I turned 40 on Friday. It was a day I’d been dreading for weeks. October and her lovely companion Autumn have always been my favorite time of the year. But ever since my 27th birthday thirteen years ago, when my mother passed away a week after my birthday, October has always brought with it a wellspring of bittersweet memories. My birthday and the loss of my mother are inextricably and permanently bound together; I cannot anticipate one without continuing to mourn the other.

As the big day approaches each year, I mentally cross off “lasts” that I remember from that final birthday celebrated with her: the last gift she gave to me; the last birthday card she sent to me, which I have saved and faithfully reread each year; the last pictures taken with her; the last time I saw her, at my birthday celebration; the last phone call from her, the morning of my birthday. Each year, the memories grow fainter, and each year I feel a bit more panic as I watch them receding.

Perhaps because this year was a “milestone” birthday, I was feeling it even more keenly. I was also feeling a bit of panic at not having accomplished so many of the things I wanted to before the “Big 4-0” arrived.  And I always feel so much the pressure, self-imposed I suppose, of giving every appearance of being happy on my birthday, so each year is an exercise in small deceptions on my part.

This year was set to be no exception, until…

My husband, that sweet and loving man, made the grandest gesture possible to try to make this birthday a special one: he surprised me with a puppy. Ahh, that explains why she hasn’t been writing for a while…

Yes, a puppy. Don’t mistake the situation: our children and I desperately wanted a dog. I had, in fact, told my husband that I either wanted a dog or a housekeeper for my birthday. After years of adamant refusals from him on the dog question, I felt pretty safe that Merry Maids would be showing up on my doorstep Friday afternoon.

And yet, incredibly, there she was, peering up at me from the floor: a shimmering, sleek, shining, silver Weimaraner. At four months old, she was already tall, but as I sank to the floor, she threw herself into my arms and snuggled her warm muzzle into my neck: I was undone. It was, as my husband had planned, the best birthday I’d had in years.

Day 6 now, is another matter…

Things I had forgotten about having a puppy:

• They always smell like puppies, no matter what shampoo you use on them, and now your house does, too. Sometimes this is a good smell, and sometimes it’s just a smell–it really depends on the day’s weather.
• If it’s not nailed down, puppies will snatch it and run. If it is nailed down, puppies will wait until your back is turned and chew it to bits.
• If it’s a particularly dangerous item to chew, such as a novelty pin, electric cord, safety razor, or pocket knife, it will become your puppy’s new magnificent obsession.
• If your puppy has not yet figured out a way to escape from its crate, that only means it is still plotting.
• Puppies are expensive: food, treats, toys, vet visits, shots, collars, leashes, crates, bigger crates, escape-proof crates, rawhide chews, food and water dishes, air freshener, carpet cleaner–and that’s just the first week.
• Puppies are blessed by their Creator with the uncanny ability to accurately predict the very spot on the floor where you plan to step next and materialize themselves there from three rooms away.
• A puppy riding in a shopping cart is a funny thing. So is a puppy trying to navigate the stairs for the first time.
• Puppies demand sacrifice: sacrifice of sleep, sacrifice of time, sacrifice of privacy, and sacrifice of furniture.

But lest you think I’m just a crabby 40-year-old ungratefully complaining about the best birthday present ever (oh, let’s face it, I am), here are some rather more pleasant memories being rekindled for me, along with the other less fragrant and more destructive ones:

• Snuggling up next to a warm, sleepy puppy is a cure for any blues.
• Nothing makes kids giggle like a wet puppy tongue on the cheek. 
• You meet many more neighbors on the street when you’re walking a puppy than you do when you’re running alone.  
• The stars over your front lawn are particularly beautiful at 1:00 in the morning (and 3:00, 4:45, and 5:50, too).

These are the things I’ve been remembering for the last 6 days; they’re the things that have been keeping me pretty busy, even to the point of keeping me from writing. But as I’m writing this, I’m glancing down occasionally to the floor at my feet, where the new god(dess) of our household, Loki the Norse Dog of Mischief (not a typo; “Dog” is just “God” spelled backwards) is slumbering away. She snores occasionally, whimpers or trots in her dreams, and from time to time, gazes up at me with her beautiful, trusting eyes, and I remember the last thing I’d forgotten about having a puppy: I’m a sucker for those puppy dog eyes every time. And my mother, that original lover of all things puppy, would certainly approve.

