My editor chose two of the articles I wrote for the weekly newspaper, Bethlehem Press, to send to the Keystone contest. It's a contest for local papers of all sizes - while I write features (and cover the occasional meeting), it's rare that I generate a ton that are deemed "recognition-worthy" but I'm super proud because one article featured Migraine Awareness and the other featured a great school, Mercy Learning Center, which works with differently abled kids.  

Car trips with my son always evoke interesting conversations, especially when my 5 year old shares his always interesting, usually unconventional opinions. He's been ill for the past few days, but today woke up chattering, as he normally does, which was all the proof I needed to verify that he felt much better.

We had a few errands to run today - bank, grocery store, parents' house - and I thought the fresh air would feel good. Even though the grey dawn arrived with  grainy tinkerbell-sized hail to slicken sidewalks and streets, by noon the slush piles outnumbered slidy spots.

My miniature orator had much to say today. This snippet is but one of his musings. *Recorded and transcribed by a Very Amused Mama.

Benjamin: "I think I'd like to be a scientist when I grow up. You know, a scientist who invents things. Like invisibility. I want to invent a way for everyone to turn invisible whenever they want. I think it would be really a cool thing if you could be invisible - or turn anything else invisible. And I could invent more light sabers, too. Because everyone needs a light saber, especially if they could turn invisible. Imagine a whole bunch of invisible people fighting with light sabers. But if I was a scientist, I wonder if I could still be a ninja? Sure. I could be a scientist ninja who invents things and gets to go around all invisible with a light saber and do spinjitsu. And then I could be like a crime-fighting ninja scientist who could turn good guys invisible so they could sneak up on bad guys and destroy them with their light sabers."

World problem #428 solved!

I was contacted today by the lead recruiter for an IT development company located in King of Prussia who needs a content writer. We emailed back and forth and chatted on the phone and - hurray - I have an interview tomorrow. 

In preparation, I checked out the company website, read some copy, scanned a few blogs. Oh boy, do they need a writer!

And the recruiter just emailed back thanking me for "conformation" of tomorrow's interview.

Yikes!

Started reading Harry Potter's Philosopher's Stone to Ben this morning. After one chapter, he is enchanted - and wanting to know when he will be old enough to learn how to "magic himself into a cat."

So the huge writing gig for Pearson officially began today. Yay! I'm checking off another item on my career bucket list: designing and writing cool educational content. And these activities will live in the student manuals as part of a massive ELL program set to roll out in China some time next year and then, eventually, to the rest of the world. Another added bonus - I'll finally collect a paycheck again.

I also signed up for NaNoWriMo because several friends threatened to "divorce" me if I didn't commit this year. By the end of the November, I may need to be committed. BUT I figured out that if I rise at 6 am instead of 7, I can sneak in a guaranteed hour of writing each day.

Now... to find that motivation. I think I saw it zipping down the street, but I'll engage my tractor beam to snare it and reinstall it in my brain.

Nora Jones' dulcet, smooth style perfectly compliments my mood today.

I struggled to find my "happy place" earlier, when I awoke before the sun, desperately dashing the 20 feet from bedroom to bathroom. But the soft, brushed flannel duvet beckoned me, so I tiptoed downstairs to grab my computer and return to its still warm embrace.

I admit no small appreciation of working in bed, alone, in the hushed pre-dawn mornings. With windows closed, I can't hear the birds' morning conversations or the thwack of morning paper delivery. But a bit of quiet jazz or classical music often accompanies my musings - or, as was the case this morning, my attempts to refashion a syllabus for a class of intro to professional writing students who desperately need refreshers in mechanics and style.

A productive hour passed; my son's door opened and he burst into my room with a joyous energy that's as much a part of this four-(and a half)-year-old's being as his impish grins and penchant for panda parties in the forts we build together.

We squiggled down under the covers and snuggled, while he recounted his dreams from last night. Apparently, while visiting his Nana and Pop-Pop, their house was attacked by zombies. But everyone safely escaped.

Patrick called. "The highways are a mess this morning," he reported. "Best to go through town and avoid 22. I think 78's closed for an accident."

Ugh. Traffic. The clichéd yet apt bane of my existence.

Ben and I motivated - he attempted to levitate from the bed and satisfied himself, instead, with a conciliatory round of jumping-jackson on the mattress. 

The normal 20-minute commute from Fountain Hill to preschool morphed into a 45-minute circumnavigation around school and city buses, broken down cars, traffic lights refusing to turn green, and 18-wheelers determindly negotiating narrow city-street turns.

Our journey's soundtrack? Benjamin rapping along to his latest obsession: Disney Junior's "Blue Ribbon Bunny" and "DJ Shuffle."  I absolutely cannot succumb to road rage with these songs and my son's lilting little-boy voice surrounding me.

"Momma, we're gonna be late," Ben worried.

"We're lucky because we'll get where we're going, even if we're a little late, and we'll get there safe and sound. Other people won't be so lucky today," I replied.

I joined him in singing the theme song to Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and we pulled into the preschool's parking lot joining the congo line of traffic-delayed moms and dads.

