Picture Yourself on a Boat on a River

It's always odd, what you think people will find interesting versus what people will find interesting. For example, I'm always surprised that some people find my being a former child actor interesting; I'm here to tell you it was a highly pleasant thing to do but, in the aggregate, is slightly less interesting and revealing than picking out bathroom tile colors.

(When looking to buy a house, I saw a bathroom tiled in shades of burnt orange and lime green. Now THERE'S a mind which deserved close scrutiny, but possibly only by a trained professional.)

When it comes to homeschooling, one of the questions I've been getting a lot lately is "What does the classroom look like?" I can only imagine this is because people who don't homeschool assume the homeschool classroom is either alarmingly organized, with a flag in the corner and those cardboard cutouts of Pilgrims, or consists of a table and chair which are actually stacked bags of cat-litter. Honestly, most days I could point to her bed, where Daughter sat and read and wrote for the better part of the morning, or the  car, where just yesterday we had a lively discussion about the Renaissance which devolved into talking about the Black Death.

The conversation frequently trends towards the Black Death, if I'm involved. Or Ebola. Sometimes Typhus, if I'm feeling lighthearted. These are the sorts of topics I find more interesting than most other people. Come to think of it, this might be why people ask me about being a Former Child Actor, to get me off the words Exsanguination and Mass Graves.

In any case, I'm offering a glimpse into my world, but it works better if you participate. Over at Pinterest, I've put up a picture of the kid's desk and some of her bookshelves. For those of you who have been playing along at home for a while, this is the wall-unit Consort created for her; I'm pleased to say it's aging better than I am. Bask in the clutter. Note the books. Consider how the bookshelf stretches across the rest of the wall. Ponder where my retirement money has gone.

And now, YOU! I want to see where your family learns. It can be full time homeschoolers or it can be where the kids do their homework after getting home from school. It could be where you are slaving away at your degree, and because you are an adult and still managing to learn new things, I will gape at you in polite wonder. The point of Pinterest is to be inspired; who knows? Maybe something you're doing-- some little creative bolt from the blue--will make someone else's homeschooling space better. Don't leave me out there alone; show me how your family learns. If you send me your email, I'll accept you as a contributor to the page. If it starts getting unsightly, I reserve the right to shut it off, but I don't think it will come to that.

And after you put up your education picture, reward yourself by searching "Bathroom tiles." Now THAT'S interesting.

Signal to Noise

(Read the previous blog. I can't force you to do it, but this will be the ravings of a madwoman without it.)


So, the noise. First, I lay in bed and listened to it for about five minutes, dully hoping it would go away. Then I placed one of the adorably coordinated shammed pillows over my head for about five minutes and dully hoping it would muffle the noise. Then I lay there for about five minutes and contemplated how if I had become a Buddhist twenty years ago as I had threatened to and meditated all this time, I’d be able to accept the noise for what it was and equably sleep through it. None of these things made the noise any less itself or any more appealing. Finally, curiosity overcame retroactive Buddhist-longings and I went in search of it. It came from the bathroom, I discovered. Actually, from a wall in the bathroom. Specifically, from a spot in the wall in the bathroom. The place from which the sound sprung was no larger than my hand, but it made up for its size by being the most annoying sound in the world. I did what any reasonable person awakened at 3:30am in a bed and breakfast would do; I grabbed my iPhone and taped the sound. I’d like to say I did this because of my naturally scientific bent, but really I did it so I could send it to Consort and annoy him as well.

Readers, here is the noise. Please note the picture of me holding up the iPhone is from a later time, because I really only planned to annoy one person with this. Once I realized I would blog about it, we had to create a visual so I could attach it. But the noise is real and non enhanced; my phone was about six inches from the wall.

Restful, isn’t it?

I sent it to Consort at 3:50 and tried to read. In case you’ve wondered, Joan Didion is a compelling writer but cannot be fully appreciated over Hector. Yeah, I named the sound. I named it because if I’m spending the night with something in a b&b, I really should know its name. Also, I appreciate a proper noun which is also the verb of what it was doing to me. Ten minutes later, my phone dinged; Consort had written back.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

I typed back:

I have no idea. More to the point, WHY ARE YOU AWAKE?

After a few seconds:

Got up to go to bathroom. Heard the email come in.

Hector was powerful; he had awakened someone over a hundred miles away.

The phone rang. Without preamble, Consort said “Take me to the noise.”

We all walked to the bathroom together. I held the phone to Hector. Hector buzzed happily in response. I put the phone back to my ear.

“Hmmm,” Consort said in his Oh, I do love a mystery at 4:00 in the morning voice. Honestly, potential engineering issues in what he thinks of as the shank of the evening meant I probably didn’t need to get him a Father’s Day present now. “It’s the bathroom, but it doesn’t sound like plumbing. It could be electrical. Did it sound electrical to you?”


There was a pause. That darling man has known me fifteen years and still he thought this was a conversation I’d contribute to.

“I’m sorry,” I said politely, “I was rolling toilet paper into ear-stoppers and was pretty much ignoring you.”

“Wet them,” he said absently, “they’ll fit more tightly.” He then got outraged. “I can’t believe the owners aren’t around to take care of this!”

“They are,” I said, dampening toilet paper, “They live right downstairs in the back. They said to come over if I had any questions.”

There was another pause. Consort took in what I assume was sort of like a cleansing breath.

“And,” he said in a slightly strangulated tone,”This doesn’t strike you as...a question?”

“I don’t want to wake them. I’ll get them up here and the noise will stop. You know, like the car-noise.”

“What car-noise?”

“Never mind.”

Pause. Finally, he said, “I’m going back to bed now.”

“You should, you sound tired.”

In order to create white noise, I cranked the air-conditioner to top speed and then added a small oscillating fan I found and turned up high. There was a lot of air flying around. It was as if I had situated my bed inside a wind-tunnel or a photo-shoot for Cosmo, circa 1979. Hector sneered at my white noise, at my sodden-paper ear inserts. Hector and I watched the sun rise. At seven, I staggered downstairs and found one of the owners, a man who until that moment had assumed his early morning would involve making breakfast and not a hollow-eyed harridan waving an iPhone at him. I played "Andrew" the noise; I was gratified that he winced. I explained that I hoped he didn’t have a guest arriving early and expecting that room, because I was going to try to sleep until whenever I could, so that the audience at the reading wouldn’t think they had stumbled into an autopsy.

I crawled back upstairs, opened the door and heard silence. As with the car-noise, the minute I mentioned it to a qualified professional, it slithered away. I had the phone in my hand and was about to call Consort when the noise started up again. Hector was screwing with me. Finally, exhaustion trumped Hector and I slept, dreaming of a nation full of dial-up modems, coming for me.

Two hours later, I ambled downstairs. It wasn’t a full night’s sleep, but it was six hours sleep in total, and I can make six hours of interrupted sleep work if I attach a caboose of three cups of tea. The other owner, "Robert", made me breakfast, which was delicious. You all have heard about my delight in toast and I believe I’ve covered my feelings about pie before, but the third leg of the Table of Quinn’s Carbohydrate Delights is biscuits. A warm fresh biscuit and great lashings of tea later, I was almost myself. The owner and I listened to Hector’s tape. Robert looked at me oddly, opened his mouth, shut it again, and then said tentatively, “Have you ever had any...paranormal experiences?”

There are about eight cities in the world where you can ask this without fearing a side-eye and Los Angeles is one of them. I told him about the poltergeist who pestered our house after my father died.

(I’ll tell you another time, I promise. It’s good, but it’s even too digressive for me.)

