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Snooki, Shakespeare and Me

/ DeeDeeFilly / 7 Comments

Psst…I’ll let you in on a little secret.

I’m about to have something in common with such luminaries as Bill Shakespeare and Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi of Jersey Shore. (And no, it’s not an unfortunate hairstyle.)

Shakespeare looks pretty on my shelf. I don’t actually read it. Too heavy…

I will soon be joining their ranks as a published author.

There. I said it out loud. I’M GETTING A BOOK PUBLISHED!

(I just broke a major rule from my college journalism classes. The only exclamation point I’m  supposedly allotted in my writing life is for the headline: “WAR!”

Well, college was a long time ago. And I want to exclaim.)

So here’s the skinny:

It’ll be a book of my favorite Tales from the Crib columns from the Lyme Times (which I’ve been writing since Will was three, who’s now ten, so that’s a bunch). It’s being published by a fantastic little publishing house, Skyhorse Publishing in New York.

And it’s probably coming out in spring 2016, so mark your calendars now. Oh, who are we kidding? I’ll remind you. SO MANY TIMES.

One thing’s for sure: it won’t look anything like this book.

 

This EXISTS. I cannot unsee it.

This EXISTS. I cannot unsee it.

Getting a book published is equal parts wildly exciting and hard-core ulcer-inducing.

As someone who writes for a life and a living, it’s been my personal Everest to have my very own words in my very own book on my very own coffee table.

And to be able to stare at it sitting there and to love it and to make my family proud (after they get over being horrified by what I wrote about them…)? Swoon.

Unless..I don’t love it and nobody’s proud and it’s a huge flop and it’s nowhere near as good as Tina Fey or even Bob Saget and there’s a hideous picture me on the back.

Oh, it could happen.

 

In the grand tradition of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling, I’d prefer to use an embarrassing adolescent photo on the back cover, preferably with hand puppet &/or weird hair issues.

In the grand tradition of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling, I’d prefer to use an embarrassing adolescent photo of myself for the back cover, preferably with hand puppet &/or weird hair issues.

 

Perhaps this perm from my first drivers' license?

Like this, maybe? My 16-year-old driver’s license — complete with poodle perm.

 

So many fears and insecurities and needling doubts will be along for this ride, but so will lots of you – as my crazy hollering cheerleaders always there to help drown them out.

It was one such lovely loud-mouthed friend who kept talking me up to an editor…and then this happened.

This is happening.

Boom.  Or at least, yahooooo.

So for all of you who have been faithfully reading my nonsense all these years —

Who have stopped me in the produce aisle to tell me nice things about my latest column…

Who have read my columns out loud to your poor long-suffering husbands…

Who have clipped my writings and sent them to friends…

Who have never once sent me hate mail…

Who have been sweet enough to ask with some frequency, “When are going to write a book?” –

For you, I am so so grateful. A writer’s words are worth a hill of beans if nobody reads them. And you actually read them. Better yet, you don’t line the turtle box with them. (If you do, don’t tell me).

Now, if you really love me, you’ll buy a copy for every friend on your Christmas list. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

For now, just THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

And yeeeeehaw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Breakfast Club

/ DeeDeeFilly / Leave a comment

Everybody but everybody is talking about Robin Williams – and rightly so. I say we all get our rainbow suspenders out of the attic and wear them in solidarity.

His passing may be news, but it’s a story as old as Behind the Music. We saw before us someone funny and brilliant, rich and beloved. And we assumed his life was inherently awesome – or at least more awesome than ours.

But there was much, much more to his story. There always is.

Hate to be there when the laughter stops...

Hate to be there when the laughter stops…

Some of you may know that this spring, I drove to North Carolina to sit by my mother’s bedside during her last days.

There was nothing to do but sit with my siblings and my dad and watch it happen, maybe nibble on cheese and crackers, make awkward chit-chat with visitors, sometimes try to tell her things you think she should know. It was grueling.

I nearly wrecked taking this picture. But it was so moody and spooky, I felt like I was in my own really unfun road trip movie.

I nearly wrecked taking this picture. But all that fog felt like the most depressing road trip movie of all time.

But when we’d step outside those nursing home doors, nobody knew our mother was dying. Especially not the girl at the Popeye’s drive-thru.

One of those grim mornings, my sister and I had the bright idea to pick up some chicken biscuits – you know, to help gird our loins. We were pretty sure this would be Mom’s last day. We’d need protein and something deep-fried to get through it.

