The trick is to have something to write about or writing about nothing in such a way that your readers aren’t smitten with a fatal case of boredom.

This morning at 6:15 a.m., my alarm clock startled me awake.  I swatted around until I connected with the snooze button, then spent the next three minutes deciding whether to stand up my walking buddy.  By 6:18 a.m., I had decided to stay under the covers.  This is the first time I’ve purposely not showed up for my morning walk.

The worst thing is that after I made that fateful decision, I never really fell into a deep sleep again.  My daughter showed up, snuggled under the covers next to me for a few minutes, then scurried back to her room to watch television.  I heard my son’s alarm clock ring and listened to him start the shower.  A few minutes before eight, I wrapped my purple bathrobe around myself, wiggled my feet into slippers and went downstairs to make lunch for my boy.  I had to remind him to brush his teeth and put on his shoes.  (Would he go to school in stockings if I didn’t remind him?)  I combed his hair.

When he left, I went back to bed for fifteen minutes.  Okay, maybe thirty.  I am not a morning person.  Ever.

At 9 a.m., the kindergartener from down the street arrived and I was dressed and appeared alert when I opened the door.  My daughter greeted him with great joy and then they ran outside to swing on the tire swing.  She wore socks and shoes–at my insistence–a tank top with a jack-o-lantern on the front and faded pink capri stretch pants.  The yard was damp from last night’s rain.

I roused my teenagers from their unkempt beds–they are messy sleepers–and moments before their dad appeared to take them to P.E. at the YMCA, I handed each of them a piece of toast and off they went.  Blessed no-complaining-quietness.

Now, be thankful that I spare you the details of the rest of the morning . . . laundry, changing lightbulbs, dishes, ironing,  retrieving dirty socks from far-flung corners . . . oh wait, those were the details.  Suffice it to say that I am Boring.  At half-past noon, the teenagers returned, red-cheeked and full of school-related complaints and the kindergartener left.  I began working at 1 p.m. and finished at 5 p.m.  (Mysterious online job that pays money, real cash money, woo-hoo!)

Husband left for meeting.

We had dinner.  (Chicken, quinoa, corn and broccoli.)

Finally . . . bedtime.

Now, more work (same mysterious blog-time-stealing job) until midnight.

The end.

My husband and I are going to a costume party tomorrow night. I think this will be the first costume party we’ve attended in fifteen years, maybe longer. (We hosted that party, so long ago. I was the Tooth Fairy and he was a cowboy.)

We are going as a famous couple. We have chosen a couple that makes me chuckle . . . but what does not make me chuckle are the unclear shipping policies on the two websites I used to order parts of our costumes. GUARANTEED 1 to 5 days shipping actually means . . . oh, I don’t know, ONE TO FIVE DAYS SHIPPING, right?

Apparently not. Apparently you are supposed to understand that if you order past 9 a.m. (Pacific time), then you’re really ordering the next day. And the day they process the order doesn’t count. And five days really means eight days. Just in case you aren’t familiar with New Math. I ordered in plenty of time, according to the shipping chart, but I didn’t realize that five means eight. Silly me.

Tomorrow morning, I will be haunting the local Halloween shops.

Tomorrow night, I’d better be in my chosen costume or I will have to go dressed as The Very Angry Pastor’s Wife.

(And yes, either way, I’ll post a picture. Want to guess what famous couple we’ll be dressing as?)

I like to keep my thumb on the pulse of pop-culture. I always have. I adore People magazine, though I am too cheap to spring for a subscription. I read movie reviews and watch movies (only in theaters because I am allergic to being interrupted while watching a movie . . . and my life at home is one big interruption after the next). I admit to a fascination with reality television (it’s okay, you can confess that you watch “Gene Simmons Family Jewels” and “The Real World”–I won’t sneer because I watch them, too).

But I cannot abide the following:

1. Kimora. While I do watch her show (while working late at night), I would never consider buying any of her clothing line (Baby Phat, in particular) because I find her so annoying, so self-consumed and so unable to spell. (I can’t stand “cute” spellings and slang spellings of words. Yes, I’m talking about you, Ludacris.) Seriously, when I’m in my favorite store (Marshall’s!) looking for bargains on the clearance racks, I recoil from anything that has a Baby Phat label. I am a Baby Phat snob and it’s all Kimora’s fault. Which brings me to . . .