“Well,” he said, sitting down at the table,”Then you should know we had a paranormal investigator come here after we bought the place. She said the woman who had owned the property originally was still hanging around and that, well, she has a crush on me. She seems to like your room and there’s been a couple of guests who’ve given me attitude when they check in and if they’re in that room, they complain about how the room is freezing. The room is at the top of the house, it’s never freezing. We think she gets mad at them.”

I was appalled; I had managed to offend both the living and the dead. Until now, the greatest concern I had about a bed & breakfast was having to make small talk before I brushed my teeth.”But,” I spluttered, “I didn’t even meet you last night! Your biscuits are delightful!”

“We’re fine,” Robert assured me. We both looked upstairs, towards Hector. He said supportively, “She’s probably just jealous that you’re cute.”

This was an adorable thing for him to say, because after an evening with Hector my only wardrobe-related question was going to be “What goes with midnight-black eye-bags which cover me to mid-calf?”

The reading was fun; Eduardo, the man who created the writer’s tour is an excellent interviewer and the audience was more sizable than I’ve had in some cities of millions. They sold out of my book, which I hadn’t expected and was awfully nice of the Idyllwildians to do. They even had their books autographed, which means they couldn’t bring it back the next day and get something they really wanted. The owner of the b & b came to the reading. In sum, everyone I might in Idyllwild was incredibly gracious and seemed pleased to have me there.

Well, nearly everyone.

The Rest of My Life

It’s time to admit a shameful secret; my writing hasn’t led to free stuff. Not for me the offers sent to bloggers for this year’s It Bag, or tinted moisturizer or even dryer sheets scented like a Tahitian rain-forest; as of yet, no one has read my first book and suddenly felt a driving need to offer me a hat. This is probably because I don't write about objects I own, which makes me a bad candidate to start writing about objects I’ve just gotten. Also, I suspect, you send objects to people who are seen as aspirational, and I’m aspirational only if you’ve always longed to spill some of each meal down your shirt. Actually, no, I did once receive something. A few months ago, I mused on Twitter about how Swiffer needed to create slippers. I believe I even dubbed them Swippers, which tells you how often I Swiffer and how pet-fur cuts off oxygen to my brain. Within a week, the Swiffer organization sent me a pair of slippers with Velcro on the bottoms which cunningly attached to Swiffer-sheets. I sailed around the house on my Swippers, shrieking in delight at the cleverness of it all. Had that been the only offer I ever received, I’d consider myself a blessed woman with hair-free floors.

But earlier this spring, I was invited to read at a bookstore in Idyllwild, a scenic alpine town about two and a half hours outside of Los Angeles. Owing to the distance, the bookstore would arrange for my family and me to stay at a local bed-and-breakfast the night before. Not only that, but the bookstore would spring for  lunch the day of the reading. I tell you, I felt as if I had been called up to the literary majors. Yes, my clothing didn’t smell like a Tahitian rain-forest, but it would smell like an alpine glen!

Also, knowing me, it would smell like my free lunch because of spillage.

A month ago, the plans changed. I got my official reading date the day after we got the official date for Daughter’s last choral performance for this year. You already know they were the same date, right? Quickly, it was determined Consort would stay home with Daughter and I would go to Idyllwild by myself. My brain stopped having dreamy fancies of family hikes as a stag gazed benevolently down at us from a nearby crag. Truth was, the kid is no great fan of hiking and would have probably scared the stag off with her grousing. Now, my fantasies went to a baser and less sporty corner of my brain. “By the arms of Morpheus,” I thought breathlessly, “I could sleep.”

Sleep is a fraught topic around here. The kid is a homeschooler who is a night person. Consort is an independent contractor who is a night person and who also has insomnia. I am a day person who works from home- a home wherein there are two people who are night people-and I am a light sleeper. The dog is very irritated by the family of skunks who live in the front yard and who are night people. The cats sleep when it suits them and them alone. This means the house works something like Las Vegas in that someone is always up getting into something and, in the case of the dog, is sometimes very upset about something outside of their control. I cannot tell you the last time I had an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Every family member loves me, but they’re fixing to kill me. The thought of a falling asleep at one time and waking up seven or (please God) eight hours later with no idea of what had happened in between made up for the guilt I felt in missing the kid’s performance. I consoled myself that I had seen every other performance that year and if hearing Daughter walking around rehearsing counted for anything, I had already sat in that theater fifteen times over. Daughter was gracious about my not being there and kindly wished me a good night’s sleep. We actually had family conversations about how I was going to sleep for a whole night. Sometimes, it appeared the whole point of my going to Idyllwild was to participate in a sleep experiment where I would discover if I could still create a REM cycle.

The trip to Idyllwild from Los Angeles goes like this; you barrel out the 10 freeway for an hour or so in a stupor (The 10 West’s motto is At Least We’re Not the 5 North), and then head up a mountain for another hour or so. The mountain road is exciting if you’ve been putting off considering your own demise. It’s a two-lane highway which hugs the side of a mountain several thousand feet in the air with what I would describe as less of a guard-rail and more of a dental-retainer. I had no idea unimproved WPA road-projects still existed. You don’t just get to Idyllwild as much as you earn Idyllwild. The pastoral little village hove into view and my fingers released the wheel, slightly. I checked in to the B&B, admired the general pinkness and comfort of the room, found a quick meal and a small margarita (half-sized, as not to possibly interfere with my sleep), and came back to the room for some reading and, finally, sleep. I was in bed, lights out, by ten o’clock. The quiet enveloped me like a slanket. I was asleep within minutes.

The dream was odd. An old neighbor and I were sitting in the park, chatting about our kids when she looked at me and said, “Don’t you hear that?”

My eyes snapped open. It was unrelievedly dark in the room, nowhere near morning. Yes, I heard that. It was hard to miss.

NEXT: The noise. And the rest of my night.

Yeah, Don't Cross My Path

Yeah, it's kitten season! Or rather, crap, it's kitten season. You can quibble with these numbers, but even the most conservative estimates will show the shelters are going to start being inundated with kittens. Hard decisions get made.The public shelters usually will automatically euthanize any kittens who aren't weaned, because they don't have the manpower to take care of the tiny ones. Even the larger kittens are at risk of being euthanized if the cages are already full. Private shelters run out of room quickly, leaving people who spend many unpaid hours every month trying to do right by homeless animals in the awful position of turning away animals, and people, in genuine need.

Which is where YOU come in.

You.

Reach out to a local rescue and utter the words "I can foster a kitten or two." Hear them sigh in gratitude. Watch as they hand you tiny shouting fuzzballs. Feel as they give you food, litter, and everything else you will need. Then, for a few days, or weeks, you get to wallow in the simple-minded peculiar joy which is kitten-sitting. If you choose to take on a bottle-fed kitten, know that you will have earned your crown in heaven. On the other hand, if you have a teenage child, a bottle-fed kitten will show them exactly how relentless a newborn mammal is, and that's never a bad thing for a teenager to see up close.

"But," I hear you saying, "I'll fall in love and want to keep the kitten!"

Maybe. Maybe this kitten was meant to be yours and I am merely a pawn in God's plan to have you buying Fancy Feast for the next fifteen years. Or maybe you get to revel in a kitten and then hand it back, knowing you can enjoy another kitten whenever you want, and it doesn't bother you that much. Or maybe you fall in love with that tiny pansy face but aren't in a position right now to have a cat, and you cry the night you take them back. I'm not saying that's a pleasant feeling, but if we only did things that made us feel wonderful all the time, a lot of very important activities would never get done. Think of it this way; your fostering saves a life, and wouldn't you agree a saved life is worth a few tears? If sending them back to a shelter where they might be euthanized if they aren't adopted horrifies you, reach out to a private, no-kill shelter. Either way, if you can do it, please do it.

