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The book everyone is talking about. The book no one thought they would ever see. Fifty Five years after To Kill A Mockingbird we have a sequel…. Firstly I think it is really important to remember the context of this book while reading it. This book was written before To Kill A Mockingbird. Before all […]

In anticipation of the new Harper Lee novel, Go Set A Watchman, (out July 14) I decided it was the perfect time for a re-read of To Kill A Mockingbird. I don’t think I’ve read the book since high school and the movie is still so dominant in my mind so it was a great […]

Tomorrow, my little boy sees the dentist for the first time.

Okay, so my "little boy" is a four-and-a-half-year-old schnoodle named Scout, and his "dentist" is really the vet. Only instead of getting a normal, six-month wellness exam and a vaccination or two, this time Skitty needs a teeth cleaning. The teeth cleaning requires the vet to put him under anesthesia - the same goes for all dogs who get teeth cleanings - and the whole production leaves me feeling just a wee bit nauseated.

Let me explain.

I got Scout about a month after I moved into my house. When I was house hunting, one of my main criteria was that it have a fenced-in backyard. Becoming a pet parent was almost as important to me as becoming a home owner. I knew I wanted my future pet child to have a big playground of his own, and I knew that having a yard with a fence would make it easier to housebreak him. (The kicker, of course, is that when I first got Skitty, he was a pound and a half, and so small he could fit through the slim opening between the fence and the gate. He couldn't really go leash-free in the yard until he was almost six months old.)

The first 90 days as Scout's mom almost broke me. He was trouble from the start. I knew he was going to be small, so I'd bought him one of those too-precious dog carrier handbag things. He tried to chew through it immediately, so it got returned. I tried to crate train him, but he'd throw his little body against the door of it and yelp until I let him out. This is a dog that was born in someone's home, mind you, and not some abusive puppy mill. I'd spent months researching breeders (and before I get any lectures from those of you who support adoption, I am seriously allergic to cats and moderately allergic to dogs, so I had to get a hypoallergenic puppy - and I'm still mildly allergic to his saliva), and I had chosen one who raised her pups with love. She'd warned me that Scout was "inquisitive" and "energetic." He was the first of his litter to climb out of the whelping box, which is partially how he got his name (I'd been leaning toward Oliver prior to that).

Anyway, eight-week-old Scout was a terror. He had razor-sharp teeth and he chewed on me constantly. I kept thinking of Gregory Maguire's descriptions of Elphaba in WICKED. Yes, it was that bad. He wasn't one of those dogs who consumed shoes or tore up furniture, but he loved making a chew toy out of me. He was tiny and he was fast, and I couldn't so much as take the trash out unless I had him tucked under one arm because whenever the door was open he'd make a break for it. I spent the first couple of months chasing him around the neighborhood, though he never got more than a yard or two away before I'd catch him.

He wasn't the first dog I'd owned, and he wasn't even the first dog I trained. I even enrolled him in a puppy class at PetSmart, where he stole the hearts of every other pet parent in the class. Even so, Scout could never master loose-leash walking, and he still struggles with "wait" and "stay." At one point, I was convinced that he couldn't be trained, period. I remember sitting in the vet's office, half in tears, telling him that Scout and I weren't on the same team, and that he was so crazy I thought he might need to be medicated. The doctor talked me through some behavioral modification techniques and assured me that Scout would mellow with age.

By month four, I'd gotten Scout to stop biting me, and I'd gotten better about blocking his access to escape routes. At his next check up, the doctor said he was like a completely different dog, and I seemed like a completely different owner. "We're on the same page now," I told him. But it was still hard.

When Scout was almost six months old, his then-vet, Dr. Lindsay, scheduled him for neutering. The procedure was going to be more invasive than I'd hoped due to an undescended testicle. And he was still pretty small, weighing in at a little over five pounds, if I r

Oh, what's that, you say? You didn't notice I was MIA? Can't say I blame you.

Here's the deal: 2009? Hasn't been exactly kind to me and my family. I'm not complaining here; I'm just explaining why I kept disappearing for long chunks of time.

THE SHORT VERSION (no, really - this IS the short version):

January - Went back to teaching at UD for the first time in a year, and more importantly, the first time since my gastric bypass surgery in Sept. 1998. It was winter session, which at the University of Delaware means cramming an entire semester's worth of work into literally five weeks. It was also E110, which is what we call the freshman comp class, and every year I can't understand what possesses a kid to take E110 over winter session. It's kind of a suicide mission, because department guidelines dictate that you have to write a certain number of pages in essay form. Plus, this winter I had a group of largely apathetic kids who took the class because someone told them it was a cake walk. Me: "They lied." Fortunately, I had a couple of really awesome students in the mix, who helped remind me of why I love to teach (thanks, Erin & Kelsey!). Plus, I started teaching adult creative writing classes at the YMCA on Monday nights. So, I went from zero to 99 in like six seconds, and by the end, I was exhausted. Oh, and somewhere in the middle of the month, my dog broke his junk from humping a new stuffed animal my mom had gotten him for Christmas. The running joke was that the bear gave him an STD. The non-joke? The cost of the vet bill and the meds he had to take as a result. One of them was a steroid, which left Scouty eating everything that wasn't nailed down. He also put on two pounds, which for a little guy like him, is a lot. Oy.