2. Sean John Puff Daddy P. Diddy Diddy Combs. The problem I have with Sean John Puff Daddy P. Diddy Diddy Combs is his smug attitude, his pompous, insolent demeanor and his misplaced self-confidence. Oh, that and the fact that he failed Marriage 101 and is not married to any of his four children’s mothers. (Nice touch, cheating on your girlfried with whom you have twin babies.) I cannot tolerate him . . . not his music, not his reality shows, not his behavior, not the expression on his face, certainly not his music or his music videos, vodka, or perfume.  And, when I find a piece of his clothing line in Marshall’s, I reject it, no matter how much it has been marked down. I would not want the Sean John clothing label on any of my children. I don’t want to give one penny to Sean Jean Puff Daddy P. Diddy Diddy Combs. Ever.

3.  Joel and Victoria Olsteen.  My dislike for them is irrational, perhaps, and unwarranted, but I cannot stand the fake smiles plastered on their faces.  I want him to cut off his mullet.  I want her to stop speaking in platitudes and cliches.  I am a Yankee, I admit it, and even their accents irritate me.  (But not your accent.  No.  I love your accent.)  Why must these sorts of people be on television when I find them so dreadful?
*  *  *

And that concludes this week’s edition of The Annoyed and Judgmental.  (Yes, that’s me.  Annoyed and judgmental.)

So, last weekend at this time, the skies were blue and I was nearly at the top of Mt. Baker with my friend, Cari. The last few winding curves on the mountain caused Cari to steer her mini-van into the lane away from the cliff . . . she was afraid we’d simply fall off the edge of the road, never to be seen again. I, on the other hand, was unafraid. Probably because of the snow-plowing in the winter, the roads had no guardrails at all. Cari told me that the roads were normally bounded on each side by high walls of snow–which was clear from the 8-foot bamboo stakes lining the roads.

We arrived at the Chalet at about 4 p.m. and set up our scrapbooking supplies. Outside the window to our backs was Mt. Shuksan. I stood and stared awhile, then got to work. My goal was to affix my pictures from 2003 into a scrapbook by the end of the weekend.

Looking back four years over the course of two days reminded me of how much my kids have grown. My life is so much different now, yet so much the same. Four years ago, I had two 9-year olds (who turned 10 during the course of the year). Right now, I have a 9-year old who will be 10 in a few months. Four years ago, I had a 4-year old who turned 5. Right now, I have a new 5-year old.

Things are different now, though. Back then, I had a baby. Now, I do not. Back then, I had all boys. Now I have a daughter who says things like, “What are you wearing today?” and “Isn’t this shirt cute?” Back then, I weighed over 225. Now I’m 55 pounds lighter. I’d gone back to my natural color back then; now I’m blond again.

When I looked at those pictures, I thought of how quickly children grow up. I wonder if I hugged them enough, if I screamed too often, if my children have any awareness of my devotion to them. I wonder what life will be like when four years have passed. My twins will be 18 then. My 9-year old will be a teenager. My daughter will be 9-years old.

My husband, I have no doubt, will look exactly the same. I married him because he is so consistent, after all.

Anyway, the weekend at Mt. Baker flew by in a haze of sore shoulders, stacks of photographs and walks up the mile-loop to the ski-lodge parking lot. We stayed up until 2 a.m. and I slept until 9 a.m. At the end of forty-eight hours, my scrapbook was complete. We drove an hour and a half down the mountain, then I drove three hours home to my family. I arrived after my daughter was in bed.

Then Monday dawned and my real life started all over again. It’s taken me the whole week to regain some momentum.

What a lovely weekend it was, though, worth the lack of sleep and sluggish re-entry into my family.

Here Cari and I are, hiking trails the last day.

The wind gusts push the trees into a frenzy this afternoon. I pause from reading the newspaper to stare out the window. The clouds glide across the blue sky, reminding me of movement and change and the impossibility of stopping a storm.

*  *  *

And just like that, clouds crowd the sky, blotting out the blue.

The phone rings. My neighbor tells me, “My son just called, crying hysterically because your son punched him in the nose. My son thinks his nose is broken.”

“My son?” I say, with disbelief.

“Yes,” she says, “My husband is on the way home. Would you mind going over to check on him? When he called me, he could hardly talk.”