Who knows? They could look like these guys:

I never said I played fair.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

I'll tell you all something right now; I don't always love what my daughter wears. Sometimes, the color combinations jar the retina; other times, I'm fairly certain she'd be comfortable if the weather swung thirty degrees but will probably come to regret this ensemble later in the day. For the most part, though, I say nothing. I say nothing because she rarely misses and usually has a flattering, charming sporty/gamine chic thing going. I say nothing because we're not the same person and part of being a human is figuring out what delights you. I also say nothing because this "Saying nothing about Daughter's clothes" is a practice to get my brain used to a few years from now when I'll feel all sorts of things about what she wears and saying something will just lead to door-slamming and threats of tattoos. Usually, I find something to commend (the color, a creative use of contrasting patterns in the socks) and ignore the parts I wouldn't wear.

But a few days ago, Daughter and I were at the store and a girl about her age crossed our path. Daughter inhaled in delight and sighed softly, "Love that shirt."

Readers, the shirt basically looked like this:

I hissed softly and recoiled. Before I could construct something politic to say, the words "Not until I am dead" sprung from my lips.

Daughter looked at me and said "Well, okay then."

"I mean," I backtracked quickly, "I can see why the fringy bits are appealing and there's nothing nicer on a hot day than a t-shirt and..."

We enjoyed the silence. I gave up.

"I'm sorry, honey. This is the first time you've seen that style of t-shirt and I get that the novelty is delightful. But, see, that shirt and anyone my age have history."

I explained that in the usual path of modern fashion, styles go from the runway, to the high-end store, to the regular department store, to the kid's department, to limbo, where they wait a generation and are revived as delightfully ironic. Leopard print, skinny pants, cropped jackets; whatever women's style you can imagine has been created at every price-point. You can buy the cheap item and hope you resemble the socialite you saw wearing the couture version in W magazine.

All except for cropped, fringed tops. At their most aspirational, cropped, fringed tops shouted to the world "I'M ON TOUR WITH MY BOYFRIEND'S HEAVY METAL BAND! WE JUST GOT BACK FROM WISCONSIN!" The next level down was the band groupies, and then the groupies for the roadies. Finally, cropped, fringed shirts were sported by the last person I saw wearing one, a woman solidly in her fifties with three inches of black root, ten inches of peach hair, acid-washed cutoffs and dirty feet in flip-flops. She was in line in front of me at a gas station at 11:30 at night; I assume she was related to the five or twelve children Visigothing around her because of how she screamed "If you don't stop messing with Grandma's lighter, I'm going to tan your tails!"

I explained this to Daughter; we both glanced at the shirt, now a half-storelength away. Daughter pined a bit.

I said grudgingly, "How about this; fringed, but not cropped. Not over shorts."

Daughter sighed and said "I'll accept that."

Because she was a good sport and to prove I have no hard feelings towards the 80's as a whole, I bought her some day-glo ankle socks. Because, as well all know, girls just want to have fun.

Don't Wanna Wait 'Til Tomorrow

The good news is, I’m sometimes inspired. The annoying news is, it’s never when I can do something about it. For example, if I’m ever going to have the Big Idea—the one which eventually pays for my very own island—I have it in the shower, as I’m shampooing. So I rinse and I condition, all the while chanting something like “Edible paper clips, edible paper clips,” so I don’t forget. But by the time I reach for the robe, 99 times out of 100, all I can remember is that for one shining instant, I was going to rule the office supply/snack industry.

So you can imagine my joy this morning when I actually remembered something all the way through robe-tying. Jeteing nimbly from the bathroom, I accosted Consort and announced, “We need to change the wallpaper on my Twitter-page to the new book.”

Consort, no one’s idea of a morning person, blinked at me and waited for me to stop being three people and become one. Eventually he played back what I said and said agreeably, “You’re right. We can do that now.”

I careened to the office and turned to ask him how I did this again, because while I might someday create edible paper clips I never remember how to change Twitter wallpaper. Consort was still standing in the hallway, staring approximately where I had just been. We morning people are a trial and a torment to the other kind of people.

“Sweetheart,” I said, a trifle impatiently, “If you're too tired, you don't have to do it, but tell me how to change the wallpaper.”

“What’s your rush?” Consort asked, looking longingly towards the kitchen, with its paper and its coffee and its not-careening.

“I’m not rushing; we just agreed I could do that now.”

Consort rumpled his hair. “Yeah, now. As in, soon.”

And with that, I just solved 15% of the Pointless Spousal Discussions we’ve had in the decade-plus we’ve been together. When I say “Now,” I mean Ideally, before another minute passes. Consort uses “Now” when he means The omens and augeries have aligned, and this thing can be done at some point from this present second to when the Sphinx crumbles. And then one of us ends up sighing, because the other one is insane.

Since it’s my blog, I am obliged to note my definition of Now is correct and Consort is insane. But he’s a better person than I am in all measurable ways, so I’ll cut him some slack.

[He is, however, insane. And wrong.]

So, here’s the question; is there a phrase with your loved one, or a friend, or a family member, that you two simply don’t use in the same way?

Girls on Film (Two Minutes Later)

So much time has passed! And there’s so much to tell you!


Wait, no there isn’t. I mean, what I can tell you is dull and what is potentially interesting is more in the planning than in the offing so, yes, I’m standing here with a hopeful expression and very little to tell.

(Quinn stands around, looking hopeful.)

(Quinn stands around, looking hopeful and a trifle self-conscious.)

(Quinn’s eyes dart around the room, trying to find something to talk about.)

Wait, here’s something. Early in May, my glorious publisher Perigee is producing a promotional video for the book, which is incredibly gracious of them. Since I last had a book out, book videos have become a thing. The run the gamut from charming to creative to “Like watching someone else’s travel videos.”

[Of course I’m not going to give you an example of the last kind of book video. But trust me when I say it would take you no more than a minute to find many examples.]

I have hopes of being in the less ghastly/more better section, but really right now my focus is that I have to be interviewed, ON CAMERA. THE CAMERA WHICH HAS A LENS WHICH CAPTURES VISUAL LIKENESSES. For me, any time on camera is like your twentieth high-school reunion, only without the dim hope that someone else will be fatter and have less hair. If I’m on camera, I’m a class of one. And yes, I did some Q-Teas last year but guess what? We shot those in late afternoon light, one of the two most attractive lighting hours one can get. I might be self-deprecating, but my mother didn’t raise a fool. I produced those and I made darn certain they turned out so I could stomach them. I might not be competing for Loveliest Woman on Earth, but I'm pretty confident that was the best I could look. The book video is being produced by a highly qualified individual, but that person isn’t me and there’s been a worrying use of the phrase “Get to know the real Quinn,” a person I happen to find is mostly unsightly. I had no say over the genes I got, and I will have very limited say over which shots they use, so I’m focusing my increasing plangent control-issue inner-voice on the one thing I can control:

My diet.

I’ve convinced myself that a low-inflammatory, low-sugar, vaguely Dr. Perricone diet will cause me to drop ten years in two weeks. Notice I didn’t say weight; I don’t care about my weight. First of all, the book isn’t based on how I am over 40 and yet can still rock a bikini, so there won’t be any of those shots, thank you very much. Second, Catherine Deneuve got it right when she said that after 40, it’s your face or your butt. What profiteth a writer in a book video to fit into her skinny jeans if she resembles Skeletor? No, the diet I speak of leads to testimonials from people swearing they haven’t looked this rested, this well, in years.

I want to look rested.

I want to look well.