I have just returned home from taking the GRE and I am in a fine mood. There were no surprises, on the test or on my score. Although I did discover an interesting little tidbit of GRE trivia: Did you know that if you score low enough on the Quantitative section that ETS starts a running laugh track in your headphones as they post it?

No. Not really. But they really should.

And even if it were true, I couldn’t tell you anyway, because they make you promise not to share any of the questions with anyone in any format. So I shouldn’t share with you these wonderful problems with which I worked while taking the test today:

Problem 1.)

Choose A. if column A is greater;  Choose B. if column B is greater; Choose C. if the two equations are equal; Choose D. if more information is needed; Choose E. if you could care less.                    

d=difficulty level of questions   a=accuracy

Column A.                                                                           Column B.

5d(Julia’s Quantitative score) + –a = 1/2                               2

average test score of a                        

Rhesus monkey on a bad day

Problem 2.) Solve this equation:

2x + y(Julia’s Quantitative score) + -3/5(probability of Julia becoming an astrophysicist) = ≤_______∞ when y=a circle with r12.

Okay, since I can see you’re clearly not a Math person, I’ll give you a hint on that second one: for any equation which involves the probability of Julia becoming an astrophysicist, the answer is always zero. I can’t believe you allowed yourself to be tricked by that one! It was so obvious!

Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! For those of you out there looking at my sample problems and thinking “That’s just gibberish”, welcome to the Wonderful World of Quantitative GRE Problems with your hostess, Julia Tagliere. That whole section was a foreign language to me. Actually, since I have a background teaching foreign languages, I can’t say that, because those come rather easily to me. I guess I have to come up with an expression that would fit better with my abilities. Let’s see…That whole section was like…Math to me!Yes, I think that’ll do nicely.

Actually, in all honesty, the test-taking itself was not as bad as I had feared. I only asked for one thing in my pre-test prayer, and that was “Please, God, don’t let me run out of the test crying halfway through because I can’t take it anymore.” There–you see? Total proof that God listens.

I felt pretty good the whole time I was taking the test, though I have to admit, as I approached the midpoint–ack! No more geometry terms!–the halfway mark of the test, I noticed that the questions were getting easier, which concerned me a little bit. It wasn’t that I feared I was making mistakes (heck, that was a given, after all); it was that in my GRE for Dummies book, it said that the test calibrates itself according to how you do on the first ten questions. If you do well on the first ten, you get harder questions later; if you do poorly on the first ten, the questions are adjusted to make them easier. So when I saw that Question 14 read “Robert has 5 eggs; Marcus has 4. x= 5 + 4.  Solve for x” I knew I was in trouble. Sure, the questions were getting easier, but I also knew that easier questions weren’t going to increase my score any. (That much Math I could figure out on my own; I’m not a total imbecile.)

S0–I came, I tested, I threw up. I’ve submitted my scores to just one university (there’s no way that my Quantitative scores would ever improve, no matter how often I would take the test, so I’m not bothering). That didn’t make the computer very happy; it obviously thought I shouldn’t place all my eggs in one basket. But by that point in the day, I didn’t think I could do enough Math to divide the eggs equally into any additional baskets anyway.

Hope the U will ignore my Quantitative scores; after all, I’m not looking to become an astrophysicist, right? And astronauts everywhere are eternally grateful for that…

I only have time for a short post today (famous last words, I hear you mumble) because I am supposed to be studying for the GRE, which I am preparing to take next week in my never-ending quest to be admitted back into a graduate writing program. (I said “admitted”, not “allowed”; a slight but important distinction.) In my weeks studying for the test, I have learned some very illuminating things about myself, the test, and other people:

• When my Geometry teacher asked me to promise never to take another Math class again as long as I lived, I should have listened.
• People who write questions for the  GRE are the worst sorts of sadists.
• People who write self-help books for others to use to prepare for the GRE are the second-worst sorts of sadists.
• I am not nearly as smart as I thought I was, though I have discovered I’m nearly twice as literate, so perhaps that will even out on my scores.
• I would rather have my second mammogram this year than ever do this again.
• I should have taken the GRE immediately after completing my undergraduate degree, long before approaching middle age, motherhood, and a generally complete indifference to all topics mathematical or scientific robbed me of any remaining memory of having studied those topics.
• I am definitely not smarter than a 5th grader, which I can say with confidence, since I now live with one.
• People who have not taken the GRE do not understand when you say “No, I can’t go out to lunch today, I have to study”; or “No, I can’t serve on any committees right now”; or “What do you mean, ‘What’s for dinner tonight?'”(With all the fast food I’m subjecting them to this week, we’re becoming a walking ad for Lipitor.)

