1. Dressed myself in workout gear, knowing full well that I probably wouldn’t work out today.

2. Decided to lie in the grass with my husband for an hour instead of shopping.

3. Ended up shopping… for expensive dog food.

4. Hurried home to watch a soap opera about football.

As I did each of these things, I imagined Teenage Me seeing and scoffing. And I had to laugh, imagining it.

1. I have awesome in-laws. My brother-in-law Teil is my dentist, and my sister-in-law Van is my optometrist, so you know I’ve got the hook-up as far as teeth and eyes go. But I also have to say that my brother-in-law Daniel has saved our lives a million times this year, because he has experience fixing the kind of things that randomly break in houses that were built in the ‘80s, like ours was. He’s helped us fix our shower, our water heater, our dryer, and all kinds of other stuff within this past year alone. For that, I thank him and pledge to continue doing shots and karaoke with him at all Teil and Van’s future parties.

2. I’m so thankful that the Internet exists and that it contains kind people who are willing to share their experiences in order to help others. This year I decided to start riding a bike, after 21 years of not having done so. And I had so much drama trying to find the right bike and the right bicycle seat. Drama and pain, literally. So I took my problems to the Internet, read a bunch of forums, and found out that: a) I probably have a fractured tailbone, and b) I needed a split bike seat.  I bought a cheap split seat and it changed my freaking life, and now I’m enjoying riding my bike so much that it makes me want to cry (almost as much as the tailbone pain made me want to cry before I bought the new seat). So: Thanks, helpful strangers on the Internet.

3. I’m glad I’ve had extra time to spend with my family this year. Particularly with my cousins Andrea and Helen, my brother Erik and his family, and my dad. And my kids, too. I mean, I live with my kids, of course, but I’m grateful that working part-time this year has given me a few extra hours with each of them. And I’m grateful that my family members are generally awesome and value the same things Dat and I do: good food, good drinks, and standing around telling funny stories. Is there anything more important in life?

4. So I’m working from this list I’ve kept on my iPhone throughout the year – a list called “Thankful for” on the Notes app – and one of the items says “Pocket Frogs.” Apparently, at one point, I felt grateful for an iPhone app game about colored frogs hopping around on lily pads. I can’t explain why now, but I’m guessing it has something to do with OCD and stress relief, so let’s just leave it at that. Thanks, little frogs of varying colors and designs.

5. The list also says “Cats,” and I’m guessing I wanted to say something about how Starbuck and Toby, my cats, brighten up my life. I think it’s because they stayed by me (literally, pressed against me on my bed) while I was finishing up my last novel.

6. I’m grateful for my husband, as always. Not least because he spent a really long time very patiently helping me find the right bike and bike seat.

7. You’re always supposed to be thankful for your job, if you have one, and for your good health, if you have that. And so I am.

8. Something not on the list: The other day, my oldest son Paul (not a pseudonym, not anymore) was complaining to me. He was, like, wearing a tie and drinking a cup of coffee, driving his car to work or to the University. (No, he wasn’t, but that’s how you can imagine him with 75% accuracy now.) On this recent day, he was actually in the back seat of the mini van, complaining to the rest of us about the crappiest Christmas he’d ever had. What was so crappy about it? I only gave him three gifts, and they were all books, and one of them was a book he already owned.

I was embarrassed by that story at the time. Also, I was a little annoyed by my son’s spoiled brattiness in bringing it up. He was talking about one of my first years as a single mom, when I had every reason to be frugal and forgetful. But, thinking about his story the next day, I was grateful. You know why? Because, if that’s the worst Christmas he has to complain about, I must be doing a pretty good job as a parent. Right? And thank God I’m able to do that.

Right now I’m working on my third novel, which doesn’t have a title yet. It’s Saturday night and I’m writing the seventh or eight chapter, out of order, because I haven’t written Chapters 2 through 6 yet. But I have a good feeling about this one, already. I’m excited, and I think y’all are gonna like it.

In January, y’all will be able to buy my second novel, Lone Star Legend. Actually, I have ARCs (Advance Reading Copies, for reviewers) right now, so email me if you’re any sort of book reviewer and would like a copy to review sometime in December or January. Just know that the ARCs have some wonky formatting issues that affect my OCD, but will be fixed in the real books, in January.