February - One of the drawbacks to teaching winter session is that spring semester starts literally right after winter ends. I think I had three days between my last winter class and my first spring one. The good news: I got to teach a fiction writing class for the first time at UD. I wasn't sure what kind of writers I'd end up with, but I have to say - some of the talent in that class really blew me away. There will be published authors (in fact, there already is one - but more on that later). AND my freshmen? So good. Every class discussion was lively, and that makes teaching fun. Plus there were some real characters, like a computer hacker who was super pissed off about the marketing of the "green" movement. So in that way, the semester got off to a great start. On a personal level? My car broked down right before Joe and my mom were going to look at a venue for the wedding reception, and we had to have it towed to the shop. Then, after getting my car back (with a hefty bill), we had to put Joe's car in the shop (another hefty bill). Then, two weeks after we got his car back, it broke down AGAIN, this time requiring a tow (and an even heftier bill). Oh, and our heating oil ran out. So the shortest month of the year ended up being one of our most expensive. Go figure.

March - This was when I really went missing, and here's why: early in March I started to get sick. I'm on a medicine for my psoriasis that lowers my immune system, so sniffles turn into major colds quite quickly. Only, I didn't think to stop taking my psoriasis meds (an injection I give myself every other week). So the cold hung on. Then, the third week in March, I flew to St. Pete's Beach with my friend Wendy, where I was her plus-one for the wedding of her friends Amir and Pepper (her husband hates to fly - as in, even heavily medicated, he can't do it). The beach was awesome, the wedding was beautiful, and I never wanted our mini-break to end. I came home happy, relaxed, sunburned ... and just a wee bit behind on my grading, because I'd been sick the two weeks before we left. Then, to add insult to injury, I got sick AGAIN. Literally, the day after I got back. This time it was flu-like (the non-swine variety, even though I'd gotten my flu shot and even a pneumonia shot like a good girl in the fall). As it got progressively worse, we realized that I had to stop taking the psoriasis meds so I could get better. But by this time, I had a head full of snot and a crazy-high fever of like 102 - so bad that Joe wanted me to go to the hospital. Fun!

April - The cold/flu wore on, and by this time, I'd managed to give it to Joe, who's a typical guy in that he's a pain in the butt when he's sick - a total whining baby. Plus, he refused to take any real time off from work to recover and kept working crazy hours from home. Meanwhile, I'm getting my freshmen prepped for their research papers while still grading their second essays that they turned in while I was in Florida. I had to skip another psoriasis shot, so my feet were cracking like crazy and I was back to the gel bandages to keep my feet workable. I had a couple of speaking gigs at the beginning of the month, while I was still grappling with the flu, one of which was for the Eastern PA's SCBWI mid-winter retreat (an awesome conference - we had such a great time!). But overall, April was NOT a good month at Casa Zeises/de Loza.

May - Things took a turn for the worse. I'd just gotten caught up on my grading and made it through two Mother's Day celebrations - Joe's grandmother on Saturday, where we made a huge brunch for the family, and my mom on Sunday, where we got to see a private screening of the new STAR TREK (thanks, Em!) and had Chinese food. The Monday after, I had a sore knot on the bottom left quadrant of my back, so I thought I'd go to the gym and workout, thinking that would loosen my muscles up. BIG MISTAKE. Afterward, as I got back into the car, I knew something was wrong, because it hurt. Like, bad. I won't go into major detail, but let's just say that by mid-week, I was crying every time I had to put on pants or go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, the dog somehow broke his junk AGAIN (this time, we're not sure how, because we'd confiscated all humpable toys), and that ran us another $200. This in the middle of the back injury pain, which by the end of the week was so excruciating that our doctor sent us to the ER. And because Christiana Hospital was still reeling from the swine flu epidemic, we actually got chastised for going to the ER. So the next day we ended up in St. Francis's ER, where we actually got some care. Within a couple of days, I was back to walking again. Which was great. But of course, that's when we found out about Pop.