So there. Any additional GRE-related information I will have to share with you sometime next week, if I am still able to put together a coherent sentence after completing the non-Verbal portion of the test (I refer to it as “Nonverbal”, because I have a feeling that that is precisely how I will be after completing it: a gibbering, shaking, wreck of a human being who has lost the ability to speak.) Wish me luck…not that it will do any good, but at this point, I’d almost consider live animal sacrifices, if I thought it would help (PETA: I’m just kidding…)

It has been several days since my last posting, so I can share that I am doubly Back-to-School-Excited, as now my children have gone back to school as well. I have to say, the house seemed more uncomfortably quiet yesterday morning after the bus left than I had anticipated–guess I like my little buggers a lot more than I realized…

It was definitely odd to walk back in from the bus stop and know that I now had the time at my disposal to do all the writing and revising and drafting and editing I’d been complaining about not having the time to do all summer. So–how did I spend my first day with the children back to school? Nose to the keyboard, butt to the chair? Nah. I went to lunch and a movie with some friends–there’s discipline for you.

In all fairness, it was at least a movie about writers (Julia & Julia)–well, sort of. There was a lot of familiarity to the various writing-related scenes sprinkled throughout the movie; like the one where Julie Powell starts ranting about blogs in general just being people blabbing on incessantly about themselves (I swear, I don’t know what she was getting at); there was also the dream sequence toward the end of the movie,when Ms. Powell comes back to her apartment to find 65 voicemails from various agents, editors, and publishers, all wanting her.

I say “dream sequence” because for most writers, a moment like that would have to be a dream. I identified much more closely with Julia Child’s path to publication, one of slogging it out through the writing, the revising, the rejections, and then the one single acceptance letter that made her heart leap for joy–that seems closer to what I’ve been experiencing, anyway. It’s like the excitement you feel as a kid when you first light a sparkler on the 4th of July: it burns so brightly but is over so fast. (I speak of brief joy here because yes, it’s official: I have an article in The Writer magazine this month, and I did, in fact, leap for joy myself when my copy arrived in my mailbox. And then it was over and I was obsessing  once more about my lack of publishing credits.)

You know, as I’m sitting and reading back to myself what I’ve written, does anyone else find it sort of circular that Julie Powell shot to fame because of a blog she was writing, about which I’m now blogging myself? Hm…I thought so.

Anyway, it was a good movie, (and a good lunch, I might add) but not a very good excuse not to be writing yesterday. I did do some editing, however, so the day wasn’t a total loss. (I refuse to say “waste”, because I think friends are one of the important things in life and well worth losing a little bit of productivity for.) I’m currently “auditioning” for a job, so technically, I did do some work yesterday–I got the audition completed and sent it in this morning, which I thought was pretty good for someone who was playing hookey all afternoon (see what I can do with a whole day at my disposal? I can have fun and get some work done, which makes Julia a much happier camper, indeed.)

Today, however, I am truly back to work. I’m spending the morning polishing another piece; working on an article for a newsletter; updating this blog; finishing my homework for my Graphic Design class later this week (quick: How many picas to an inch? How many points to a pica? You don’t know? Ha–now I do!); and shortly, I will be taking a break from writing to work on my GRE prep. I have to go pick up The GRE for Dummies t0day from the library–I hope that title will turn out to be an oxymoron in my case. I have no fears when it comes to the Writing portion of the test, but fear I may be somewhat of an idiot savant when it comes to the rest of the exam. Will keep you posted…

So, that’s what’s happening in my life, which I can write about here because it’s my blog,  and since blogs are just about people blabbing on incessantly about themselves, then it’s all about me, me, me…if you don’t like it, you’ll just have to get your own space.

It’s September, which can only mean one thing: It’s Back-to-School Time! Do I hear strains of Handel soaring in the background?

