Normally,it’s cold, it’s gray, it’s gloomy right about now. Except this year. With the exception of, well, today, we’ve had this weird, glorious spate of beautiful sunny early January days. It’s been unseasonably…nice.

Now. I will admit something. I actually don’t mind having some cold, gray, yucky days in January. When I lived in California, we didn’t get a lot of weather like that, and absence made the heart grow fonder. I once overheard a woman compare the weather in San Diego to a person who smiles all the time. In theory, that sounds great, doesn’t it? In reality, it is nice….for awhile. Then it gets a little annoying. You find yourself wishing for a gloomy day so you can justify a nice cozy day on the couch, with no feelings of guilt over not going for a run or doing something healthy and wholesome and virtuous. When it’s 72 and sunny, you feel like you ought to be out there, even if you really really really don’t want to be.

But when you have a long long string of more typical winter weather—the damp frigid kind, I mean–those start to get tiresome, too. But usually I don’t get tired of that until at least February. The novelty starts to wear off around Valentine’s Day, and by March, it’s downright unwelcome. My perpetually cold toes start wearing holes in my warmest socks because I’ve worn them so often, and yet when I go to the mall, all the stores are selling bathing suits and tank tops.

So a few sparkling days in early January were maybe not quite as glee-inducing as they would be a few weeks from now. But you know what? I’ll still take them. The mid-winter blahs are still ahead. Might as well store up some Vitamin D while I can.

This has been quite the whirlwind month at my house. Today is the first day in I don’t know how long that I’m just getting the chance to sit down and breathe. 

Not that I’m not working. I am. I was fortunate this year to score more writing/editing work than usual for December, and for that, I am extremely grateful. 

In fact, I am writing today. I recently landed some assignments for the website of a consumer health and lifestyle magazine, and I’m really excited about that opportunity. I’m finishing up two assignments for the editor today, and I’ll submit them tomorrow. I made sure to get as much done before Christmas as possible, as I knew that there would be exactly zero time to sneak off and work during the weekend of Christmas. Not that I’d want to be working on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day anyway. There was just so much going on. Although I’ll admit there were times during the weekend when it would have probably been more relaxing to sit down and write than it would have been to, oh, wrap presents or figure out where all the stocking stuffers disappeared to.

I’ve got another assignment for a health magazine from a new client, and I’m really excited about that, too. That’s due next week, so I’m just getting started.

I’m so lucky to have all these new people taking a chance on me. I really am. There have been several years when I’ve spent a good chunk of December wishing I had managed to land more work because the holiday bills start rolling in when January arrives. It was good to be busy this year.

Let’s hope it continues in 2012!

Waiting on Santa Claus!

In fact, I can’t remember a time when our house was not bedecked in twinkling lights for the entire month of December. There were even a few years when Dad got really creative; he spelled out actual words on the bushes with strings of lights. One year, it was NOEL. Another year, PEACE. The neighbors were used to us by then. Random passersby probably wondered how those hippies got stranded so far out in the suburbs.

But that was Dad’s thing. When my family moved to Nashville a few years ago, we assigned the task of hanging Christmas lights on our new house to my father. While everyone else digested or cleaned, he was untangling cords and linking up strings and replacing bulbs. If we’d let him, he’d have climbed a ladder and draped them on the tall holly trees at either end of the house, but I ordered…er, strongly advised…him not to do that. But we just let him have his fun, and at the end of the evening, the bushes in the front yard were all dressed up with lights for the holidays. Every year since then, it’s been his job.

Except this year. A couple of months ago, Mom and Dad bought a house a few miles away from here. So they spent most of last week moving things into their new house. They had to leave on Friday morning, so they were busy unpacking boxes on Thanksgiving night. Dad didn’t get a chance to dive into the giant plastic bin of lights and cords for me. So I had to do the lighting myself.

On Saturday afternoon, I gamely dragged my bin of gear out to the front sidewalk and surveyed the rest of the street. My neighbors on one side were working methodically to create a lighting display that could win awards. One holly tree was wrapped in a series of alternating red rope lights and twinkling white lights, to give the appearance of a giant illuminated piece of peppermint candy. Miniature lighted trees lined their front walk, and a pair of motorized deer twinkled from the flowerbed. On the other side, another neighbor was rigging up his yard displays. Santa, snowmen, penguins…they’re all there. For good measure, he had hauled out his tall ladder and draped long strings of those giant retro bulbs from the trees in the front yard, too.

I sighed. I managed to drape a few nets of colored LED lights on the holly bushes and a few strings on the round boxwoods by the front porch, but that was pretty much all I could do. Even that was a major accomplishment; I had little tiny pricks all over my fingers from the stickers on those stubborn old holly bushes, and I had grimly surrendered after tangling with them too many times. My five-year-old asked wistfully if there was any way we could hang lights from the empty branches of our sycamore trees, too. I told him that I’d have to read up on our disability insurance first. Meanwhile, I silently thanked the neighborhood HOA for not setting out specific rules on Christmas lights, as some HOAs do. Because if they had, well, I think there’s a pretty good chance mine wouldn’t make the grade.