Pop is Joe's grandfather, who along with his grandmother, helped raise him after his mom passed away when Joe was 12. So he was more like a dad to Joe than anything. And we'd just seen him Mother's Day weekend, and he was making all of these plans with us, like to go see the new Harry Potter movie, and to go to the Poconos over 4th of July weekend, and to go to the shore with them in early September. When we said goodbye, we didn't realize it would be the last time we'd see him. Pop passed away rather unexpectedly - we're pretty sure it was a heart attack - the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend. Needless to say, this was a very devastating time, and not just for Joe. I'd only known Pop for a couple of years, but his death hit me hard. Plus, watching Joe and his family grieve was excruciating. It's always hard to see the ones you love in so much pain. We spent the next 10 days shuttling around to Bethlehem and back. In the middle of this, my stepfather's uncle lost his long battle with cancer. My semester at UD was wrapping up, and through all of this I was trying to grade research papers and magazine projects and writing portfolios. The Sunday after Pop's memorial service, I pulled two 14-hour marathon grading sessions, so by Tuesday (this would be last Tuesday, the beginning of June) I was crispy fried.

June - Both Joe and I were struggling to find normalcy in our lives, and in doing so, we completely forgot our two-year anniversary. What a wake up call. I spent all of last week running expensive errands, like the three-hour trip to the Saturn dealership that cost $420. Joe was pulling some marathon work sessions of his own, so that he could take a much-needed vacation. Between last Thursday and Friday he worked 36 hours straight, with no sleep, and finally started his vacation around 8 p.m. Friday night.

So, there you have it. Now Joe's on vacay - our "staycation," I keep calling it, because I often like trendy buzz words and am still annoyed that we can't find a Brangelina type nickname for ourselves (Loe? Jara?). But it's hard. Between my back injury and losing Pop and both of us overdoing it on the work front, we're barely treading water. Joe spent the weekend writing a computer program for himself, and I spent it glued to HARVEST MOON on the Wii. There was a short stint Saturday night where the two of us performed surgery through TRAUMA CENTER: NEW BLOOD, but for the most part, we've been trying to process on our own.

And now, because I can't stand to end this post on a sad note, I figured I'd recap some of the good stuff that's happened:

• Joe made my January birthday super special this year, and without spending much money;


• We had the awesomest Valentine's Day ever, starting with getting a family portrait with Scout at Petco, followed by Scrabble in front of the fireplace at Panera, and finishing with an entire weekend of gourmet cooking;


• In March, the Lifetime adaptation of TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HOLLYWOOD STARLET came out on DVD;


• We booked the Fair Hill Inn for our wedding reception, which is a dream come true AND will cost several thousand less than what the wedding factories wanted to charge us;


• There was that whole trip to Florida thing, which was so so so so so much fun, and the great SCBWI conference experience;


• My best friend gave birth to a healthy baby boy at the beginning of April, and he's not only adorable, but he's given us MAJOR baby fever;


• When I was recovering from the flu, I watched the entire third season of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS on DVR, and it was so good it warrants its own line here;


• Six words: PRIVATE VIEWING OF STAR TREK ROCKED. (Did I mention that Emmett's wife made cupcakes frosted in the colors of the original TV show's uniforms, with flavored cake to match? She's so freaking cool.);


• My friend Cindy sold her first book (we met during the very first round of adult creative writing classes I taught at the Y), and Cassie, from my fiction writing class at UD, just had one of her workshopped stories accepted into an anthology;


• I've lost a total of 145 pounds (and no, I don't have new progress pictures, because we took the last round when I got back from aerobics and I'm all red and sweaty and ugly, but we're planning on doing more soon);


• and finally, I got my first review for THE SWEET LIFE OF STELLA MADISON, which I posted last week, and it was good and gives me hope that this book - the first book I've published under my own name in almost four years - will do well.

So, if I had to give last week a title, it would've been A Series of Unfortunate Events. It started with the whole running out of home heating oil and Monday, continued with my car breaking down only minutes before we were supposed to meet with a potential wedding caterer on Wednesday, and culminated in Joe's car breaking down the very next day - with a whole lot of messy family drama and minor-league trauma in between (nothing I want to go into - but suffice it to say, it was a VERY bad, bad week).

Here's an example: Thursday night, Joe and I baked our traditional Valentine's Day red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The cupcake part was fine - they came out REALLY red and tasted divine. But when we went to do the frosting, we realized we'd left the cream cheese out too long and it somehow got rancid in our 67 degree house. We were also planning on using leftover white chocolate chips, instead of buying bars, for the frosting, but chips have a stabilizer in them that don't let them melt the way bars or chunks do. So we wasted 3 cups of powdered sugar trying to turn rancid cream cheese and unmelty chips into frosting. Which meant that Joe had to run out to the grocery store after midnight to buy replacement cream cheese, chocolate bars, and powdered sugar. This after two earlier stops at the store for ingredients we neglected to stock ahead of time.

(The sweat equity was worth it, though. The cupcakes are always a huge hit, and this year when I was frosting them I had the brilliant idea of skipping swirls and instead piping a white chocolate heart on top. It was beyond precious.)

