This Mothers’ Day, remember to keep your damn kids in the basement where they belong.

There’s a No Kids movement afoot. And as a parent of a his-mine-ours brood of five, I couldn’t be more delighted.

Airlines and restaurants with No Kids sections? Perfect. That means people in the Families with Children section understand that babies cry, toddlers throw tantrums at the least convenient times, and kids up to around, oh 18ish, do a lot of whining. And it’s all developmentally normal human behavior–not the mark of poor parenting, or “breeding” as some of the angrier, super clever childless-by-choicers call it.

Society is no place for children.

While we’re on the topic, I want to confess that I get uneasy when my childless-by-choice friends are compelled to reassure me that they are definitely not “anti-children” because they’re perfectly fine with well-behaved, well-raised, well-parented children. Spoken like people with absolutely no idea what kind of anxiety is involved with parenting in your presence. Did you know that we beg the universe not to let our normal kids do something annoying but normal-for-their-age in front of you?

And thanks so much, but no, I really don’t want the honor and pressure of being your token example of a parent of “well-raised” children. Because sooner or later, my kids are going to act like kids in front of you.

Just what is the mark of a well-raised child, exactly? Are those the babies who don’t scream in church? Or the toddlers who never throw themselves on the ground in the gummy snack isle at Publix because they want the Disney gummies, not the generic shark gummies?

A well-raised child definitely can’t be the irritating preschooler who wants nothing more out of life at the moment than for you, refined childless being, to look at his new Hot Wheels Color Shifter and tell him it’s amazing. Or the sticky, inconsolable kid who’s wailing behind you in line for the public restroom because her ice cream scoop fell off the cone.

Childless-by-choice friends, would you define “well-raised child” for the rest of us idiots? Please? For Mothers’ Day?

While you’re at it, tell us how to accomplish it. But be very specific, if you don’t mind, because your general wisdom about how kids ought to conduct themselves is actually more maddening than helpful. And it sort of makes you seem ignorant and miserable.

“Get this thing away from me!”

So bring on the Anti-Kid Movement. Absolutely. In addition to the No Kids restaurants and airlines, I’m hoping for No Kids grocery stores, hair salons, auto centers, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, beaches, and theaters. Win-win.

I can’t wait until I don’t have to be around people rolling their eyes and making those phlegmy guttural noises–adult tantrums, I call them. That always strikes me as far less age-appropriate than whatever annoying thing my preschooler did.

In the meantime, though, angry childless-by-choicers, I’m going to keep bringing my spawn out of the basement and into your world.

Facebook. Where family, politics, and high school behavior collide

Last Sunday I posted information on Facebook about a Trayvon Martin support rally here in Key West. I didn’t even plan on going–I just thought I’d pass along the info in case it would be useful to anybody who wanted to attend.

A couple of my family members responded to the post with things like, “I’m not even going to comment on this one.” Oh, the irony of commenting to say you’re not going to comment. That’s when I realized that, even within my own family, it’s going to be highly political.

I understand why that’s happening, I guess, but I don’t feel much like playing that game. Not even with “lol” at the end of every sentence, as though that absolves us of all accountability.

So here’s how I feel, and then I’ll be done.

I don’t have all the facts. I only know that an unarmed kid–a boy the same age as my son–was pursued and killed. And no matter how many pictures people post on the Internet of this particular kid looking “suspicious” or flipping the bird, I won’t understand what that’s supposed to mean. Do some people’s unarmed kids deserve to be shot more than others? Do some sorts of people have no right to ask very good questions about justice for their dead child?

Really, if a kid acting like a badass thug is a reason people decide he probably deserved to be killed, a whole bunch of our kids better beware. Have you checked just the Facebook activity of your teenagers and their friends lately? Plenty of them act like testosterone-amped asswipes. Some of them have even gotten in trouble at school.

When George Zimmerman caught up with Trayvon Martin, I have no idea what happened, and neither do my relatives who smoke Fox News all day. But if it had been my son who’d been pursued on his way home with his candy and iced-tea, my guess is that he’d have been scared shitless. My guess is that he wouldn’t have been sure whether to run or to yell or to fight back, especially if his pursuer pulled out a gun.

