over and over.  (While there are people who never get tired of the sound of their own voice, apparently we are not among them, as it turns out.)

But we are speaking this Sunday, March 8 at The Beacon, our church's ministry to the entertainment industry.  We're the kickoff speakers for The Beacon's Lenten series, and will speak about surviving during the tough times, among other topics.  

If you should happen to be in L.A., feel free to stop by.  We're speaking after church (at 12:30) and there's lunch.  We'll try to have something new to say (if only for our own sakes!)....