I rush my younger kids into the house, grab my keys and speed ten houses down the street to the kid’s house. I find the victim lying on his front step with a towel on his nose. A zip-loc bag full of ice cubes sits by his side. He shudders and cries a little. I examine his nose, which to my untrained eye appears to be unbroken. Thick blood rims both nostrils. I cannot believe my son–who is nowhere to be found–is responsible for this.

The boy tells me his brother and another boy were fighting. He went to break it up and my son punched him in the nose.

So, when his uniformed father–a soldier who’s been to Iraq–pulls up moments later, I offer the story and my opinion that the nose does not look broken. I apologize and he says, “Boys will be boys. When I was growing up, I broke my brother’s arm.” This confession consoles me. Then he says, “There has to be more to this story.” Really? That hadn’t occurred to me, but obviously, there must be.

I drive further around the circle, stopping at the other boy’s house. My sons are not there. When I return home, somewhat in a huff, I find them trying to look invisible.

I separate them and interrogate.

Their story is that another boy was fighting with the victim’s brother. The victim rushed over to–what? Intervene? Punch someone? We’ll never know, because my son grabbed him to stop him. The victim threw a punch, my son threw a punch, the victim grabbed my son, my son turned to run and whacked the victim in the nose with a random backhand.

The victim maintains that my son punched him straight on the nose. The other five boys, including the victim’s brother, corroborated my son’s story: the damaging blow was an accident.

Nevertheless, my son–who told his story with tears streaming down his face while he begged to know his punishment–has been grounded. He shouldn’t have interfered, shouldn’t have grabbed anyone and certainly shouldn’t have thrown any punches, even if they didn’t land.

The ironic thing is that the boy my son was defending is a weasel who doesn’t like him and whom he claims to dislike as well. The victim with the bloody nose, crying on his front porch, is his best friend.

And the whacked nose was not broken. I hope the friendship remains unbroken as well.

*  *  *

Update:  The boys are still friends.  The kid who was bloodied came over tonight so he could go to youth group with my sons.

Disclaimer:  Should you happen to know me and my family in real life, please do not mention this incident to the boys.  They don’t know I have a blog.  As I attempt to balance their privacy with my exhibitionism, a stray comment from you to them might cause all my spinning plates to crash to the floor.  And we don’t want that now, do we?

I’ve been wallowing in some mucky emotions. From those emotions sprung a post that made me weep, but for once, I decided to withhold the melodrama. Which leaves me with nothing but a recitation of daily events. Which may make you weep.

Can I just complain one more time about Pee-Wee football and how it sucks time right out of our family? My 9-year old only has to practice three nights a week. He has a game every Saturday morning. My husband is the former athlete in our family, the one who keeps signing up our kids for activities, so he is the one to stand in the damp cold, watching practice.

Except when he is busy, as he was Tuesday and will be tonight. I have permission, though, to drop off my son, alert another parent that I’m leaving and then pick him up later because nothing will make you want to cry like standing on the sidelines while darkness falls and your 5-year chatters and complains, “Is it over yet?” (Well, nothing except being rejected, but that melodrama is behind me.)

Tomorrow, I am leaving my family to spend forty-eight hours scrapbooking with a bunch of other escaped housewives. Oh, sure, some will be important career-minded women, but for the weekend, we’ll all be creative fools, fussing with our pictures as we adhere them to acid-free scrapbook pages. I, personally, will be reliving 2003, which, as I recall, was a fairly good year. Except I was very fat.

Oh, and get this! My husband mentioned that he’s invited over the new youth pastor and his wife, plus a military chaplain. They’ll be here Saturday night (while I am gone!) . . . which means I really need to straighten up around here and perhaps mop the floor. And maybe I’ll remove the dirty sock stuck to the fireplace. (Why, yes, that is a hole in my ceiling. Thank you for noticing.)

Someone left Nickelodeon on and the noise annoys me, but if I walk ten feet over to snap it off, someone will spring into sight and turn it back on. My daughter is playing outside wearing a pink skort with yellow dots, cotton shirt, and black parka. She is not wearing socks or shoes. Two of my boys are in the Boy Cave playing video games, sniffing the air and wondering when they’ll be allowed to eat breakfast burritos. The cubed potatoes are still cooking. Three or four stray boys are playing here, too. And it sounds like someone is upstairs, though I have no idea who that might be.