But who cares? We have lights! They’re colorful! They’re cheerful! They’re energy efficient! They were cheap! (I always wait ’til they’re marked down and then buy them.) So what if they won’t win any awards? So what if my attempts to decorate are rather painfully amateurish? We have lights, right? I even have them on a timer. Not bad for an amateur like me.

Maybe next year I can do more. Or, even better, maybe next year, Dad will be available again….

I snickered for a moment, thinking of all the jokes that could be made about underpaid, underappreciated, starving writers, etc. etc. 

But am I grateful I’m a writer? Seriously, yes. I like what I do. I like writing. I get to do something for a living that I actually enjoy. I really don’t get tired of writing, at least not on a macro level. Sometimes I get tired of writing about specific things, but I never get tired of writing.

And I never seriously consider giving up writing and taking up something else, like…I don’t know. Accounting. In fact, I turned down admission to several prestigious law schools about ten or 12 years ago because I wanted to remain a writer. And here I am. 

I didn’t buy the good candy for Halloween.

The good candy, for those of you who have been living under a rock, is the Good Candy that you hand out to the trick-or-treaters. That is, chocolate. Good Candy usually includes at least some of the following: Kit-Kat, Twix, Baby Ruth, Snickers, Reese’s cups. For some–not me–it can also include Butterfinger, Mounds and Almond Joy. But it always involves chocolate.

Kids know who hands out the Good Candy. They remember.

Now, I must defend myself. I did not do the unthinkable and buy the Bad Candy. Anything generic is going to be saddled with the Bad Candy label, as is candy that is not kid-friendly. Starlight mints are not innately bad candy, but what child do you know who lusts for little hard peppermints when they could be gorging on caramel, nougat and, most importantly, CHOCOLATE?

The worst of the Bad Candy is that horrible taffy stuff that is wrapped in plain black and orange wax paper wrappers. Shudder. No one wants that stuff. No one admits to buying it, but clearly someone does and always has because I always had some in my trick-or-treat bag when I was a kid, and my five-year-old always winds up with some, too. It always, always gets tossed out. But I think you could probably also include Mike’n'Ikes and Good’n'Plenty on that list. I’m sure there are a few hard-core fans of Mike’n'Ike and Good’n'Plenty, but I’ve never met them.

So what did I buy? I bought miniature Tootsie Roll lollipops (which I personally adore), regular Tootsie Rolls, Starburst, and Skittles. Definitely not Bad Candy, not at all, but not chocolate.

When I got home from Target last night with my bags of candy, my husband wailed, “Why’d you get this stuff? Why didn’t you get the Good Candy?” He mournfully told me how he always looked forward to unwrapping a few Kit-Kats and Reese’s peanut butter cups after we turned off the porch light and extinguished the candle in the jack o’lantern.

I proffered one lone small bag of individually wrapped Twix bars that I’d snapped up just for that purpose, but he was still sad. No variety, he said. And what would the kids think?

Well, I guess we’ll find out in just a few hours. Kids? Please don’t egg my house or TP the sycamore trees in the front yard. I hear that there’s a well-meaning but clearly misinformed couple on the cul-de-sac who are handing out pencils and raisins…and what about the dentist and his toothbrushes?

The Rhodes College public affairs office dryly noted in a statement posted on its website that “these reports are completely false.”

My first reaction was, “Thank goodness.” As you might know, Rhodes is my alma mater. And I love that campus. I know I’m biased, but it has got to be one of the most beautiful colleges in the entire country. The Gothic buildings with slate roofs, the row of massive old oak trees that form an arching canopy near the front of the campus, the lush green lawns…gorgeous. (And just a wee bit haunted, as all good colleges should be, I think.) I can’t imagine Rhodes not being at that very site, even though the original campus was actually located in Clarksville, many many years ago.

My second reaction was, “Wow, how’d they screw up so badly?” And by “they,” I mean the team that broadcast the false report. It’s one thing to mention that a school’s enrollment is growing and making the current campus a little more crowded. It’s another to jump about a mile to the conclusion that the college is looking to relocate. That’s a massive assumption.

As a fellow journalist, part of me wants to give the broadcast team a little benefit of the doubt. We’re human. As such, we’ve all made mistakes, even though most of us try as hard as we can to make as few of them as possible. You fact-check. You double-check the spelling of someone’s name. You call someone back when your notes look a little confusing and say, “When you said XYZ, did you really mean XYZ or did you say XYZ and also ABC?”