Therefore, I eat krill and brightly-colored vegetables.

Of course, these diets are apparently also great for combatting chronic conditions and lead to a better and longer overall life, but pish tosh to that. Some day, we can all contemplate why I can’t motivate myself to eat to avoid diabetes but can eat to possibly look as if I had a nap. Also, it can’t be a totally Perricone diet because I tried eating salmon on Sunday and it turns out that not only am I allergic to shellfish, it would appear I’m allergic to fish as well, and I’m pretty certain vomiting doesn’t make one appear rested.

Also, I’m scrubbing the walls so they film well, which I think is the domestic version of how I’m eating in that it’s a perfectly appropriate thing for adults to do but I can only be motivated to do it because cameras will be around. And then I’ll have the couches cleaned and the pets Simonized, buy a bouquet of flowers to have in a vase in the background, pop a krill-soaked walnut or two and act as if this how it always is around this house. Because the Real Quinn leaves something to be desired but with any luck the Real Rested Quinn will be a sight to behold.

King of the Road (Part Four)

A REM cycle or two later, I hauled the two of us up the hill to work the afternoon shift, once again with the cats. Having had bronchial luck with this before, I requested to be allowed to walk a cat. The supervisor at the building said, “Oh, great! I took Princess out this morning but I think she’d love to get outside again. Let me get her ready.” I waited for her to grab a leash and harness and dress one of the dozen or so cats milling about aimlessly. Instead, she went to a chair, gently picked up a blanket and slowly walked it back to Daughter and me. Curled up inside the blanket was a tiny cat; she was full-grown, but couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds. Princess let out a tiny snore.

The supervisor smiled at her fondly and stroked the cat’s forehead with an index finger. “You don’t have to leash her, she doesn’t walk much. Her systems are failing, she’s not going to make it much longer. Princess likes being outside but I’ve got to get some work done. I’d appreciate it.”

Daughter and I walked Princess outside on her bed in a stately and ceremonial way. Princess looked around and let out a tiny peep of what I assume was approval. After much consideration, we found a perfect spot for her to sit on her blanket in the shade, because the supervisor told us the blanket was easier on her bones and full sun was too hard on her. Because while she was dying, she was still a cat, once we situated her blanket in the shade, she immediately stood up, tottered off the blanket, and sprawled in the sun.

We stayed out there for over an hour. Daughter and I idly chatted and dug holes in the sandy dirt. Princess turned her head this way and that, feeling the breeze on her face. Sometimes we petted her, which she didn’t seem to mind. I can think of hours I have spent getting more done, but I’m hard-pressed to think of an hour I’ve spent which mattered more. Princess, I came to learn, had been a feral cat when she arrived, five years before. For nearly her entire stay there, she had been alternately fearful and dismissive of the humans who cared for her. No one minded and they loved her for the prickly girl she was. In the final few weeks of her life, she had grown patient and seemingly pleased with the human’s attention. So for an hour, she got to enjoy a spring afternoon and a little bit of adoration. When the supervisor came back out to get her, we carefully lifted Princess back into her blanket and told her what a good girl she was. She looked at us, and then beyond us, out at the beautiful afternoon and at things only she could see.

When we finished out shift, I told the kid we had to make one more stop for the day. It’s on the Best Friends property, but is out beyond any of the animal enclosures. We bumped down a dirt road and then came to it; Angel’s Rest.

I’ve been to cemetaries before, some of great age and laden with history, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to one quite like this. These weren’t just animals who had lived, and died, at Best Friends. People had bought markers for beloved pets; there was even the occasional marker for a pet-loving human being. The ones who were here because they were loved made me sad. The ones who were here because they never got to go home made me sad. And yet, in the middle of that sadness, that wistfullness, there was serenity. The wind slithered through the chimes and moved the prayer flags around. The mountains were beautiful. When the chimes weren’t ringing, the silence was so deep it gave me the same swooping feeling I’d had staring at the Kanab night sky. Life was precious, and sad, and brief, and wonderful. Dying is hard, but dying also means sitting on the sand, feeling the sun on your face. These animals were gone but it certainly felt as if a whole bunch of spirits were around Angel’s Rest, around Best Friends, and they seemed like very contented spirits. Perhaps they had found their home after all.

The next morning was our final shift; we needed to end on a high note. Here’s what looks like a high note to me:

First, there was Puppy Socialization class, where they learn how not be inappropriate at things or people they don’t know. Puppy Cotillion, as it were. No, they didn’t learn how to fox-trot, but I suspect at least half of Daughter’s cotillion dance-partners would have been happier being allowed to bite a skateboard-wheel. Then we got to take slightly older puppies on walks. The puppy-walking path is less than three-quarters of a mile in total and each walk takes at least a half-hour because we’re learning our leash manners.

It should be acknowleged that Maverick will understand how to walk on a leash before I learn how to take footage while walking.

Again and again we walked, two tiny puppies at a time, watching these animals enjoy the pleasure of being outdoors, being safe.


Coming around the final time, before we handed in our dogs and headed home, I thought about our adventure. We weren’t critical to Best Friends; had we not been there, another of the hundreds or so volunteers there that day would have done what we did. But we had been useful and I could only speak for myself, but I was very happy. I turned to the kid, who was coaxing a puppy away from an eight-foot long branch he was trying to drag along.

“Did you have fun?”

She nodded vigorously and said, “Oh, yeah.”

“Are you sad we’re going home?”

She looked up for a second and went back to puppy-debranching. She thought and then shook her head.

“No. These are very nice animals, but they aren’t our animals. I need to get home and see ours.”

(To Sara and those people who assumed Averil would be coming home with us, that wasn’t going to happen for three reasons. One: our lives are insane. Two: there’s a miniscule possibility that I’ve actually learned something and won’t add more chaos to my life. Three, and most relevantly, she can’t go home with anyone under 12.)

We went back to the motel, said goodbye to Foo,

and pointed our car towards Vegas, where we grabbed an early dinner, which led to the last lesson:

LESSON NINE: Under no circumstance, if you have four hours of driving ahead of you in high desert, should you take half of your Vietnamese meal, no matter how delicious, to go.

Between the food and the dirty clothes, my car smelled like a tuna-fish sandwich buried in a shoe under a latrine. I’m not sure Daughter and I smelled much better but when we landed at home, Consort and the pets leapt upon us, each hugging us in their own way. I started the first of many loads of laundry, and went in to lie on the bed and enjoy the sensation of not-driving. Daughter was on my bed, flipping through a book, both cats in her lap. I lay next to her in companiable silence for a minute and then said, “We’ll go back soon.”

She glanced at me, kissed the cat, smiled and said “Definitely.”

Definitely.

No More Words

I just said something I wager has never before been said in the history of the English language:

"Kiddo, for the car, do you want mosquitos or Jane Austen?"

And no, it doesn't actually get any better if I explain it.

I Know Every Engineer on Every Train (Part Three)

Once again the proud guardian of an asthma inhaler, Daughter and I set off for our morning’s shift at the cat center. After our training video, we were presented with the seemingly unanswerable question:


In which cat building do you want to spend your time? There are over a dozen buildings, most with a specific kind of cat. We could pet and coo older cats, or help care for cats who have a hard time getting around, or we could SPEND TWO HOURS INTERACTING WITH KITTENS!!! KITTENS, WITH THEIR PIPE-CLEANER TAILS AND THEIR DISPROPORTIONATE HEADS AND THEIR IRRATIONAL FEAR OF THAT THING NOBODY ELSE SEES IN THE CORNER!!!

KITTENS!!!

