This is What Happens When "In Jill's Words" Gets Writer's Block

I think I've had a case of writer's block this past week. Apparently, the more frequently one writes, the more likely one is to be afflicted by this condition.

Writing is not my day job. It's not even my night job. It's more like a weekend job and only when I'm not stressing out about all of the other tasks I have to complete before re-entering the trenches on Monday.

Last Monday, when I re-entered the trenches, I found myself with a miserable head cold, a gift given to me by my student teacher whose last day had been the previous Friday. There I was, sick and teaching ten classes per day with no assistant for the first time in eight weeks, simultaneously prepping my Veterans Day and Winter Programs, dealing with students throwing up in class (I've already had three sickies this year), collecting money for recorders, facilitating a patriotic mural painting during my lunch hours, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and by the way, I was loving every minute of it because I was finally teaching (as opposed to "mentoring" from the sidelines) again.

But I was left with little time to be witty.

Last night, I was so desperate that I even asked my very serious, very un-funny husband for help. (I personally think he's pretty humorous, but he claims otherwise.)

"What should I write about this weekend? I need a funny topic."

"Write about something that's not me," was Dan's response.

We were both staring into our respective bathroom mirrors, our mouths full of toothpaste.

"But you're so funny."

"No I'm not. I'm very serious."

"Then very seriously, Dan, what funny thing should I write about this week?"

Dan spit.

"Sweaters." He glanced at my cardigan hanging on the bathroom door. "The Broncos." He pointed at the BSU shirt I was wearing. "Hair brush. Kleenex."

He started laughing uncontrollably.

"Are you just naming random items around this bathroom?"

"Pretty funny, huh?"

I groaned and rolled my eyes, leaving him alone as he called out after me, "Toothpaste!"

Even though Dan's goal was to get me to write about something other than him, his weird demonstration last night had the opposite effect.

This is as witty as head-cold-ridden "In Jill's Words" gets. I apologize in advance for the weak topic.

Or, in the words of my husband, who said to me a few minutes ago, "You're writing about writer's block? That's so meta." (If he wishes to remain so anonymous, why does he have to be so funny?)

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The TouchPad Widow, Part 2

In last week's “The TouchPad Widow, Part 1," Dan and I had decided to buy one of the discounted TouchPads HP was trying to sell off. After Dan made the purchase online, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our new tech toy.

It showed up on our front porch a few days later. Dan thought the TouchPad was so awesome that he hardly made eye contact with me for a week. I, on the other hand, was pretty grossed out by the greasy fingerprints on the screen. Apparently, greasy fingerprints are part of the wonders of touchscreen technology.

Now Dan's nose is always in the TouchPad. It's kind of like trying to talk to these young 'un, Wired Generation teenagers, always texting or . . . texting - I don't know what all these newfangled electronic gadgets are. Twittering, tweeting, chirping?

The other morning, I was in the bathroom, fixing my hair. Dan stood in the doorway, "listening" to me prattle on about very important (I'm pretty certain - very important) issues. Then I noticed he had the TouchPad in his hands.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah . . ."

"When you don't make eye contact with someone while they're talking, it makes them think you're not listening."

He didn't respond.

In an attempt to entertain myself, since it appeared no one else was going to pay attention to me for a while, I started randomly calling out things like:

"Stop playing with your TouchPad!"

"Are you playing with your TouchPad again?"

"Ooo. That sounds a little naughty!"

Still no response. Not even an eye roll or a furrowed brow.

One afternoon, Dan found a weather app. He was so excited that he had actually found a compatible app that he spent all day looking at it.

He would peek into the office (where I was hiding from him and the TouchPad) and announce, "Accuweather says it's 64 right now. There's an app for that."

Later that week, I was deciding whether or not I wanted to ride my bike to my doctor's appointment.

"We can look it up on Accuweather," I said to Dan. "Aren't you proud of me? I want to use the TouchPad."

Dan, sensing that I was warming up to the TouchPad, downloaded a free e-book from Amazon. I guess he figured the way to my heart was through a book, even if it was in an electronic format. I have been reluctant to embrace the e-book idea. Dan has already said if we ever get a Nook or a Kindle, we can't buy any more print books. ("It's better for the environment," he says, appealing to my environmentalist sensibilities.) Maybe I'm just an old lady, but I still love feeling paper flipping through my fingers.

The other day, while Dan was still at work, I found myself looking for the TouchPad. I figured Dan must have taken it with him, and all of a sudden, I felt a little sad that I couldn't play with it. Perhaps soon, Dan will be the one asking, "Are you playing with your TouchPad again?"

That still sounds slightly naughty.



Check out my writing in An Eclectic Collage Volume 2: Relationships of Life, now available at www.freundshippress.com. For more information, visit the book's Facebook page.

The TouchPad Widow, Part 1

Some women bemoan being football widows around this time of the year, or more specifically from where I'm writing, Boise State football widows. I thought I was so fortunate, after growing up a non-sports fan in a live-eat-breathe sports family, to find a sports un-enthusiast husband.

But I have now joined your ranks, football widows. Except in my case, I have become "The TouchPad Widow." I thought I was safe in marrying an intellectual computer geek who was more interested in codes and algorithms than the Superbowl, but I didn't realize that a tech toy "is to" software engineers "as" the NFL season "is to" sports fanatics.

