So, KNOXVILLE:

We spent one night in Knoxville at Millie and JP’s. In addition to visiting with them, we also got to see our friends Kellye and BT and to FINALLY meet their baby girl. HOW CUTE IS SHE??

I don’t have any photos of Brian because he was the photographer. Sorry, BT!

After one night in Knoxville we drove onward to the second stop on the Summer Road Trip of Southerly Wonders:

HUNTSVILLE, AL

In Huntsville we had the privilege of visiting more great friends who not only fed us, housed us, and allowed us to play with their funtastic 2.5 year old, they also ensured that we did not miss a single MINUTE of So You Think You Can Dance. WHEW. (There is exactly one photo of this second stop, and in the photo my eyes are 100% closed. So I will not be posting it.)

In tomorrow’s dispatch: A dog rolls in the dirt in BIRMINGHAM, AL.

First, on Saturday afternoon, I met Laurie Halse Anderson. !!!!!!! But I was too nervous to ask her for a photo. So here I am with the copy of TWISTED that she signed for me:

Today I put my metaphorical big-girl pants on and decided to ask for pictures. (Yes, Mom, I said please. And thank you.) SO here is a picture of the amaaaaazing Jackie Urbanovic!

Then I had my picture taken with Mitali Perkins, the always-thoughtful and thought-provoking writer/blogger/Twitter-book-party-founder extraordinaaaaire!

She signed books for me!

Then I got books signed by YA superstars Francisco X. Stork and Natalie Standiford!

(Thumbs up for reading, you guys)

(I’m talking on the phone. In Robot. I’m saying, I can’t wait for Natalie Standiford’s new book!)

I also met Kate Messner, but I don’t have a picture of her OR her books! This is a travesty that shall be rectified.

Then I met Eloise Greenfield and George Ford! George Ford has illustrated many, many wonderful children’s books, including THE STORY OF RUBY BRIDGES, one of my all-time favorites. It was such an honor to meet him. And you guys, there is a Brainpop Jr. video about Eloise Greenfield. That’s a very big deal in my world. Very few people have their OWN Brainpop videos!! It’s like, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ezra Jack Keats, and Eloise Greenfield. And a few others but not that many!!! This year my whole class memorized her poem “Things” for Poem in Your Pocket Day.

And then! Who should I meet but Deborah Heiligman! Her CHARLES AND EMMA won approximately 7.4 million awards this year. I can’t wait to share COOL DOG, SCHOOL DOG with the students at my school!

As you can tell, I am getting plenty of mileage out of my brand-new laptop’s built-in camera.

So there you have it. I am glad I was able to take photos of at least a few of the fabulous folks I encountered this weekend. And I’m glad no one took a picture of me eating my extra-saucy jerk chicken sandwich at a little table on the exhibit floor today. That was a horrific spectacle.

Happy Sunday!

Even though the school year is over, my summer hasn’t officially started yet. I’m participating in a curriculum institute, where we’re working on writing new curriculum units for all subjects. It’s a pretty interesting opportunity to create changes I’ve wanted to see…and it’s a bit daunting to know that going forward, I can’t really complain about the curriculum, since I’ll be one of the teachers who wrote it.

Summer is going to pass quickly, because I finish the institute on June 30, and the day after that is JULY, and then you know what comes after July is AUGUST and that’s when we go back to school. So. The bulk of any writing I do is done in the summer, usually. This year,between travel plans and workshops and visitors, it looks like I’ll be doing my writing on July 1 and August 7. It’ll have to be Me : Drafting a YA Novel :: Jack Bauer : Saving the World.

Snow Week

Snow Week 2010 is almost over. I have watched about 60 episodes of LOST and taken about 100 pictures of the dog. I can’t account for much more of my time during my unexpected vacation. I don’t know where it all went.I have nothing to show for it other than a newfound fear of Smoke Monsters.

Fears

My friend Emily and I got to talking about sharks recently. Then she mentioned that when she was little, she was afraid of sharks in pools and whales in the bathtub. Makes sense to me: if a whale lands on you in the bathtub, I don’t think you have much of a chance.