Nope, I just don’t know how my verywhite child would have reacted to being put into that position. But I do feel pretty sure that his killer would’ve been arrested immediately, then given a trial where the facts might be sorted out.

I think what my Fox Family & Friends are missing is that it’s the blatant racism that has already occurred that has people across the nation so concerned–not necessarily a firm belief in what the outcome of a trial ought to be.

You know, when I first heard about the shooting and the subsequent inaction, I felt like we’d been set back a good 60 years. But after experiencing the intense swell of humanity across the nation, I feel like we just may have come further than I ever thought possible in my lifetime.

And I also find comfort in knowing that my family loves me, and that I love them, despite our mutual disdain for each other’s pathetic state of ignorance.

lol.

Curmudgageddon

Every week I learn there’s some new thing I’ve been eating my whole life that makes it a serious goddamn miracle I’m still alive. Gluten, for example. WTF is gluten? I never knew I had to worry about it, and now it is–and isn’t–in everything.

IN MY DAY, we worried about how much fat was in a thing. Just plain fat. Not tripletransmonosaturated megafat. And we didn’t even suffer heart-endangering stress, probably because we weren’t worrying about stupid fat subcategories.

Now, as they say, get off my lawn! Then pull up your saggy-ass pants. Maybe you can pin them up with one of those Pinterest pins or something.

Since we’re WTFing, WTF is Pinterest, anyway? By the time I figure out what that is and why I cannot function another day without it, the next extra-fantastic webby such-n-such will have rolled out.

Really, if you want to kill an Internet thingy, just let me get my crotchety little old lady hands on it. Don’t believe me? Remember MySpace or Myspace or myspace? I killed that myself, with a pink and brown polka dot-themed background and Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman” playing upon entry, if memory serves me right.

I haven’t killed twitter yet. And I do tweet, but I can’t post a picture to twitter. I’m positive it’s simple. I just don’t know how. So what? I’m going to have people for that someday. And my twitter picture poster people will also help me do laundry. Because if I didn’t have to spend so much time doing laundry, maybe I wouldn’t be such a technomoron.

Since it’s Sunday and I’m obviously feeling all soft and confessionish, I’ll go so far as to admit that I have no idea WTF tags are for on blog posts, even though I sometimes add them. Everybody does it, so they must matter. My twitter-laundry people will also explain this to me.

And while I did readily embrace Facebook, you’ll have to pry Old Facebook out of my cold, dead, laggardly fingers. Timeline can kiss my transultramega glutenous ass.

Life as it is

Where I’m from, the stretches of farmland outside town are divided by country roads with enormous, canal-sized ditches on both sides. Last week, my 33-year-old cousin, Jed, was a passenger in a car that flew into one of these country road ditches and hit a cement culvert at an estimated 90 miles per hour. Mercifully, we didn’t need to wait for autopsy results to know that both guys died instantly. Nobody wants to wonder if a loved one drowned in icy ditch water while trapped upside down in a car.

Thirty hours and 1700 miles later, I was home to hug and be hugged. I’m not even that huggy, but family funerals are different. I love family funerals, generally. Since there’s nothing I can do to take away the death that causes them, I try to let them help me refocus on what matters. I only wish I could make it home for all of them.

As I get older, I experience funeral trips home (and trips home for any reason, really) differently. In my more idealistic years, I was focused on if and how people had changed for the better, using my definition of better, of course.

Did So-n-so stop smoking after the fire? No? Sigh. Did So-n-so apply for that job with the county? No? Sigh. Is So-n-so still taking attendance at funerals and holding the no-shows accountable? Yes? Sigh.

But this time, my desire to see change was just, I don’t know, gone. It’s like I’ve learned to accept family as it is. Life as it is.

Okay, I did note the irony of us honoring drunk driving-related deaths by bar-hopping on slick roads. And of bringing a keg to the funeral home (it was the other guy’s family, I swear).

Mostly, though, I felt a new, comfortable resignation that it isn’t my job to worry about how other adults ought to be living–no matter my motivation. Hell, for all I know, I’m the weirdo they’ve been tolerating all these years. Either way, I genuinely like my quirky family just the way we are.