Which was exactly why we didn’t go to kittens. Right before we left, Consort helped me pack the last of the suitcases in the car, stole a Girl Scout cookie from the Road Trip Snack cache, looked deeply into my eyes and said, “I don’t expect you to come home without another animal. But, please, try very hard not to come home with another animal. I spend enough time as it is thinking about quadruped shit.”

Being as the cats seem to take an almost sadistic pleasure in waiting until we sit down to dinner to commit an unspeakable act in the litterbox in the nearby laundry room, and being as my little road trip had made him King of Pet Excrement for the week, I couldn’t actually argue with him. He’s a saint, that Consort. Best to not be exposed to temptation. Daughter and I voted to work at the Casa de Calmar, a house for cats with feline leukemia. Cats with feline leukemia can live healthy lives and the disease can’t be transmitted to humans, but our cats at home don’t have it and I couldn’t in good conscience bring an infected cat into our house. I could fall in love many times over at Calmar and never once ask the question, “Say, is there an adoption application around here?” I still wasn’t certain, though, how much cat-fur my immune system could stand, even with medical back-up. I prayed there was something I could do where I wouldn’t go into respitory failure. Even though the buildings have both indoor areas and screened porches

 (catteries), that might be more than my lungs could take.

“Would you like to walk Moses?”

LESSON SEVEN: Walking is beneficial.

Prayers answered. Some of the cats like to snap on the old harness and leash and go out for a stroll. Mostly, I was told, they stand around outside, mark a bush or two, glare at the wild turkeys who have the audacity to stand mere yards away, gobbling rudely. Not my walking-buddy Mo. We spent the better part of an hour trudging, leaping, pouncing, skittering, cakewalking, and talking our way around the back of the property. This was one of the few moments we weren’t lunging off towards a new adventure:

When we finally took him back in, he was content to head off to a sunny spot in the cattery, and I was giddy; I had been of service and my breathing was still inaudible! What else could I do which was useful and fairly low in allergens?

Daughter went off to brush, pet and generally be an eleven year-old girl around the cats and I washed dishes. Not quite as strange and lovely as a walk in the Utah mountains with a cat, but still useful and the steam kept my bronchi open, which has its own peculiar beauty.

After lunch, we got to work with the dogs. By work, I mean walk. It was an efficient little machine; the kid would be handed a leashed dog, I would be handed a leashed dog, and we'd head towards the hike-path. We'd walk the path, take the dogs back to the building and be handed another two dogs. Best Friends has enough property so that each dog-building has their own hiking path, which means dogs who see each other on the walks know one another a bit and are less likely to act out. This means the dogs--healthy, young, ebullient dogs--know exactly where they are going, heading away from the building as if the path is paved in Snausages. I tried to get a movie of our walk but it's hard to get decent footage when someone about knee-height is concerned you've missed the INCREDIBLE CACTUS TEN FEET IN FRONT OF US PLEASE GET A MOVE ON.

Here's the path. Yes, this part of Utah looks remarkably like someone moved to Mars and did a bit of landscaping.

Daughter and I walked three dogs each, at which point it was time to pick our dog for the sleepover! There are bunnies, cats and dogs who are authorized to go on sleepovers, as long as the place you're staying is so inclined. I had picked our motel for just that reason. Our first pick was Avril, a gorgeous marshmallow of a dog who had been making seductive eyes at the kid all during our shift and came highly recommended by the employees in that building. The trainer for this building let us hang out with Avril while he pulled her paperwork for the sleepover. Avril was kind enough to me, allowing me to pet her and make a big deal about her spotted tummy, but her heart was clearly taken by Daughter. She inched closer and closer to the girl, finally putting her paw in Daughter's hand:

They stared at each other, delighted. The trainer came back, rubbing his head.

"How old are you?" he asked Daughter.

"Eleven," she said, furrowing her brow. No one ever seems to care about her age until they are going to deny her something.

"I'm sorry, but Avril is only authorized to have sleepovers with children over twelve."

Avril and the kid both stared at him, Avril inching further into her lap.

"It's just that she was taken from a really bad abuse case, which involved a child. She's obviously better, but she still hasn't been officially cleared for younger people."

I braced myself for the sulk we'd all now be enjoying. Instead, Daughter gently slid Avril off her lap, whispered something in her ear, got up and said calmly, "Then let's meet the dogs who can be around me."

We walked out of Averil's pen. I asked her what she had said to Averil.

"I told her I was sorry."

"Sorry for not being able to take her?"

"Yeah. Sorry for all of it."

"Me, too."

Avril stood in her outdoor run and watched us go.

LESSON EIGHT: You're never fully ready for houseguests.

We were placed with Poppy, a lively and bouncy young dog who was incandescently joyful that someone was snapping on her leash and grabbing her overnight bag. Very bouncy, in fact; owing to having had distemper as a puppy, she has neurological damage, which means she spends most of her life as if she's standing on couch-springs. A more polite houseguest I couldn't have asked for: she enjoyed the walk we took; she enjoyed sitting with us watching us eat on the Mexican restaurant patio; she enjoyed the car trip back to the motel.

Ten minutes after arriving at the hotel, she was this relaxed:

And a half-hour after this, she was this relaxed:

It's hard to get a picture of a black dog in shadows, but trust me, she was the embodiment of a curled up, relaxed dog. I had every reason to suspect we'd have a quiet night.
 
There are several points to Best Friend sleepovers. If you're thinking about getting a pet, you can see if you and the dog are the right fit. You can give an animal a night of undivided attention, which most animals revel in. Or you can give Best Friends valuable information about the animal you have sleeping over. For example, say you've been given a dog with a neurological condition that makes her bounce and the trainer from Best Friends tells you she doesn't do it while she sleeps. After a single night of sharing a bed with her, you could tell the trainer that, in fact, she does twitch while she sleeps. That, in fact, sleeping next to her is like sleeping next to someone with hiccups. Daughter proved that, as an adult, she will be able to rent apartments situated under The El by sleeping soundly the entire night, even with Poppy next to her. I, on the other side of Poppy, enjoyed up to four minutes of sleep at a time. In the morning, I dragged myself up to Best Friends, waved Poppy a numbed farewell, stopped by the main offices and told them we wouldn't be working that morning, headed back down to the room and slept until noon. Daughter told me afterwards that while I slept she watched Sponge Bob Square Pants for three solid hours, which I am going to declare a continuation of our animal adventure.
 
NEXT: More.

And Every Handout in Every Town (Part Two)

The first night we were in Kanab, I had to dash outside into the  freezing darkness to get something from the car. Sprinting back in, I noticed something and slowed down. Then, I stopped. And then, I ran in to get Daughter.

“Put on your shoes,” I ordered, “you’ve got to see this.”

“But,” she whined, “I’m warm and exhausted.”

I fixed her with a hard look.

“Put on shoes.”

I dragged her outside. She shivered and looked at me expectantly. I silently pointed upwards at the sky, at the stars. She looked up. When you’re from a big metropolitan area light-pollution emitting place such as Los Angeles, you could accurately describe the night sky as “The faded navy blue place with the moon.” If you’re observant, you might see a star or two a week. For the past month, we’ve had two planets up there and that was stylish. This sky mocked any attempt at counting; were there a thousand celestial sequins or were there a thousand in just that corner over there? It was light enough to read print. If living in Los Angeles means looking around at all the stuff you want and believing you’re just one contract away from being the most important person in the world, living in Kanab must mean occasionally looking up at all the stuff that is and realizing you’re not important at all. Looking at these stars was some version of freefalling. We reveled in it all. After a couple of minutes, Daughter said, “This is very cool, but I can’t feel my earlobes any more.”