I was a pretty fearful kid. I was afraid that E.T. would materialize in my downstairs bathroom. If that was the only place he was going to come for me, I don’t know why I didn’t just use another bathroom in my house. I guess then I would’ve had to explain myself to my parents, and despite my intense fear of E.T. I felt somewhat responsible for protecting him from adults.

I was also afraid of alien snatchers who would snatch me from my bed at night, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it because we just don’t know enough about alien technology.

I was afraid of being trapped inside a burning house and yet was paradoxically afraid of fire trucks.

I was TERRIFIED of thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Then when we actually had a hurricane I slept through it.

I was afraid of Teen Wolf. I hadn’t seen the actual movie, I had just seen a 30-second trailer. But it was long enough for me to understand that Michael J. Fox (whom I otherwise loved) was a TEEN who was also a WOLF, and that freaked me out. This leads me to suspect that I may have also been afraid of teenagers. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know there are things that are much scarier than Teen Wolf. But nothing is scarier than Teen Wolf Too.

Mundane Anecdotes

Dog park: I jogged with the dog to the dog park yesterday. Belby is not the greatest jogging partner. I get annoyed because she doesn’t understand how to keep a steady pace, and she gets annoyed because I don’t understandSQUIRRELOHMYGODSQUIRREL.

But we made it to the dog park nevertheless. Belby made a new friend. I learned the names of lots of dogs and no people. That seems to be the way it works…

Today we watched Julie & Julia. I liked it, and it made me want to learn to cook for about 2 minutes. By which I mean it made me want to cook something for two minutes. So I microwaved a bag of popcorn. Seriously, I do not have the cooking gene. It’s weird, because my mother is an excellent cook.

On Friday night I had a late-night Slurpee craving and drove to 7-11 to get my fix. Typing about it makes me want another Slurpee.

Book Info!

I found out that Keena Ford and the Field Trip Mix-up was named one of the Best of the Best Books of 2009 by the Chicago Public Library! Hooray!

Keena Ford and the Secret Journal Mix-up will be released on September 16, 2010. Hooray!

Congratulations to all of the ALA winners, BBYA honorees, and everyone who has seen their books recognized recently. And congratulations to everyone who has celebrated publication recently or is working toward it. With so much social media to connect us, this is a really fun time to be part of the online community of writers and readers, don’t you think?

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read a book a week this year. This sounds like nothing to lots of readers, but between my school schedule and writing efforts, it’s not easy to find the time! Plus I’m taking guitar and am terrible at it, so I need lots of practice. Plus I have a very jam-packed TV-watching schedule. Anyway, enough excuses. My book for this week is Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani. In seven days or less I should report that I have finished it!

1. I (We) got a dog! Her name is Belby. She’s part beagle, part feist. I think I talk about her too much at school, because on a visit to the Nature Center the other day, the Nature Center lady asked my students for examples of mammals, and one of them said, “A Belby!”

Here is Belby as she waits to get dressed up for Halloween (she was a princess):

2. Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-up won the transitional fiction category of the Blue Crab Young Reader A ward! Thank you VERY much, Maryland Library Association!

3. I received a wonderful letter in the mail from a young reader yesterday, which reminded me that I have yet to list an address on my Web site for any readers who are interested in writing to me. I love to hear from Keena‘s readers! The best “snail mail” address is probably my school:

Melissa Thomson

c/o William Ramsay ES

5700 Sanger Ave

Alexandria, VA 22311

Happy Friday!

I am creating a lot of problems for Pete because I like Big Surprises but I also like to be In Control. Last night I attempted to get enough information about my birthday celebration to restore the appropriate balance between control and surprise. I was moderately successful, but he wasn’t crazy about all the meddling. So I changed the subject.

I told Pete how I have been thinking about my ancestors who came from Latvia, and how tough it was to come over on the boat and to have to change their names and wear those old-timey shoes and lose many aspects of their culture and traditions, and how one of their special Latvian traditions that they tried to preserve despite the pressures to assimilate was that in addition to celebrating birthdays on the exact day, 2 days before the birthday they would tell the birthday person what his/her present was going to be.