I love that my family remembers our loved ones in all sorts of ways, including rum-soaked karaoke in the garage, taking turns noting the time we “seen Jed last.”

I love that my brother restrung and played my mom’s old guitar at the funeral while my sister, husband, and I sang about friends and about God. I’m not a theist, but it wasn’t about me. I was just lending my voice, which, by the way, I love that my family still thinks is funeral-worthy. It’s not.

I love that before anyone arrived at the funeral home, for Jed alone, my brother performed Brian Adams’ “Summer of ’69″ because he’d always requested it. Why? I can’t say. I mean, he wasn’t even born until the summer of ’78. But Jed was an old soul and loved basking in nostalgia like the rest of us–my cousins and me. We love talking about the good old days, which get better and more lie-laden with each recollection.

I love that the preacher cut off friends and family from sharing memories “in the interest of time” then used the next hour of the service to try to save the heathens among us. Alright, I didn’t love that part. But I did love that my aunt, Jed’s mother, addressed the overflowing funeral home, kept it completely together, and ended with, “I love all of yous.”

And if all goes well, one of those yous my aunt will love is going to be her grandchild. Two days before Jed died, his longtime girlfriend learned she was pregnant.

mmmkay, now what?

I did not hire a little old man to sign for me. That's really what my hands look like.

Well, that’s that. I signed my letter of agreement with the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency this week and mailed it off. Linda Epstein is my Agent Extraordinaire.

Now what? I’m glad you asked. To completely oversimplify (for the purpose of complete oversimplification), I write the next manuscript while Linda sells the first one. Then I send her chocolate booze. Is there a chance it won’t sell? Yeah, but that’s not part of the completely oversimplified version of things.

I’m not going to lie. The publishing industry feels big. It overwhelms me when I think about how many writers are all trying to do the same thing. And some of them are just so savvy, you know?

If I’m not careful, I start to feel like book deals are really only for brilliant, pretty people who are completely comfortable with Big Things. And in my debilitating daydreams, these people all look like Zooey Deschanel. They have awesome, messy-on-purpose hair, and dweeby glasses that are only cute because they’re on faces so beautiful. And these Big people all live in New York, the city.

None of this is true, necessarily. It’s just what happens in my head if I stay on twitter too long.

For the record, my hair has looked like that every morning since I was 8.

I’ve never even been to New York. Luckily, that was not one of the questions on the exam I had to take to get an agent. Just kidding, there’s no test. You just have be a good writer.

Good and lucky.

Mostly lucky.

Also for the record, I want these glasses. And lips.

You know how some kids want to grow up and run away to bigger, fancier places? I wasn’t one of them. My life is anti-Big Things. I live on a small island, and I moved here from Auburn, Michigan. No, you’ve never heard of it because there are more people per apartment building in NYC than there are in all of Auburn, Michigan.

And the thing is, I sort of love that about Auburn (and about small places, in general). Sure, I could do without the lack of diversity, the apparent one-Catholic-church-per-square-mile rule, and way too many people with graduate degrees saying “seen” when they mean “saw.” But still, I like small. And I probably always will, although I do want to go to NYC, on a two-way ticket. Even if I never sell a book in my whole life.

The Call

Happy Agent Day card from my daughter. Not pictured: roses and dinner at Salute from my husband

Yesterday was not a bad day, mostly because I got THE CALL from Linda Epstein at The Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.

Exclamation points are so out right now, but I don’t care. This requires a lot of them. Like this many!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least.

If you’re a non-writer type, getting “the call” means somebody at a fancy literary agency in New York doesn’t think you suck and they want to be your agent. It doesn’t mean you don’t suck, of course, but it’s always good to have an agent who believes in your writing enough to take you on as a client.

The grueling process goes something like this: Agents get thousands of queries from hopeful writers every year. From those, they ask to see a few manuscripts. And from those manuscripts, they decide to offer representation to a few writers. Literally, just a few.

It’s a major milestone for writers seeking traditional publication. It’s something we dream about, because it’s pretty impossible to sell a book to a publishing house without an agent on your side. Major publishers rarely deal with unagented authors–especially unknown newbies like me.