But then, if you read the report from Rhodes, it notes that no one contacted anyone at the college to verify that information. If that is the case, that’s a big old problem right there. That’s Journalism 101. You call your source and ask him to comment. If you can’t reach him, you either 1) wait to publish or 2) confirm elsewhere. Or in some circumstances, you might note that So-and-So declined to comment (but you usually tell the person that you will be mentioning that in your report). Publications and media outlets have different standards for anonymous sources, so it’s hard to generalize on that kind of situation, but most places are either not going to let you use an anonymous source or they’re going to make you verify the information with several other sources first. But you don’t just…not contact someone to verify a pretty major piece of information.

Problematic, definitely.

But I’m relieved to learn that at least my school’s staying put! After all, in a few years, I’m looking forward to dragging my recalcitrant children around campus to point out all the sites of happy memories while they groan and bury their faces in whatever electronic device is all the rage then. No one had better take that away from me.

Who? I know, I know. I can hear you asking that question, and I don’t blame you. Lotta Crabtree was a young girl who became famous in the 1850s for dancing for miners in mining camps in California. She later went on to become a professional dancer and actress who toured around the country, before retiring at age 45.

As a child, I also loved reading biographies of more famous women, notably Amelia Earhart, Dolly Madison, Jane Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt. I even liked the book about Virginia Dare, even though the vague ending made me uneasy. (It still does, actually.)

But for some reason, the Lotta Crabtree book was my favorite. Maybe I identified with a little girl who loved to dance? Whose family struggled for money? Who knows. I do remember that I especially loved the detailed descriptions of her embroidered dancing costumes, scarlet satin dancing slippers and shimmery green velvet shoes. They sounded so beautiful, so glamorous for a little girl, especially in comparison to the dingy white Keds and striped HealthTex shorts that I wore in the days when I was so obsessed with the book.

The only trouble with that book was that there was only copy in the collection of all the libraries in the greater Birmingham area. My mother may have not understood why I was so devoted to that particular book, but she understood that I was devoted to a book. Every so often, she’d gamely drive me over to Homewood, across town, so I could borrow the Lotta Crabtree book again and reread it until it was due back two weeks later. Usually we left the library with a stack of other books, too. When I finished the Lotta Crabtree book, I’d read about someone else.

Now that I am a parent, I understand that parents want to do whatever it takes to encourage their children to learn. Driving a few extra miles to check out a library book really isn’t a big deal in the greater scheme of things, my mother surely recognized, and it had the effect of encouraging me to read. My five-year-old son is learning to read right now. Would the book about mummies that he chose a few weeks ago be at the top of my list for “must read” books for a five-year-old? Absolutely not. Did I willingly check it out for him? You bet. Anything to keep him interested in learning.

In fact, we checked out a massive illustrated book about Ancient China this morning for the same reason. William can’t read it himself yet, but he’s more than happy to sit next to me while I read it to him. And he asks lots and lots and lots of questions.

I’m sure that some parents might think it’s weird to discuss tombs of ancient Eastern warriors with their kindergarteners. Maybe it is. I’m still going to do it. Because it also gives us the chance to talk about what “B.C.” means and what we can learn from ancient artifacts that have been preserved and what that civilization might have been like. It gives us the chance to talk and to learn together. And maybe one day, my son will say, “Thanks, Mom, for letting me check out all those random books when I was a kid.”

Thanks, Mom, for letting me check out all those random books when I was a kid.

As I was going through my notes, I became amused at all the acronyms. FFS (fee for service). CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). ACO (accountable care organization). HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). HIT (health information technology). EHR (electronic health record, which my autocorrect stubbornly insists on changing to HER every single time.) And then there’s whole alphabet soup of health care organizations and professional groups. AHA, AMA, ANA, AACN, AAMC, etc. etc. etc.

Is there any industry that is more laden with acronyms than health care? I’ve asked this question before, of course, but I started to wonder. So I posed that question on Facebook yesterday, and many of my friends and colleagues weighed in with their suggestions. Banking, one declared. Education, several teachers said. The government (I can see that), and the aerospace industry were also nominated.

What do you think?

Is that Sandwich Smiling at Me? is my manifesto about the value of simple lunches for children.

Essentially, I was constantly getting frustrated by a stream of articles and blog posts that featured fun little culinary projects designed to, as paraphrased from my column, increase your child’s recommended daily intake of whimsy. It’s not that I don’t think those little sandwiches with faces and bodies aren’t cute. They are cute. I just think it’s crazy for a parent to attempt that level of food preparation to provide the contents of their kids’ lunchboxes.

Pack your child a nice basic sandwich with some fruit for lunch. Leave the decorating for the holiday cookies or the birthday party. Or at least for an occasion where you can keep the final product at home to admire and photograph, rather than encasing it in plastic and schlepping it off to sit in your child’s locker for five hours.

That’s how I see it. You certainly don’t have to agree. I’m all magnanimous like that.