In half an hour, my husband will pick up our 9-year old and take him to football practice. Before then, I will fish his stained polyester pants from the dryer, insert the pads and lace him into his protective gear. When they leave, I will inform the neighborhood kids that it’s time to go home. My teenagers will shower (oh, how I hope they shower) and I’ll drive them to church for youth group.

When I return home with my chatty daughter, I’ll read (On Writing Well

by Zinsser) while she showers.

How I look forward to that moment.

Yesterday, I spoke with Nicholas Sparks on the phone. Yes, that Nicholas Sparks, the novelist. His newest novel, The Choice, is currently number one on USA Today’s Best Selling Books list.

A bunch of us “mommy-bloggers” were invited to participate in a conference call with Mr. Sparks (Nicholas, may I call you Nicholas, Mr. Sparks?). We each had an opportunity to ask two questions, and as it turns out, we collectively asked questions already answered on his website.

It was fun, though I bet he gets tired of answering the same questions.

I was the last blogger invited to ask a final question and I asked him my favorite question for writers: “What are you reading now?” (I prefaced this by saying perhaps he doesn’t have time to read since he’d already mentioned that he has five kids, works out two hours a day, coaches for three hours a day, and is involved with the start-up of a private school. He said he rarely watches television or surfs the Internet.)

But, he said, oh yes, he reads and reads a lot. Here are the last six books he’s read:

1. A book called Unbroken that someone gave to him. (I don’t know author or genre.)

2. Bowerman and the Man of Oregon: The Story of Oregon’s Legendary Coach and Nike’s Co-founder.

3. The Case Against Homework.

4. The Post-Birthday World.

5. 1453.

6. “The latest Grisham novel,” which is Playing for Pizza.

Someone asked him, “Do you find writing cathartic?” and he said, “No! I find writing hard!” He also pointed out that what he writes are “modern day Greek tragedies.” Love stories, he said, descend from Greek tragedy in which every story ends with a bittersweet or tragic ending (as opposed to a romance novel which always features a happy ending).

He also said, “Love changes you,” and in his books, love changes the characters.

At the end of the telephone call, he mentioned that he’s been on tour for 10 or 11 days and furthermore, that he was really sick. I couldn’t hear an audible “awwwww,” but I suspect that every single woman clutching a phone to her ear thought the same thing and wanted to personally tuck him under the covers and tell him to rest.

(His website is full of information for writers and readers alike. Just so you know. And here is a link to another blogger’s transcript of the phone conference

Immigrants (L.A. Dolce Vita) dvd

.  Oh, and look here.  Here’s another blogger’s post about it.)

After my morning hour-long walk, I fixed lunch for my third-grader and welcomed the five-year old from down the street. Then my boys left with their dad for P.E. at the local YMCA. I savor the time they are gone, not just because they are 14 and tend to forget to put on their deodorant, but because we spend so much time together that I need the occasional break from their judgment and back-talk. Okay, that and I like to clean their room while they are gone.

Now, the more responsible mothers among us wouldn’t dream of cleaning their teenagers’ room, but I figure that my baseline standard of cleanliness is beyond my boys’ comprehension and so, if I want it cleaned to my standards (which aren’t really that high, but still), I should clean. So I do when I can’t stand it anymore.

Also, that room is not just their bedroom, but also a sort of rec room in which all the neighborhood kids and all my kids spend an inordinate amount of time. In fact, a large part of the distressing mess in there was mine because the (old, used) piano bench fell apart and I removed all its guts (sheet music, old music books and newer piano lesson books) and left them in disarray on the adjacent filing cabinet. For months. Even after I repaired the bench, the stuff sat. A few other things piled atop the music books and then someone left a shirt (post-sleepover) here which I put on the top of the piano. Then, for whatever reason, an extension cord found its way to rest on top of the shirt, along with two screwdrivers and a thingamajig that you use with caulk.

Cover the whole thing with dust, bake thirty minutes at 350 degrees.

• Without a Paddle the movie

No, wait. You must not bake clutter. You must put it all back where it belongs and throw away what you can. Which I did. Then I dusted and vacuumed, but not before I moved the couch and unearthed some stray Legos, a spoon, a plate, three dirty socks and a million string cheese wrappers and a pile of Goldfish crackers.

Yes, that was pleasant.

I hooked up a gigantic speaker to the boys’ computer, threading the cords behind the big desk. I put away their clothes. And now, at least for today, when I walk into that room I am not tempted to hurl myself to the ground in revulsion.