In the wake of this process are hundreds of thousands of writers getting our neurotic little writer hearts broken over and over by rejection. I’ve had my share. Mostly because, like a lot of writers, I hoped I was the exception–that I could write a first draft and send it off and then everybody would definitely fall in love with it and fight over it.

Uh, they didn’t. I am not the exception. I am not special. Even though my mom promised FOR SURE that I was.

I’ve eaten a lot of humble pie over the last few years (let’s call it key lime humble pie), minus having to actually apologize to anyone, because agents don’t want that–they just want you to go away and learn something. And I’ve learned that I have to keep working really hard if I want to compete for a book deal with some of these crazy talented writers.

Maybe I’ll get my ass handed to me, but right now I’m just so, so happy to have entered what’s known as the second circle of hell. Where my agent (!!!!!) helps me get my manuscript super-duper submission-ready and then she sends it off for the next level of terror and waiting and crying and chewing my nails ’til my fingers are bloody nubs. Oh my God, that sounds like so much fun. Why everybody doesn’t want to be a writer, I’ll never understand.

Check out The Jennifer DeChiara Lit agency at www.JDLit.com so you can see that I’m agency-mates with those Elf on the Shelf people. My agent (!!!!!), Linda Epstein, also blogs at www.lindapepstein.wordpress.com.

Getting a better pair

"When I'm wasted, nobody notices that I jack up my breasts with my arm."

I’m finally getting some work done. My husband got tired of my constant complaining and self-criticism, so he and our cherished friend, Aetna, are buying me a sexy new set of twins.

Don’t get excited–I’m not talking about a fantastically perky new rack. It’s even better than that.

It’s double knee surgery, baby! And if all goes as anticipated, those puppies are going to swell up bigger than Pamela Anderson’s ridiculous pre-reduction knockers. I’m talking at the height of her confidence crisis.

And then a few days, okay weeks, later, I’ll be back in my tap shoes. Unless there really is zero cartilage left, in which case I’ll still wear my taps on principle, because they’re new and attractive. I just bought them after 19 years with my old ones.

I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll audition for the Rockettes after I get my knees fixed, though. Although it’s totally an option, especially if I gain seven inches during the surgery, as I fully expect will be the case. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to make big, Radio City-sized decisions right now while I’m operating on high emotion.

Actual taps. Are these not the legs of a Rockette?

The highest emotion I’m experiencing at the moment, by the way, is unbridled terror. Like any decent practitioner of Internet medicine, I’ve Googled myself into hyperventilation with accounts of how I’ll never walk again, let alone open the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes next winter. Why are people only compelled to share their bilateral lateral release and chondroplasty stories if they end badly? It’s not knee replacement. It’s just a tune-up and alignment.

So, I’ve backed away from the search engine, because I’m going to do this and I’m going to be fine. My orthopedist is, quite literally, one of the best in the country, and can probably perform this surgery drunk. Drunk and sleeping. On a roller coaster. This surgery is that common, and this guy is that good.

It seems like at least a quarter of the population has had knee surgery of some sort, so I’m hoping you people will share your experiences with me.

This is the part where you email me at RhondaSaunders@gmail.com (or comment below if you don’t mind the world reading it) to share your very positive story and to tell me how knee surgery changed your life for the better and how you’ve never regretted it and that I should not just skip it and start saving for all-new titanium knees 15 years from now, instead of just fixing the originals in March.

Neil Goldberg: a happiness project

The original Sunlion Jewelry

Have you seen Neil Goldberg riding his bike around town? He glows like a pregnant woman. I think he might be the happiest person alive. Which is amazing, all things considered.

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Everybody in Key West knows who Neil Goldberg is, but for readers who live in the real world, here’s a brief history:

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Goldberg was a talented, prominent local jeweler and a respected member of the Key West community for decades. He had a beautiful wife, three kids, and a shop on renowned Duval Street.

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Then in 2005, allegedly amid divorce and custody battle stress, he plowed his vehicle into three vacationing college students on scooters. In 2008, he was convicted on three counts of DUI causing serious injury and was sentenced to restitution, community service, and 104 days in jail followed by probation. Lucky, really.