Existential perspective gave way to warm earlobes. We went inside and turned in.

We drove on to the Best Friends sanctuary the next morning for our training and learned another lesson:

LESSON THREE: Best Friends isn’t playing.

If you have an appointment for the 9:00 tour, do not arrive at 9:06 and expect them to still be getting people on the bus. I’m usually pathologically punctual, but when we went to the front office at the motel to grab some breakfast, Daughter got trapped in the gravitational pull of Foo’s charm.

Our official training began at 11, so we spent the time walking around gazing at the rescued horses frolicking in the fields, the rescued pigs strutting around self-importantly, the rescued goats angling for my jacket as I leaned against the fence. As much as I liked them, they couldn’t have my jacket, as I needed it, as it was still wobbling around freezing. Daughter entertained herself by jumping on frozen grass on and listening to it crunch. The manager of our motel had told us the weather was expected to reach eighty degrees by the end of the week. “That’s springtime in Kanab for you,” she said, shrugging.


LESSON FOUR: Kanab isn’t playing, either.

At 11, we trained and got our schedule. Every morning, from 8:15- 11:30, we’d work in one area, then we’d have lunch, and then we’d work in another area from 1:15-4:00. Because the kid isn’t twelve yet, we were put in rabbits, cats and dogs. Some day, my daughter will throw a complete adolescent fit in public and I’ll cut her slack because of the fit she didn’t throw at Best Friends when she learned she couldn’t work with the horses. Trying to convince her that rabbits, our first stop, are very much like tiny horses did remarkably little to lighten her mood. Perhaps food would help.

Small note about the cafeteria; the food is fine. Vegetable things, pasta things, some fruit. If you go, you will not notice what you’re eating because this is the view:

Pasta salad really doesn’t stand up against a glimpse of The World Before Man.

And then, rabbits! And, of course, antihistamines, because while I’m a bit allergic to some dogs and somewhat allergic to most cats, I’m wildly allergic to rabbits and hay. My protocol for the trip was Benadryl at night, Claritin during the day, and an inhaler tucked deeply into my back pocket at all times. That the rabbits have runs which are half indoors and half outdoors—thereby providing me with precious gulps of air not woven with allergens—made it all the more tolerable. I was positively sanguine, watching Daughter brush and hand-feed specially selected rabbits, trudging up and down the hillside to the far rabbit yurts, doling out cilantro and lettuce to worthy rabbits. I saw wild turkeys strutting around. I basked in the silence, as exotic and infinite as the starry sky the night before. Daughter had forgiven the universe for the lack of horses and was angling to adopt at least six of her new friends. I had done the right thing, bringing us here.

Five minutes before the end of our shift, I reflexively tapped my inhaler-pocket. Then, I tapped it again, and followed that with tapping the other pocket. Several pocket-taps later, I finally admitted I had lost my inhaler. I retraced my steps from yurt to yurt, then in the yurts, to no avail. Somewhere in the cilantro-doling and lettuce-strewing, I had dropped my inhaler and it was nowhere to be found. This didn’t bode well for the week. We finished our shift and drove back to the motel in silence.


LESSON FIVE: Small towns can be challenging.

I made a quick call to my ENT doctor in LA from the room; I could have a local pharmacy call them and it could be replaced! Now, to find a pharmacy in a town with two stoplights. Surprisingly, there were two, but both were closed for the night and wouldn’t be open again until after we were supposed to be working the next day. I chose not to think about this for the moment and find us some dinner. Yelp and the motel manager both recommended a nearby Mexican restaurant. I like the manager and I don’t want to sound like a snobby LA person, so I’ll keep my comments positive. The salsa was pretty good. What else can I say that’s positive? Oh, here’s one. Until that night, I was almost positive you couldn’t screw up rice and beans. There are five restaurants in town and this was the most lauded; something told me we’d be here again. I stared moodily at my food and pined for my inhaler. The nearest town large enough to support a 24-hour pharmacy was an hour and a half away. This is what living in a small town means. Daughter alternately read her book and noted how little room a rabbit would take up in the car, were we to bring one back from Kanab.

We got back to the motel; the manager was at the front desk. Daughter fell upon Foo,

who seemed thrilled about this. She asked how our first day had been. I raved about the good stuff and mentioned my lack of inhaler. The manager clucked her tongue sympathetically, grabbed the phone and said “Let me call Clyde.”

“Clyde?”

“The pharmacist.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I protested, “Besides, the pharmacy closed at five.”

“I’m calling him at home. He lives right around the corner. He can go back and set you right up.”

LESSON SIX: Small towns can be wonderful.

Come to think of it, the salsa was actually great.

No Phone, No Pool, No Pets (Part One)

The book was done, as far as the parts I could do. Daughter had a light week of schoolwork. Consort had two large projects which arrived in his life due yesterday; he needed a quiet work space. We needed relaxation time. Mother-daughter road trip!

Not just any road trip, but a trip we’ve been pining over for years. This year, finally, we’d travel many, many hours to clean litterboxes and dog runs! Because it would appear I’m a little confused about what the definition of the word “relaxation” is.

 We headed to Best Friends, the largest animal sanctuary in the United States, to work for a week. How big is it? Darn big; they own 3,700 acres and lease another 33,000, which makes sense when you realize they have about 1,700 animals living with them at any given time. When you have that many animals, it’s just considered good form to have what amounts to a national park between you and your neighbors.

If you know about animal rescue, you’ve seen their work. After Katrina, a branch of their organization spent nearly a year in the Louisiana/Mississippi area, rescuing and placing homeless animals. They took in some of Michael Vick’s dogs. They’ve sent support to international rescue groups in times of crisis. They’ve got their own show, Dogtown, on the National Geographic Channel. They average 27,000 visitors a year, about 4,500 of whom end up volunteering. This is no small achievement because Best Friends isn’t just 36,000 acres of space located within a thriving metropolis. No, Best Friends is proudly off the beaten path. It’s surrounded by Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon's North Rim, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Lake Powell, which mostly means people are driving through to go somewhere else about five months a year, during the tourist season. The rest of the year you can stand in the middle of the road in the local town, Kanab, for minutes at a time if you felt so inclined, because there’s no traffic. Directions in town are based on whether you go to the first light or the second light; there are only two. How far off the grid is Best Friends? My GPS stopped working for several miles during the trip there. So if someone is coming to work at Best Friends, it’s because they worked very hard to do it.

LESSON ONE: Eight hours is not six hours.

When I punched the address into Google maps, it informed me the trip would take eight hours. I—who usually assume everything will go much worse than anticipated and take much longer— uncharacteristically decided the trip was no longer than six hours. See, because it takes about four hours to get to Las Vegas, which is almost exactly halfway to Kanab, so the whole trip would take six hours!

Yes, I’ve arranged for someone else to teach my child math.

The trip was a little over eight hours. Many of those hours were spent driving through the desert, which makes for a challenging learning experience unless you’re trying to teach your child every single synonym for the words beige and featureless. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love the desert, but it’s a love based less on novelty and more on how impressive it is to go hundreds of miles without anything actually changing. It’s the visual version of a Philip Glass piece. There was a brief flurry of excitement around Las Vegas, what with the billboards (“Mom, why would anyone need edible underwear?”) and then we were back on the moon again. To pass the time, we ate the taquitos and Girl Scout cookies I packed. Daughter learned a valuable lesson about her mother; road-trip food sneers at Recommended Daily Allowances of anything nutritious.

And then we drove into this.










Notice how it appears to only be over the highway? That’s because it was only over the highway. Over the sound of the fire-hose inundating the car, Daughter and I tried to think of synonyms for apocalyptic.


LESSON TWO: You never know.