Those of you who know me may suspect that my excitement [denoted by use of exclamation point above] comes from having my kids head back to class and out of my hair after a delightful–yes, delightful, she snapped–but very long summer.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re wrong. I’ve really enjoyed having this time with my children this summer. No, really. Stop laughing. Now.

Okay, maybe you’re a little bit right, I can’t deny that it has, indeed, been a loooooooong summer. But a chance to regain some of my lost sanity [please tell me it comes back] is not the primary reason for my excitement. I’m not excited because they’re going back to school; I’m excited because I’m  going back to school.

After having my plans for graduate school this fall derailed, I decided that there were still some things I could do to keep moving forward; one of those things was to start coursework in the Graphic Design field. I felt there was a knowledge gap for me in that area on a couple of freelance projects I’ve done this year, so thought it’d be a good way to close that gap. I’m also keeping one eye on the self-publishing industry (though there’s a  stubborn, elitist part of me that still views that as a decision of last resort). Should I decide to head down that path, being able to do my own layout would mean more freedom for me (and less money, since I wouldn’t have to pay someone else to do it.)

So it was that I found myself in my first Graphic Design class bright and early last Thursday morning. I was ridiculously excited, taking my seat in the front row of a packed classroom. Before you assume that I’m some sort of teacher’s pet, let me point out that the room was packed, and the only seat left was in the front row. (Just between you and me, I probably would have sat in the front row anyway, even if the room was empty, because I am a teacher’s pet. I just didn’t want you to be making baseless assumptions.) And the ridiculous excitement? That stemmed from having spent ten hours in the car with my family the day before. Need I say more on that subject?

I grinned like an idiot when the instructor entered the room. I was so ready to soak up some knowledge, that I found it really disappointing to spend so much time going around the room introducing ourselves, but it’s probably a good thing we did, because it forced me to turn around and look at the faces of the people in the room behind me. God, they were so young! This class is being held at a technical college, so the class is full of very young, very fresh, very…bored? late teens and early twenty-somethings.

I studied their faces as the instructor went around the room. “Hi, I’m Jane. I’m here because my mom told me I had to get out of bed this morning or move out.” “Hi, I’m John. What class is this again?” “Hi, I’m Mary. What’s the minimum grade I have to earn in this class to graduate?” “Hi, I’m Matt. I’m not in this class, actually–does anyone have a set of jumper cables? Dude, I left my lights on and now my car won’t start.” And on almost every face, boredom, apathy, and irritation. There were, to be fair, precisely 3 exceptions: two exchange students, and an older–read, older than me–woman who was heading back to school after having lost her job. And then there was me.

How could this be? How could the rest of the class not be filled with the same anticipation and eagerness to learn that was making me quiver like a chihuaua? How could they possibly be bored? Have I grown so old that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be stuck in a windowless classroom listening to a boring teacher talk about rules and grades on a beautiful late-summer day? Yes, apparently I have.

I could hear their idle chatter in the back of the room throughout the professor’s opening speech; I could hear their irritated sighs as she went over her grading policies (and I understood with sad clarity why she felt had to spell things out so carefully); and when the professor announced that we were going to be watching a video, I could just make out a communal “Yes!” sounding from the room as a whole. Myself, I was disappointed that our first day was to be spent watching a video–but not for long.

The video turned out to be a history of…Print! Yes! You heard me correctly: from the cave paintings of Lascaux, France, all the way up to the technologically advanced and marvelously modern…1970s. Fascinating.

I could hear the eyeballs of my fellow classmates plunking on the floor behind me, they were rolling so far back in their heads.

The professor warned us that it was a foreign film and the narrator had a very strong accent, so we might have a hard time understanding some of it. I watched the opening credits and prepared myself for a voiceover by the Swedish Chef, but was pleasantly surprised when the video was opened by the dulcet tones of …Sir Alec Guinness? When did he find time around the Star Wars videos? It probably wasn’t him, but it certainly sounded like him. I snuck a peak around me to see if anyone was having trouble understanding his “heavy accent”, but everyone else was sleeping, so I couldn’t tell.

At that point, enjoying the quiet unbroken save for the occasional plink of drool droplets landing on a desk or an unexpected snore, I settled in to watch the rest of the video, which I, personally, found to be quite interesting. Did you know that Bodoni, Garamond, and Baskerville were actually real people before they were fonts? Fascinating.

I can’t wait until next week.