He was totally buying it right up until the end, but it didn’t work.

So then I tried, “I already know what my present is. Tell me what you think I think it is. Guess what my guess is. Tell me what it is.” And he said, “A puppy.” And I said, “I’m getting a PUPPY?!?!?!” And he said, “No, I think that’s what YOU think it is, but it’s not,” and I said, “But the last thing I said was ‘Tell me what it is,’ and you said, ‘a puppy,’” and he said, “Oh, no,” and I said, “I’M GETTING A PUPPY!”

Tomorrow is also the grand opening/grand closing day of the BOXCAR MUSEUM in room N406. One of my second graders wrote a poem about the Boxcar Children for the occasion. It begins, “When you’re the poorest, you live in the forest…”

We were making invitations to the museum, and another student started freaking out because someone had allegedly “ransacked” her pencil case and her scissors were missing. Usually kids will say “Someone took my [pencil, whatever]” before finding it somewhere else on their desk, but “ransacking” takes the theft paranoia to a whole new level.

I have a draft of another post about BEA, but I will have to put it aside until after my birthday/last day of school/manuscript deadline.

I started my day at the Children’s Book Breakfast, where I greatly enjoyed meeting my tablemates despite my distinct lack of deipnosophistry. School Library Journal summarizes the awesomeness of the breakfast better than I ever could. I’ll just say I’m totally psyched that I can add “Sang with Julie Andrews” to my resume.

After breakfast, I spent thirty minutes or so being TOTALLY lost and trying equally hard to a) figure out where I was, b) find the right escalator to get where I wanted to go, and c) avoid looking totally lost. Eventually I found my way to the Autographing Area where I was lucky enough to snag ARCs of Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick and Lit by Mary Karr.

Oh, look at the time. I have to go be awkward at the BEA Tweetup.  But there’s more to come!  Remember this girl from American Idol?

That was me this afternoon, meeting Baby-Sitters Club author Ann M. Martin. Except not as endearing, because I am old and don’t have pigtails.

First shortcoming: I’ve been trying to stick to a new writing schedule where I get up extra early and write in the mornings, but I haven’t been too successful yet. (I’m going to try it for a few more weeks before I downgrade “not too successful” to “miserable failure.”) It’s so hard! Bed v. computer is a comically lopsided battle. My computer is like, “I have a polka dot case! And an adorable background image!” and I think, “Sounds good. Computer it is.” But then my bed is like, “Awww, computer. You’re so cute. But are we really even pretending this is a competition? Seriously.” The bed is impossible to beat. It’s like that episode of 60 Minutes and the bed is Michael Phelps and the computer is Anderson Cooper. No, it’s like the bed is Michael Phelps and the computer is me at swim lessons at the Y in 1982.

Second shortcoming: I went to what I thought was a cardio kickboxing class on Thursday, but it turns out it was like an actual kickboxing class where instead of kicking and punching the air, you kick and punch a piece of foam that a real person is holding. I was partnered with a girl who goes to the class all the time and even had her own boxing gloves. She was nice, but man was she powerful. I found the whole experience terrifying and not empowering in the least. So now I know I’m not missing my calling as a boxer.

I DO like Zumba, and it was right after the scary boxing class, so I stuck around for some more exercise. This was a huge mistake. I should have known when my legs started twitching. Both class involved many, many lunges. Friday I was okay, but yesterday I could barely bend my knees. I was supposed to go for a long run yesterday in preparation for a race I’m running next weekend, but given that I couldn’t even walk correctly, the long run was out, and by the time I regained sufficient range of motion today it was like a thousand degrees outside. I decided the best way to get the long run done is to  make someone else run it for me. And that person is my favorite person to dump things on: Tomorrowmelissa. I delegate all unpleasant or disinteresting tasks to her.  I’m sure she’ll complain about me. She always does.