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On the four-year anniversary of the accident, though, he violated the terms of his probation by smoking weed. And for that, he earned 12 years in the big house. He was attacked several times in prison and generally had a terrible experience, despite trying to make good use of his time by teaching other inmates to read and helping several work toward GED completion. I guess that’s the whole point of prison; it’s an ugly place.

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But in a strange twist of fate, Goldberg was released from prison after serving 16 months of his 12-year sentence. As it turns out, crucial ICOP video evidence had been excluded from his trial and the court decided that wasn’t fair.

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So here’s Neil Goldberg today. He’s a 60-year-old ex-con who’s lost his life savings, his home, and everything he owned. He also lost a good portion of whatever respect he’d earned in this town over the past 40 years or so. His kids moved away with their mother. And he’ll never drive again, which is why we see him biking to his sales job at a sandal store on Duval (not far from his former shop), like he’s the luckiest man on Earth.

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I’m not writing to debate the details of Goldberg’s conviction or release. Or to discuss the legalization of marijuana. Or to ponder saving for a new wedding ring since mine came from Goldberg and now I think of his mess every time I look at it. Nope, none of that. I like Neil. My interactions with him were always positive. Plus, I’m a sucker for an involved parent, which he absolutely was before he flushed his own good fortune down the crapper.

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I’m simply writing because seeing Goldberg reminds me about the incredible power of attitude. He can’t uncrash into those kids to unalter their lives forever, and he can’t untoke that anniversary reefer. But he can serve as an example of the degree to which choice influences our happiness or misery. Love him or hate him, you’ve got to admire his ability to carry on with his chin up, and to do it on the same little island that witnessed his string of fuckups.

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But I could be wrong. What do you think?

The End. And no, I’m not telling where the bodies are buried

Key West’s controversial, beloved and hated Blue Paper–Key West the Newspaper–is dead after 17 years. Like DEAD dead. And the owner and publisher, Dennis Reeves Cooper, is dropping out and moving to a remote Amazonian rainforest village. I’m glad to see he’s doing that, too, because he’s been dreaming about it for a long time.

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I pretended I had big plans to expose the specific hypocrisies I encountered while working as associate editor for Dennis at KWTN. You know, sort of the way he would, without question or hesitation, lambaste anybody else in a similar situation. Who knows, he may expect nothing less of me. I hope he’s not disappointed.

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In moments of less clarity, I even outlined a series of stories (in my head) starring a villainous, disingenuous Dr. Cooper.

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“I got your ‘journalism as a contact sport’ right here, Cooper,” I laughed darkly in the privacy of my office.

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But I’m not going to do that, no matter how you beg. Listen, if I learned one thing about myself in my years at KWTN, it’s that I’m really no Dennis.

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Factors contributing to my FINAL DECISION NOT TO TELL YOU why Cooper would have made a perfect target for his own front page Blue Paper stories include:

• He’s doing the right thing by closing shop.
• Digging up the bodies won’t help anybody right now.
• As pissed as I was about some of his decisions, I’m not perfect, either.
• Although he has no idea, he is an old man. And sometimes old people just get a pass on some things, for no good reason. Even if they’re the type who launch really big rocks from fragile glass temples. I hope I’ll get the same courtesy someday if I need it.
• I want him to retire with his dignity intact. Because despite the last couple of really weird, desperate years, his paper helped bring a lot of change to Key West over the last two decades.

So, the Blue Paper as we knew it is gone, but some of your favorite contributors are busy doing their thing around the island.

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Matt Gardi is writing for Konk Life and doing a radio show every Friday at noon on the Konk Broadcasting Network. His blog, Naked Conch (www.nakedconch.com) is also very Blue Paperesque, in all the best ways. You’ve got to check out the responses he got from school board members he challenged to take the FCAT.

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Rick Boettger is also doing a radio show on the Konk Broadcasting Network (www.konkam.com), Wednesdays at 10 a.m.

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Kimberley Denney’s “Bitchin’ Paradise” has been picked up by Konk Life. And I’ve heard Guy DeBoer won’t sterilize it, either.