Hewlett-Packard is selling off its TouchPad stock - $99 for the 16GB and $150 for the 32 GB. Just to put this into perspective, the 16GB model was around $500 when it was first launched.
After hearing about the clearance sale, Dan and I spent many sleepless nights discussing whether or not we were going to purchase a TouchPad at this deeply discounted price.

Q: Do we need a TouchPad? Would it really be that much more convenient?
A: No, it would just be a toy.

Q: Is HP even going to continue supporting them?
A: Maybe for a little while.

Q: Do we really want to promote the use of conflict minerals and overseas slave labor through this purchase?
A: No, but the company won't be making much of a profit off this anyway.
Q: Doesn't that sound a bit like a rationalization?
A: Yeah . . . probably . . .

Q: Do you remember how I used to call iPads "i-Maxi-Pads" when they first came out?
A: Yes.
Q: That was so funny, huh?
A: Hilarious.

Eventually, Dan had to make a decision.

"The sale opens tomorrow morning at 10:00. My manager scheduled our meeting a half-hour later just so we could all snag TouchPads."

"Are you going to buy one after all?"

Dan crinkled his eyebrows, "I don't know. You can't watch Netflix or Hulu on it - although I might be able to hack into it. You can't use iTunes or iBooks. It doesn't support Android or Apple apps. It's WiFi only, no 3G or GPS . . . "

"Sounds fantastic," I said sarcastically.

"But it's only $99."

"Then you should just get it."

"Okay."

"Is that all you wanted, for me to make the decision?"

"Yes," and with that, Dan was off to work.

He returned that afternoon, having successfully ordered a TouchPad before the website and call center crashed. The order was expected to arrive on our front doorstep that weekend. Little did I know that I was one step closer to becoming The TouchPad Widow.

Join me next week when I write about post-TouchPad life in "The TouchPad Widow, Part 2."

Check out my writing in An Eclectic Collage Volume 2: Relationships of Life, now available at www.freundshippress.com. For more information, visit the book's Facebook page.

Celebrate Good Times: Woman Power!

A few years ago, a couple of studies found correlations between friendships and life expectancy. In the women's magazines (to which I subscribe for research purposes only), these findings took the form of article titles like "Women Need Friends to Live a Longer Life" or "You Go, Girl: The Link between Longevity and Friendships."

I always scoffed at these proclamations with a sigh and a roll of the eyes. It was already difficult to find enough hours in the day to do everything I needed and/or wanted to do. And now some cheesy women’s magazine was telling me I needed to spend time building a larger network of friends. Just what I needed – one more task to add to my to-do list.

So I shunned this thinking. Maintaining friendships was more likely to cause me stress than increase my life expectancy. I had my husband; I liked hanging out with him. Most of my friends from high school and college lived out of town or were busy with their own families and jobs.

After my mother died and before my father remarried, my immediate family consisted of my dad, my brother, my husband, and me. Consequently, for a few years of my adult life, I didn’t even have women in my own family with whom I could interact.

However, I changed my tune a little (or at least modulated it into a neighboring key) after taking part in the Women’s Fitness Celebration a couple of weeks ago. It had been a few years since I had been free to participate in this, and I had forgotten how rewarding it was to socialize with other females and to be a part of a "Women Only" event.

This year, my father’s wife, her two daughters, her daughter-in-law, and her daughter-in-law’s friend joined in the festivities. (My father’s wife, didn’t end up walking with us. She fell ill the morning of the 5K, but we had all gone out to dinner the night before.) I also met up with one of my best friends and her family at the finish line. I had such a pleasant time during this girls’ weekend that I started to think there might be something to this “Girlfriends Are a Necessity” theme that the magazines had been touting.

I met my girl group at a downtown coffee shop for breakfast. We watched as female walkers and runners, clad in multicolor leggings, fluorescent wigs, and crazy, oversized sunglasses, lined the streets. Then, two of the women in my group pulled their arms through a set of orange and yellow, translucent wings.

We gathered at the starting line, red and purple balloons floating intermittently through the air. Of course, as someone who occasionally embraces the title of "Tree-Hugger," I couldn't get past the environmental impact of all that plastic eventually littering the earth.

We weaved in and out of the hoard of women, attempting to find enough room to move freely for the 3.1 miles. We critiqued the various sets of butterfly and fairy wings (which were surprisingly prevalent) throughout the crowd. We compared Zumba classes. We admired the older homes and the newly-built condominiums as we walked through a Boise Bench neighborhood. We related in ways that, though I tell my husband everything, only girls could truly understand.

At one point on the course, we passed a group of cheerleaders, chanting and hooting at us from the sidelines.

“That’s just what we need, a bunch of Barbie dolls rooting us on,” I said, a little louder than I had intended.

A woman walking beside me started laughing.

"Did I say that out loud?" I said, feigning embarrassment.

"My thought was, 'Why aren’t they out here with us?'” the woman said.

At the finish line, we were greeted by a group of men in tuxedo jackets and shorts, a longstanding tradition of this event. One man in particular was wearing bright yellow gym shorts with his coattails. This 5K was less about being in premium physical shape than it was about uniting and lifting up a community of women.

Even as I walked to Julia Davis Park where my husband, Dan, was picking me up, several people asked me about the race, gave me the thumbs up sign, and congratulated me - all that encouragement for an simple 5K. Sometimes (men, are you listening?), a little encouragement and female bonding is just what we women need.

Check out my writing in An Eclectic Collage Volume 2: Relationships of Life, now available at www.freundshippress.com. For more information, visit the book's Facebook page.