Category Archives: People

Funeral-con(versations)

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Having a conversation with a distant cousin of my husband about graphic novels is about the last thing I expected to happen at my mother-in-law’s funeral service, but it happened. I noticed one of my sisters-in-law talking with a woman who I knew was somehow related to my husband. I remembered her from a past family gathering, but didn’t recall exactly who she was. I think she sent us Christmas cards for a few years, but since we never reciprocated (I quit sending Christmas cards to anyone long ago), stopped after a while. She owns a company called WriteBrain Media that promotes companies in a variety of ways. She approached me and wondered if I might be interested in some of her outsourced work. She and another entrepreneur had also just begun another venture called The Devil’s Candy Store. As we talked, I also learned that her husband (whom I also remember meeting many years ago) is an artist whose work includes familiar Star Wars illustrations.

We talked about Neil Gaiman a little. She mentioned that she and her husband once had a booth next to Charles Vess at ComicCon. She said that Clare should contact her husband if she was really interested in pursuing art as a career — he might be able to help her out.

We’ve not communicated since the funeral — over 5 months ago — even though we exchanged email addresses and telephone numbers. I think I was a little intimidated. Not by Denise — she’s a lovely woman and highly approachable. But by the life she and her husband have — it seems more glamorous than my suburban work-from-home mother kind of life. They seem to be in Holly Black‘s league. Even if she’d emailed me with a web site proposal, I doubt I would have accepted. My work is nowhere near as professional (flashy?) as what an artist or author would expect.

It just goes to show, you never know who you’re going to meet in a church basement in a small town like Pingree Grove.

Clare and the SAT

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My high school junior has been preparing for the SAT for the past few months. I never took the SAT. I took the ACT and didn’t do very well, but because I wasn’t going to a prestigious college, it really didn’t matter. Now a-days it does matter, and because we live on the East coast and Clare will probably be looking at schools that require the SAT she was encouraged to prepare for the test. Many students take SAT prep courses — it is even offered as an elective at the high schools. We didn’t realize this last year, so Clare didn’t take the course offered at Whitman. Instead she was enrolled in a SAT course offered by Kaplan – the company that manages the test. Personally I think it is nuts — that we spend so much time and money on these courses, but it is like steroids in sports. The only way to compete in some sports sometimes seems to take the steroids. The only way to compete for some colleges seems to be to take the SAT prep courses. It’s not right, but it’s the norm — at least in Bethesda.

We thought she’d done ok on the PSAT and were not concerned about her score on the SAT — even she said that although she does have test anxiety, she was not worried about taking the SAT. At some point during the Kaplan course she realized that her PSAT score was not as good as it could have been and the first few times she took practice SAT tests during the course did worse than on the PSAT. This added to the stress she’d already been feeling regarding school this year. Even before the course ended, Clare asked me to sign her up for the SAT test in May (and maybe the June one too).

When she did much better on her final practice test she felt a little more confident going into the real SAT on March 1. Dean drove her to the test center (her high school) and picked her up afterwards. I was at a wrestling tournament with Andrew, so at about 1:00 pm, when I knew the SAT was finished, sent Clare a text message asking how it went.

Here is her response:

Not very good. I filled out a wrong section early on and I was able to fix it but the knowledge of the error distracted me. I answered the questions, but the answers seemed too straightforward in some cases and the choices were unsettlingly similar for lots of questions. The essay was fun, but i probably just jinxed it now. And I feel no relief. No weight has been lifted as they say. But then — I didn’t expect to do well.

In a time when most teenagers (and some adults) write text messages that are missing punctuation, capitalization and letters, I was impressed with this text message from my daughter. She may have messed up on her (first) SAT, but she writes beautiful text messages.

Poor Andrew

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The kids and I went out to dinner this evening. We all had a lazy Sunday, but Saturday was big for both kids. Andrew placed (5th) in Regionals and Clare took her SAT. Andrew was giddy with the knowledge that he could eat what he wanted and not stay after school for the grueling practice wrestlers go through.

Saturday night Andrew ate the last of the ice cream, declaring it to be his first ice cream in 3 months. Tonight he ate sausage soup, tortellini with sausage, several bites of appetizers, an entire ice cream dessert, two root beers and half a cannoli. When we got home an email was waiting for Andrew from his coach. The coach wanted Andrew to practice with the team and be prepared to possibly step in should someone in his weight class not be able to wrestle.

He was nearly inconsolable. We talked and he is now prepared to have another week of hard practice and little food. After his dinner tonight, I’m not sure if he could loose the weight that he gained from the ice cream and pasta.

He asked me to buy him a lot of fruit for the rest of the week.