Now, Nora's singing "Thinking About You," and while she thinks about me, I'm thinking about Ben, and a conference call later this afternoon, and revising an assignment for Thursday night's class.

I'm tucked away in a corner at Starbucks drinking my tall, skinny (sigh) Caramel Macchiato,  quietly amused by everyone (myself included) tapping away on their Macs and smart phones.

A W-shaped flock of Canadian geese aims south in the whitish-blue sky, and I watch them disappear over the red gold maple trees. I sip my coffee, content.

I'm reaching out to all my "more technically gifted" programming people with a desperate cry for help.

I'm trying to update a WordPress site for a client. I deleted the original home page because it wouldn't accept any edits, so now I've got the 7 pages he requested. They're done & visible when you visit his site. The problem is that the original home page still exits online - yet it's not available to me when I'm in the editor for WP. 

I've looked in different WP fora and all tell me to go to the "Appearance" tab or "Settings - Reading" but I'm discovering that my dashboard doesn't give me the any of the following options: Home/ Store/ Feedback/ Appearance/ Users. I'm running 4.0 and he updated to 4.0 also. My settings gives me virtually no options - and certainly not "reading."

I don't know how/ where to type in phpMyAdmin to try to change the site url or home values (and I'm not sure how to do that, anyway, but I read somewhere that it would help). I've cleared my cache, so it's not that the old page is lingering on my computer somewhere. I can't figure out how to get to the root install directory- or even if it's necessary.

Suggestions much appreciated!

In early August, I agreed to sub-contract a cool program for Pearson's Wall Street English via a small LLC in New Mexico. My responsibility? To generate 1,000+ grammar and vocabulary exercises for a beginner-advanced online English course set to roll out in China some time next year. Start date for my part of the project? September 26.

The date came ... and went ... And I, who am trying to scrape together enough to pay the bills and not dip too deeply into our rapidy shrinking savings account, began to panic. Fortunately, a few larger clients for whom I'd done web copy revisions and additions paid me - and that covered September's mortgage, car payment and my little guy's preschool tuition (and a few odds and ends). 

And still I waited. I reminded myself each night and morning that I absolutely could earn a decent living freelance writing/ editing & adjuncting at Cedar Crest, and that a more nebulous income still beat the stress from my previous job - and the non-financial rewards of spending more than two hours a day with my 4 1/2 year old far, far outweighed the drawbacks.

I must say, however, that it'd be nice to have health insurance again.

So finally, New Mexico called, by way of Germany. Turns out the "middle" man needed to bow out. Where did that leave me? I determined not to panic - not an easy feat. Pan's floodwaters threatened to rise higher than my calves, but I trusted that everything would work out.

And so I waited, the start date now three weeks past due. On Thursday, a woman from Pearson's Content Creation divison called and followed up our conversation with a torrent of emails. Pearson's rewritten several scripts, realized more activities are needed to hit all unit objectives, and oh, by the way, the time to complete the project's shrunk by a month and doubled in scope.

Now the floodwaters reach mid-chest, but these waters teem with data, metrics, matrices, and a prototype deadline of October 24. Twenty levels with at least 100 exercises per level equals a minimum of 2,000 exercises to write between tomorrow and project end date- March 15. 

I determined several years ago that it was time to transition from full time to part time teaching and incorporate education writing into my life. 

And so it begins!

Ridiculously excited because my husband and I will embark shortly on our first date night since ...

wait for it ...

wait for it ...

January, when we splurged on a good meal and saw A Bronx Tale. 

Tonight it's Rodizio's Brazilian Steak House for dinner to indulge our inner carnavores and then Young Frahnkenshtein at the Civic Little Theater in Allentown. 

Time to beautify!

A good friend of mine, who happens to be the Director of Digital Content at PMA , spoke to my Intro to Professional Writing students tonight. I learned much more about her actual job - since our time together (we're also neighbors whose boys play together often) usually revolves around recipes, creating silly memes, a glass of chardoney, book chatter, the latest New Yorker or other "literary" magazine... I'm feeling a bit like a mental midget right now and as I'm delving deeper into the world of digital content, realizing how little I really know (although I can fake it really well) and how much I need to learn. And I'm in awe of her skills and ability to move fluidly among the communication worlds.

Apropos of learning, E. mentioned a local chapter of women who are teaching other women to code. Can't remember the name at the moment, but they meet at Wegmans, and they partner experienced with newbie programmers, and although my plate - nay, my tupperware - runneth over with hustling to freelance, repping for Young Living Oils, Celedon Road and Visalus, playing with a 4 year old son, doing the wifey thang with my hubby, I think I need to check out this coding group.

I've dipped a toe into the coding waters of website html. I can bold and highlight and italicize with the best. But this new world beckons. I have to remind myself not to dismiss my potential ability because I'm mathematically challenged. I see patterns - many patterns - everywhere, and isn't coding nothing more than a collection of patterns you manipulate?

Heck, by producing my son, born 01-01-10, a miraculous example of binary basic, am I not qualified to take my place among the other coders out there? I think I'm going in.

{Takes deep breath. Leaps.}