So then Saturday was Valentine's Day, and the icky turned into de lovely. We started the morning by topping some Trader Joe's whole grain french toast with bruleed bananas, then groomed the dog and took him over to PetCo (where the pets go) for a $6 family portrait. After that, Joe and I got haircuts (one of those quick, cheapy places over by Shoprite) and then hit up GameStop, where Joe proceeded to convince me that we needed several games for the Wii. This after $1,100 in home heating oil and car repairs. I relented, though, because he got a nice little bonus at work and the week before was putting in 14-hour days trying to make headway on some projects. One of the things he picked up was actually my Valentine's Day gift - My Fitness Coach for the Wii. I'd had the Xbox version when I was staying with my parents, saving up for the house, and really loved it. We also put a $5 pre-order depost on EA Sports Active, which looks so freaking cool that I can hardly stand it.

Afterward, we grabbed our Scrabble board and headed to Panera, where we snagged - and I still can't believe our luck - the two leather club chairs in front of the fireplace. We spent the next two hours playing Scrabble in front of the fire, sipping hot Chai and soliciting tons of "awws" from people who walked by or sat near us. It was so cozy, and so romantic, and so very us.

Back at home, we started to prep the very elaborate Valentine's Day feast we'd planned. The first course was to be Ina Garten's shrimp bisque. The recipe calls for seafood stock, but since I couldn't find that, I went with Better Than Bullion's Lobster Base. Oh. My. GOD. It was a disaster. The bullion was super salty, and I made the rookie mistake of NOT TASTING IT before adding the two teaspoons of salt the recipe called for. (In my head, I could hear Tom Collichio chastizing me for not tasting my food.) We tried everything we could to rescue the bisque - adding more tomato paste, adding more cayenne, adding more roux-thickened half and half ... finally we realized we were going to have to pick up more shrimp and add more leeks to make it palatable, and put the soup away for the next day. Then Joe started having stomach cramps, so we decided to postpone the entire romantical feast for Sunday.

The next day, I made us blueberry-and-Greek-yogurt smoothies before we hit the gym. Then it was off to Shoprite to pick up more shrimp. We came home to an odd-looking poop from the dog. There was a thing sticking out of it that resembled a giant earthworm. We scooped the sample and put it in a bag, put the bag in a Tupperware container, and put the container in another bag before popping it into the fridge. Then we spent the next hour Googling intestinal parasites to see if we could identify what it was that came out Skitty's body. Joe was so creeped out he didn't even want the dog kissing him. It was ... yeah, not good.

After we recovered from the "ew" factor, we headed into the kitchen. We sauteed an extra leek and the new pound of shrimp before pureeing it and adding it to the super-salty bisque. It tamed the flavor some, but not enough so that I could enjoy it. I had a very small portion before deciding my tummy still couldn't handle it. Such a disappointment! Expensive ingredients + lots of labor should = yumminess, right? I was afeared that our Weekend of Loveliness was morphing into A Series of Unfortunate Events, Take II.

But then Joe saved the day by making Alton Brown's chocolate mousse - my absolute favorite dessert - and it was AMAZERFUL.

Soup + mousse = full tummies, so we postponed the Valentine's Day Feast yet again. Which meant that Monday morning's breakfast consisted of a petite filet mignon (that we butchered ourselves, I might add), accompanied by sauteed mushrooms and topped with a homemade blue cheese chive sauce and a fried egg. I could only get through half of my filet, but even so, it was ... decadent.

A quick trip to the vet revealed that Scouty's foreign object was not, in fact, a giant mutant Earthworm, but something resembling waxed paper. Suddenly it dawned on us that while we were out on Saturday, a spurned Scout most likely raided a trash can, fished out a cupcake wrapper, and promptly swallowed it. Even though I was annoyed at the dog for trash munching, just knowing that he was okay and not infested with mutant worms brought such a sense of relief. The rest of the day was spent catching up on work and chores, and after I taught my final creative writing class of this session at the Y, I came home to help Joe finish off this totally scrumptious Curry Cauliflower Soup and a batch of Lavendar Blueberry Muffins for breakfast the next day. The latter recipe came from Recipes for Life After Weight-Loss Surgery, which my mom got me for Christmas, and they, too, were super yummy. You make them with oat flour, yogurt, and unsweetened applesauce, so not only do they taste awesome, but they're also really good for you. We used plain Greek yogurt instead of the traditional kind, so the muffins pack even more protein.

After we cleaned up the kitchen for the upteenth time, we took the dog out and ruminated on how much we'd actually cooked in the past five days. Out of everything, we only had one unmitigated disaster (the first batch of cupcake frosting) and one minor one (the too-salty shrimp bisque). Which isn't bad, considering everything that came out perfectly, including our home-butchered filet.

And now I just realized that I've written a novel here, AND that it's already 9:15 a.m., so I better wrap up.

Hope everyone had a loverly long weekend and a happy kicky sticky sweet V-Day!