But I promise you have never sat in a drive-thru so long in all your livelong days. And you have never met a slower, spacier drive-thru worker in the history of drive-thru workers (and that’s saying something). I’m talking glacial.

While we waited on her to go pluck the chicken bald, the most awful gallows humor kicked in.

ChickenHunt2

Lucy is kindly re-enacting the scene for you.

We started making up the cheeriest, most horrifying things to say to this poor woman– all in our sweetest, most sing-song Southern way, of course.

Things like, “No, really…it’s okayyyyy! We’ve got nothing better to do. Our mother is only on her deathbed. In fact, she could very well be knocking on the pearly gates by the time we get our biscuits. But really and truly, you just take your sweet, sweet time! We’ll wait right here!”

We went on and on like that until the tears were streaming and our fists were hammering the dashboard. It’s safe to say we were a little unhinged.

That drive-thru girl had no idea who she was dealing with that day – or what we were dealing with. You just never know.

And I think nowadays it’s harder to know.

We only know what we see from photos online — usually filtered, scenic, and all smiles. Most of us tend to put the good stuff out there and hold the bad stuff close to the chest.

Anotherfakesmile2

Look at those PAINED expressions. You just know there’s more to this story.

I don’t have a problem with that exactly. I mean, I love the good stuff — like cute pictures of your kids (and I hope you can tolerate mine.)

At the same time, I can’t stand the danglers of mysterious Facebook bad-stuff like, “Can’t sleep from worry!” or “Just spent the morning in the ER!” Good grief, tell us or don’t.

But since we’re all putting our prettiest selves out there for public consumption – and since little nibbles of electronic conversation often suffice for “connection” – we don’t always know what’s behind the curtain of each beautiful life. And there’s a lot.

If we hadn’t actually talked about this stuff in real life, I would never know that the smiling young couple traipsing across Europe had just lost their first baby. I would never know that the lovely college girl with the impeccable wardrobe battles a painful mystery illness. I would never know that the happy family at the beach had just clawed their way back from adultery.

Way down in the depths that Instagram can’t see, you just never know what’s really going on with people. Down there, everyone is a mess. EVERYONE. And the parts that aren’t a mess are only the handiwork of God’s merciful mending kit.

This is how I feel much of the time. Fall down on your face UNDER THE BED tired.

This is how I feel much of the time. Fall down on your face UNDER THE BED done. We are all a mess.

We are the Breakfast Club – each of us a brain, an athlete (maybe not so much), a basket case, a princess and a criminal.

No matter what we look like to the world outside, we are all a confounding mess. Every last one of us. And we all need grace – and each other.

And that woman you see doubled over laughing at the drive-thru? She could be on her way to a loved one’s deathbed. Probably not, and if she is, that would be really weird. But it could happen. And she’d want you to give her a bag full of biscuits.

Just make it snappy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a blog!

/ DeeDeeFilly / 4 Comments

 

AuthorsTea

If she only knew all the stuff I’d written about her.

“Welcome to my blog.”

Those just might be the most overused words in the English language. (Except maybe “Are we there yet?”) Everybody and their Aunt Linda has a blog.

I’ve been writing a column in an actual newspaper made of wood pulp for what seems like a hundred years (a happy place known widely throughout rural Southeastern Connecticut since 2007 as “Tales from the Crib”).

I was happy there. Times were simple then. And from my newspaper treehouse, I hid away from the “blogosphere” — a place that sounds a lot like Thunderdome.

So yeah, I’m more than a little slow to this blog party…and the Twitter party…basically any party. I mean, I never even went to prom.

But if I learned anything from Breaking Bad (and I learned so very many painful life lessons), it’s that some things are worth getting a late start on.

I hope this is one of them.

I’ll still write here about my kids and family and faith — stuff that makes me laugh and stuff that makes me weep and stuff I want to do better. And I’ll still write about all that from the comfort of my home and my elastic-waist yoga pants that almost never experience yoga.

But with this fancy new blog, I’ll throw in some pictures. And I’ll cast the net a little wider. And we can go back and forth more about the stuff that makes us all laugh and cry and aspire and spit nails. And you can invite your friends if you want.

I’m not done yet. I’m just graduating to the next level.

If I’m weirdly inspiring my daughter through all this, then I guess I better raise my game.  I mean, the kid dedicated her book of 3rd grade poems to me.

 “To my mom who inspires me to be an author when I grow up.”

Now, if I could just keep her from actually reading the stuff I’ve written about her…