About six hours into the journey, we started the drive through Zion National Park. A mile or so into the park, we stopped at a gate; the park fee was $25.00. I flinched. “Is there no other way to Kanab?” The forest ranger shrugged and said, “You can go back around at Hurricane.” Hurricane was an hour back, which meant I was weighting $25.00 against my sanity or a deep vein thrombosis from having sat for so long. I grimaced and paid, all the while cursing Google for never saying “Hey, this route? It’ll cost you.” We went into the park and then we saw this

 and this

 and this.

The mountains were red, as were the roads, because they used the local rocks for paving material. The sky was ludricrously blue. The clouds and the snow were the same pristine white. It was like a landscape created by a kindergarten student with two crayons. Daughter squealed in joy because she thought she saw a mountain goat scrambling across a hill but then decided it was probably a shadow. We came out from a tunnel and saw this.

 There was a family of four mountain goats, just sort of loitering by the side of the road. I mean, like three feet from the car; if inclined, the kid could have lunged from the car and touched a mountain goat horn. In the time it took me to stop squealing and grab the camera, they drifted a bit, not from fear but what appeared to be disgust at my lack of cool. We pulled over and just basked in the not-Los Angelesness of it all. I turned to Daughter.

“You remember my irritation about having had to pay?” I said to her, barely concealing a grin. Her eyes shining, the kid said to me, “It was so totally worth it.”

She was so totally right.

Eight hours and a few minutes after we started, we landed in Kanab, Utah, the setting sun turning the mountains the pink of an Easter ham, a few golden beams lighting up our home base for the next four days, the Quail Park Lodge, an adorable renovated motor lodge from the Route 66 era. I can rave about it, I can unequivocally recommend it for the customer service (details to follow), or I can show you one of the two dogs who is there every day. This is Foo,

and this is Foo playing with the three kids who stayed at the motel that night.

There's also an affable huge Leonberger named Coda, but he mostly slept and every picture I got of him looked like a meditation on roadkill. Just take my word for it, he was there.

We arrived at eight, ate the last of the taquitos and cookies as a sort of dinner and collapsed in exhaustion by nine. We needed to get our sleep; we were due at work the next day.

PART TWO: LESSONS LEARNED AND MAMMALS SOCIALIZED.

Shot Through the Heart

I know two things about this sweater:

1. This is from the Isabel Marant fall 2012 collection.
2. This was my family's couch in 1983.

About the Movies

Robin Raven asks What are your favorite movies?

Depends on the day and the mood, of course, but my steadfast answers are Reversal of Fortune, Sunset Boulevard, and The Man Who Wasn't There.

Consort, upon hearing this list for the first time, smirked and said "You know they're all narrated by dead people, right?"

Nope, hadn't noticed that. I tell you this in case you thought I couldn't be more peculiar. Thank God he already loved me.

I also love Glengarry Glen Ross. I think it's funny.

I tell you this in case you thought I couldn't be more peculiar.

Vacation, Had to Get Away

I want to write without actually having anything which needs airing out, so I reached out on Twitter, asking for questions. Javachick asked What are you positively looking forward to the most this Summer? I happen to think this is an excellent question, and yet oddly enough always loathed the essay “What I Did This Summer.” I believe this is because history has shown anticipating I’d be at the beach a lot, date a sensitive, smart Irish boy and finally look good in white jeans was leagues more fun than dutifully writing I went to summer school and now know how to type. Also, I had strep throat. Twice.


What am I positively looking forward to? Well, the book comes out August 7th, and that’s fun. I mean, it’s going to be a quiet kind of fun, because I’m strange and won’t let anyone throw me an author’s party. Two incredibly lovely friends with perfect party-houses have offered and my first response is always “A party where I’d be the guest of honor and someone might toast me while everyone else looks at me?”

(Insert appalled expression here.)

(Insert horrified silence here.)

Honestly, sometimes I think one of the reasons getting married gives me the squinks is the thought of being the focus of that much attention for a day. But the book will come out and perhaps I’ll get a chance to talk to some people in the press about education, which excites me inner wonk. And I’ll do another Quinn Cummings Seemingly Endless Blog Book Tour, which (thank you Sara J. Henry, Who Knows Things) was the most fun I had with the first book. So there’s that.

We’re threatening to travel as a family, which hasn’t happened in years. YEARS. Between not wanting to spend the money and having things which took up our vacation time, we’ve been staycationing since before that become a horrible portmanteau word. And yes, Los Angeles has a lot to offer, but if it doesn’t take place in a strip club or a morgue, I think the kid and I have done it by now. It’ll be nice to haul the family to some new city and find out if their green tea is any different that our green tea.

What else which is positive? Nothing else yet, but your effective use of the word positive has reframed the calendar in my mind, Javachick, and I thank you for that.

I'm Still Here

I hate to sound ungrateful. It’s nice people care about me and all, but man, do I hate “Where are They Now?” stories. I hate being asked to do them for a number of reasons:

1. You’re not being asked because you were on the cover of Time magazine last week. Ergo, you’re not what you once were. And if you’re me, you’re not what you once were when you were nine. I’m totally comfortable with my current level of artistic achievement and wouldn’t change a bit about my life (except getting over this present stage of growing out my hair to bangs-length, please), but “Where are they now?” can only be answered with the question “Yeah, where am I now?”

2. It’s lazy writing. No offense to the editors who greenlight these stories, but stories like this (and, by extension, the people who commission them) are one reason why newspapers are dying. If five hundred words leaves the reader with no stronger sensation than “huh,” then you, the editor, should ask your uncle, the dry-cleaner, if you can start working a few shifts at his plant. And don’t tell me people are curious. If they were curious, they’d have Googled me to see whether I was dead or not. At best, people read pieces like this because someone left the page folded open next to the sugar dispenser at the coffeeshop and they glance over while the person in front of them hogs the cinnamon.

3. I’m inevitably bracketed by people who’ve overdosed or filed for bankrupcy. Again. The only thought more deflating than “Yeah, where am I now?” is “Well, at least I didn’t die in a flophouse in Kingman, Arizona.” These articles are the express-elevator to diminished expectations.

And yet, I did another one if these where-are-they interviews last week. I did it because the last time I held my nose and agreed to one of these pre-obituary profiles, it actually led to my first book deal and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I have a new book to promote. So I told the reporter I’d do it. I only flinched a bit. At least they’d mention the book’s title.

[The Year of Learning Dangerously. Pre-order it now!]

Being interviewed is an inherently weird social interaction. It’s like a blind date. A blind date where only one person gets to ask questions, can ask whatever questions he likes, and the other person can't sneak out the back door if things get too uncomfortable.

“Why did you stop acting?”

“Did it bother you that you never reached that level of fame again?”

“Do you wish you’d been one of those child actors who actually made it as an adult?”

“How are you making a living now?”

Or, as I could also describe it: The Same Intrusive Questions I’ve Been Asked for Two Decades. As I’ve noted in the past, people don’t actually think before they ask questions of people they have seen on television in their childhood. It would be as if they could ask intimate questions of their Atari or their Easy-Bake Oven. I suppose I should be pleased I’ve never been asked about the results of my latest Pap smear or demanded my TRW. Yet.

So, today, I’m going to answer the Question Which Underlies the Same Intrusive Questions I’ve Been Asked for Two Decades: Quinn, why aren’t you nuts? Why aren’t you squatting semi-naked on some street corner, having a weave-pulling battle with a transsexual and huffing Febreeze?

