The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Picture Blog

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Picture Blog

Okay, I haven't been around the Internet too much in the last week or so. Life has a way of interfering with the computer, doesn't it? I did finally manage to figure out how to import pix even with Vista which I've heard some people actually like.

Here are some sort of recent pictures.

Mother's Day - I wasn't sure if Philip was expressing love or trying to get me to smell his armpit. In teen boy world, those two things could be related:

This is a sneak picture my kids took when I was talking to them. Later, they used it as a basis to critique my hair. I tried explaining how I didn't have a chance to comb it that morning since no one could find socks, deodorant, or homework papers. They didn't buy it, and last night I drove to a haircut appointment:

Our first bloom in the perennial garden:

Emma's ballet recital:

One of the cats. This is Jade. We will have additional cat news very, very soon:

(and no, Jade isn't pregnant)

A building corner in the East Village of Manhattan that I liked so much, I took a picture of it. Sometimes it's fun to feel like a tourist in a place you've been around all your life:

I took this picture because I liked Emma's sentence: "Mom, come here quick. Dad is going out to walk the dog and he is dressed like a homeless priest." (I should say we've been having a lot of rain) What you don't see here is that he tied this poncho with a spare piece of rope when he couldn't find the belt. Emma is still recovering from her father's anti fashion choice:

I'll be back soon, after I finish final revisions on my newest manuscript finish up all the end of the year parties, concerts, and lunches.

18 comments:

K.C. Shaw said...: Great pictures! I like your hair, although I must admit that mine's looking about the same as yours and someone's going to force-march me to the hairdresser's if I don't go soon.

Your kids (and cat) are adorable!; Wednesday, 17 June, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, K.C. The cats are much, much easier to please than the kids.

I think my biggest hair dilemma is that I don't have time to ever comb it. Remember being a teen when all you did was check your hair?; Wednesday, 17 June, 2009
Glynis Peters said...: I loved your pics, your husband's one made me giggle.; Wednesday, 17 June, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, Glynis.

I thought he looked sort of like a shepherd, but Emma was (and still is) horrified at that outfit.; Wednesday, 17 June, 2009
Bish Denham said...: Your son certainly did "strike the pose." I love old building too. There is an aura about them, the energy of all the people who have come and gone within their walls.; Wednesday, 17 June, 2009
Megan A. : ) said...: Hi, me again, stalking yr blog. I wrote the essay on yr book, but can u tell me what u r working on right now? (Extra credit) Thanx!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; Thursday, 18 June, 2009
Megan A : ) said...: Alos, I like yr pix. Emma is soooo cute and I always like to see pix of Philip : ) Don't u have another son? or daughter?; Thursday, 18 June, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: You would love the old buildings in Manhattan, Bish. They definitely have auras; that one did for me.

Hi, Megan. I'm a big believer in extra credit. Right now, I am writing the outline of another YA, finishing revisions on a middle grade book that will probably have one or two sequels, and, very, very possibly, I may finish the first chapter of an adult novel. So a lot of stuff at once.

I do have another son-Christopher. He is not as camera happy as his two siblings, and I get the sense that he doesn't want to have his picture on the Internet too much. Emma and Philip are happy hams.; Thursday, 18 June, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: I love the picture of your daughter in her ballet finery, and your kids' description of your husband's fashion sense is, you have to admit, apt. My husband takes sadistic pleasure by deliberately dressing in ways that make our kids cringe.; Thursday, 18 June, 2009
Bish Denham said...: Anne, Are you up for playing a little game? I've tagged you with a fun one.

http://bish-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/06/sinfully-tagged.html; Friday, 19 June, 2009
Adrienne said...: Great pictures! What a cute family you have. I think our husbands possess a similar fashion sense...

We like playing tourists in our own city, too.; Friday, 19 June, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Fun, Bish. I just posted it to your blog.

Thanks, Adrienne! My husband secretly enjoys our kids' outrage at his fashion choices. Well, maybe it's not so secret...; Friday, 19 June, 2009
Bish Denham said...: Anne, check out my blog Monday, 6/22. I've passed on the Kreative Blogger Award to you.; Sunday, 21 June, 2009
Katie Anderson said...: Oh man, am totally cracking up at the homeless priest!!!

love the pics :); Tuesday, 23 June, 2009
Stephanie J. Blake said...: Time gets away...

Love the pics!; Friday, 03 July, 2009
Anonymous said...: Discount RX Pharmacy - Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, Tamiflu. Get Cheap Medication online. Buy Pills Central.
[url=http://buypillscentral.com/news_en-us.htm]Discount Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Tamiflu Drugstore No prescription[/url]. rx generic pills. Cheap drugs pharmacy; Thursday, 12 November, 2009
Anonymous said...: When you order Viagra or some other meds in our machine shop you may be established Cheap Discount Cialis Pharmacy On-line that this product single of first-rate grade determination be delivered to you exactly in time.; Tuesday, 17 November, 2009
Anonymous said...: When you order Cialis or some other meds in our betray you may be established discount Cialis Online that this spin-off simply of pre-eminent grade determination be delivered to you systematically in time.; Tuesday, 17 November, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***