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Scott McCarthy’s “Gayfly” will appear in Konk Life, too.

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Art Winstanley was the art director at KWTN for twelve years. His “Key West the Blog” was recently recognized and recommended by National Geographic. He takes intriguing photos around the island and blends them with just-right commentary. Hard not to feel good after perusing his blog (www.keywesttheblog.blogspot.com).

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“Key West Reactor,” David Lybrand, hasn’t committed to another paper yet, but you can find him at www.davidlybrand.com/blog.

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Hal and Sally O’Boyle were long-time staples of the Blue Paper in many ways. You can find Hal at www.haloboyle.com  and Sally at www.fiftytolife.com.

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Let’s not forget the best, most reliable film columnist of all time. Phil Mann’s excellent column is still available on the Tropic Cinema blog at  www.tropiccinema.com/blog

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And me? I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to working in the bowels of a newspaper. I won’t stop writing, though. For now, my column has morphed into this blog, mainly because I can’t commit to a regular deadline at this point. But I plan to be back in print sometime, somewhere around the island. I’ve gotten a couple offers. And then there’s that book thing. . .

Merry ambiguously interpretive wintertime holidays.I mean that

Is it just me or is there a harder-than-usual sell this year to keep the Christ in Christmas via Facebook campaigns and holiday cards complete with pleas, demands, and dares to see the light? I got pamphlets in some cards this year. Pamphlets.

That would be a little disingenuous, don’t you think? For me to take up Jesus once a year to avoid scrutiny and judgment during my Christmas celebration?

I’m convinced the chosen are getting double HeavenRewards points for each heathen saved during the month of December. And hey, I’m easygoing enough. I’ll watch the demo or sign something if it’ll help. I just can’t promise my soul.

Likewise, I don’t understand why “Xmas” makes some people gasp, genuflect, and perform the sign of the cross. Or why generically inclusive “happy holidays” greetings are so offensive. And I know I’m not even sort-of alone on this.

If you enjoy a season full of Jesus and you’re genuinely afraid these things could strip Jesus out of Christmas against the will of those who share your convictions, that’s fascinating to me. But then, I also think there’s more than one way to Good, so what do I know about convictions?

I grew up celebrating Christmas. It makes me feel happy and sparkly and squishy in the heart. Even the godless love pretty lights, traditions, warm memories, and cookies, after all. Still, my hosanna-free celebration is of great concern to a few of my family members and that makes me sad.  I adore almost every single one of them, so I hate that their time and energy is being chucked down the black hole that is my lost soul.

Nonetheless, the only time they’ll hear me say “Jesus Christ” this month is if they’re in the room when I open my post-Christmas shopping bank statement.

The spending pain will subside, though, just in time to watch the kids open stuff, even if they aren’t doing it in the name of God. Stuff! New stuff! LOOK MOM! Santa brought us MORE STUFF! For our stuff collection! And yes, I expect them to be charitable and to think of others, too. At least during the Xmas season. After that, they can turn their bedroom crucifixes back upside down and resume eating puppies in their closets.

Even more than I like watching the kids enjoy their shiny new stuff, I like our Martha Stewart pre-lit Christmas tree. It takes five minutes to assemble and inspires awe for a month. We got it at an after-Christmas sale a few years ago at our island Kmart and it’s still delivering. If it dies next year, it will only have cost us ten bucks per Christmas!

I love catching the two youngest lying on their backs, faces up with heads jammed against the green metal trunk base. Is there anything more beautiful than the inside of a cheap, fake tree? My kids think not.

I’d tell you the reason we don’t use real trees is that they’re fire hazards or because we dislike the idea of cutting down living trees (actually, those things really are about 20 percent of it). But the truth is that decent pine trees are hard to come by in Key West. Not to mention emmereffing expensive. See, if we buy a real tree, our kids will get less stuff. And I’m not sacrificing their true happiness for some earth-grown tree experience. They can see real pine trees when we visit my God-fearing relatives (and the other ones) up north.

Yep, I enjoy Christmas for lots of reasons. And as much as I love my bible-thumping extended family and friends, there’s nothing about how they feel that compels me to believe Christmas is any more theirs than mine.