First, I’d quibble about the “Not nuts” part. My own delightful child—who is blessed with both a clear eye and a prodigious vocabulary — when recently asked to describe me in three adjectives, said “kind; hardworking; and fretful.” I have same the innate capacity for joy as a mechanical pencil and can spend an entire evening stewing that I haven’t done enough to save the sea turtles. I’m not anyone’s idea of a fully actualized human being. And yet, compared to some other former child actors, I’m a bedrock of stability. Why is that?

You ready?

BECAUSE MY PARENTS DIDN’T CONFUSE ME FOR AN ATM.

Yes, my parents gave me lots of other advantages. They loved me dearly. My mother took me to see “Fantasia” multiple times, even though she hates animated movies. But the difference between me and many other child professionals was that I was never expected to support my family. If 15% of a child’s income is the parent’s income, the parent is no longer in position to make decisions for the child based solely on what’s best for the child's overall welfare. They might tell you the child comes first, they might even believe the child comes first, but at some point there will be a mortgage payment due or a car to be replaced. Introduce into this mix a job the child might not actually want to do and the parent/manager will make a choice that a parent/parent might not. Soon enough, you end up with a dynamic where even the most woolen-headed kid understands she’s the well from which all benefits spring. She's the anointed one whose fame makes her more valuable than other members of the family but also someone whose desires will only be recognized if they’re in alignment with the bottom line. Eventually, time does its pesky thing and she’s no longer cute, which is when things usually go to hell.

Cue the Febreeze fight.

In case you’re curious, the article for which I was interviewed was titled something like “After Oscars, the Inevitable Downfall.” They neatly cherry-picked the quotes that make me sound most elegaic about a business I haven’t cared about in over a decade. And, of course, they didn’t mention the book’s title. So I’m out of the “Where Are They Now” business.

Where am I now?

I’m here now.

And I’m doing just fine.

Just Breathe

When I was twenty-four, I was diagnosed with asthma in the traditional way: at a dinner party at a doctor’s house. I had gone from the dining room (warm) to the porch where people were having canapés and cocktails (cold) and commenced to cough. Since I was in day nine of Quinn’s Annual Bronchial Plague, I thought nothing of it and sequestered myself by the tomato plant in the corner to have a satisfying half-hour hack. Nearly everyone inched away from me, but my feelings weren't hurt in the least. My bronchial opera isn't pleasant to be around. I have been known to break blood-vessels in my throat, such is my coughing. Once, I found myself in an ER waiting room sitting across from a person holding a dirty rag against what appeared to be a stab-wound. He  watched me cough a few minutes and said I could go ahead of him. So you can imagine my surprise when the host actually sought out my company.

“Where’s your inhaler?” he asked.

I waved my arms around in a way I thought would convey Thank you for your concern, but this isn’t asthma as much as the tail-end of a bronchial Cthulhu and it will abate somewhere between now and next month.

“I don’t know why anyone hasn’t told you this, but you have asthma,” he said firmly. “Now come in the house and let me see if I have something for you.”

Always accept dinner-party invitations at a doctor’s house. A few minutes later I was no longer coughing. One specialist's appointment later, I had an official diagnosis: asthma. I had the type most usually aggravated by a previous illness, which explained why my November cold usually left me hacking and wheezing until April. I was given two inhalers -- one for crisis situations and one for every day use -- and told to take care of myself. Since “take care of myself” meant “stay away from people who are smoking and work out regularly,” I can honestly say asthma may be the best thing which ever happened to my health. Of course, I’m great in a crisis but kind of a disaster when is comes to mundane tasks. Some days, I’d carry my inhalers; most weeks, I wouldn’t. Hey, I’d think. I’m fine! When I’m not fine, I’ll carry my inhaler! Come to think of it, I haven’t had an attack in months. Perhaps I’ve outgrown asthma! And sometimes I’d forget to get a new inhaler when the old one ran low but, Hey, asthma hasn’t happened in months!

About six years later, I got sick. Because I’m all about timing, my illness ramped up and required antibiotics late one night, on what turned out to be  the coldest night of the year. Consort offered to make the run to the all-night pharmacy but I got weirdly stubborn and insisted I could take care of it myself. He drove. When we arrived at the pharmacy, I got out of the car (warm), and since I couldn’t breathe through my nose, I sucked in a blast of nearly freezing air through my mouth. My bronchi closed with the finality of a bank-vault and I started to cough. Coughing pushed whatever air was left in my lungs out, but when I attempted to breathe back in, I couldn’t. And then I’d cough again. The force of it caused me first to lean against the car and then eventually sit cross-legged on the ground, coughing and pawing through my purse looking for my inhaler which was safely and ineffectively back home. Consort was next to me, looking down and saying calmly, “We have to go to the emergency room now, you’re not breathing, let’s get you into the car” and I’m coughing and waving my hands at him in the It’s really not that big a deal, just give me a quick tracheotomy and we’ll be on our way manner, but I was clearly hypoxic and I rarely make my best decisions hypoxic. And all the while some part of my brain is thinking This can’t be the way I die. It’s too stupid.

We found an inhaler in the glove-compartment. I have no recollection of putting one there. I think the universe looks out for me but is well within its rights to roll its eyes every now and again.

I thought of that incident this week when Anthony Shadid died. Mr. Shadid was, by any measurement, an extraordinary journalist. This is from Wikipedia:

• From 2003 to 2009 he was a staff writer for The Washington Post where he was an Islamic affairs correspondent based in the Middle East. Before The Washington Post, Shadid worked as Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press based in Cairo and as news editor of the AP bureau in Los Angeles. He spent two years covering diplomacy and the State Department for The Boston Globe before joining the Post's foreign desk.
• In 2002, he was shot in the shoulder by an Israeli sniper in Ramallah while reporting for the Boston Globe in the West Bank.
• On 16 March, 2011, Shadid and three colleagues were reported missing in Eastern Libya, having gone there to report on the uprising against the dictatorship of Col. Muammar Al-Ghaddafi. On 18 March 2011, The New York Times reported that Libya agreed to free him and three colleagues: Stephen Farrell, Lynsey Addario and Tyler Hicks.The Libyan government released the four journalists on 21 March 2011.
• Shadid twice won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, in 2004 and 2010, for his coverage of the Iraq War. His experiences in Iraq were the subject for his 2005 book Night Draws Near, an empathetic look at how the war has impacted the Iraqi people beyond liberation and insurgency. Night Draws Near won the Ridenhour Book Prize for 2006. He won the 2004 Michael Kelly Award, as well as journalism prizes from the Overseas Press Club and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Shadid was a 2011 recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the American University of Beirut. He won the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 2003 and in 2012 for his work in 2011.

This guy was the real deal. He spent his career making a fascinating and dangerous part of the world comprehensible to civilians like me. Last week, Mr. Shadid died in Syria, not from a bullet or an explosive device, but from asthma. He was trying to leave Syria on horseback and suffered an asthma attack. Reports were he was especially allergic to horses. He probably wouldn’t have chosen to leave Syria that way but it’s a war zone and he took a chance, as he had so many times before while reporting from that part of the world. Maybe he had his inhaler with him. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe this was avoidable. Maybe this wasn’t -- some asthma attacks are not going to turn around even with an inhaler. Maybe he had a moment of thinking "This can’t be the way I die. It’s too stupid."

Mr. Shadid left a legacy of award-winning journalism and great writing.

Mr. Shadid also left a wife and two small children.

And Mr. Shadid left a chilling reminder to all of us who live with asthma; can kill you. If you’re reading this and you have asthma, please stop reading right now and check to make sure you have a working inhaler and that it's with you at all times. Make sure it’s not expired. If it is, get it replaced. You’ve never gotten me a birthday present, so consider it an early gift to me.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Shadid.