Aside from the very temporary wonky formatting issues, I think y’all are gonna like that one, too. Especially y’all who are familiar with the Internets and the things that go on there.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for someone to re-design my author site so I can update with the events I’ll be doing later this year.

And, um… Also, I have another kids’ book coming out, called I Kick the Ball, but I’m not sure when, exactly. They said 2011 but I think it’s actually going to be 2010. I’m super-excited about that one, because it has a little boy for a protagonist, and as y’all can imagine, I have an affinity for little boys, seeing as how I gave birth to three of them. Also, they hired a really awesome illustrator for it, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

There are also a zillion other things going on, all good, that I’m not supposed to talk about yet. So I feel like I can’t ever really update y’all in a real way.

But… there is a moral to the story. The moral = hard work pays off. Hard work snowballs and makes you glad you started it.

knitting stuff

I’ve taken a few knitting classes over the past three or four weeks, so now I know how to knit, and I’m super-glad because I’ve wanted to knit all my adult life but never managed to teach myself….

and now I know how, and I’m making a scarf out of cheap acrylic, and next I’m going to make a more complex scarf out of expensive acrylic, and after that we’ll see what happens, but I have dreams, y’all.

I’m on this knitting social networky thing called Ravelry.com, and my name there is Gwentown, in case you want to friend me so I can look through your projects and steal your ideas.

other stuff

Other stuff is going really well, all considered. I have no complaints, y’all.

I started to type a big old status report on my three kids, but then I felt weird and deleted it. I always feel weird telling details of their lives, but especially so now that they’re teenagers. I mean, I have the mom blog on the Houston Chronicle, now, too… So I’ll angst about the privacy issues there, and tell y’all here that my kids are doing really well.

I keep saying “my husband this” and “my husband that,” and people think I’m trying to remind everyone that I’m a newlywed, but really it’s just that I’m used to saying “my boyfriend” and I’m trying to train myself out of it.

My husband is out at a concert with his friend right now. I’m at home working. Well, I’m supposed to be working, but instead I’m typing this blog entry. Shhhh….

this little girl

Today I was knitting in public (which I’ve heard people say is tacky, but I don’t understand how it’s tackier than, say, shopping for clothes in public, but I think it’s mostly British people who say it’s tacky, and I’m in America, so whatever). I was knitting in public — at the hair salon, actually, while my husband got his hair trimmed — and there was this little girl.

Not to be judgmental, but then again why not, so this little girl and her brother were getting simultaneously bitched at and ignored by their parents, if you can imagine that. You know how I mean? Their dad was feverishly typing on his phone, but keeping up a steady stream of “Chloe*, be good. Steven*, be quiet. Chloe, shut up. Steven, I’m gonna spank you if you don’t behave.” (*Not their real names.) He wasn’t even making eye contact with them — just telling them to shut up and behave. Then he’d haul them outside and buy them ice cream, then haul them back in and bitch at them, without looking at them, for eating the ice cream like children instead of like adults. All while reading his phone.

So I was thinking, “Wow, this dude really doesn’t enjoy having kids.” But I kept my eyes on my knitting.

At one point, the discontent dad hauled little Steven outside to spank him or buy him a candy, and little Chloe started circling me like a hawk, staring at my knitting. It cracked me up on the inside, the way she literally circled me to see the process from all angles, then walked up really, really close. She was maybe seven or eight years old.

“You ever seen anyone knit before?” I asked her, finally, when I could feel her breath on my hands.

She shook her head.

“That’s what I’m doing. Knitting,” I told her.

She ran around to my other side and sat next to me on the salon’s sofa. She said, “Are you sewing a blanket?”

I told her I was knitting a scarf. I unrolled the scarf for her to see, and showed her the knitting needles.

Her dad came back in and bitched at her to sit on the other side of the room.

Later, little Steven won his dad’s attention by emptying the water cooler onto the floor, and Chloe took the opportunity to squeeze onto the sofa between her dad and me.

“Knitting a scarf,” she said slowly, to no one.

I smiled in her direction.

She sidled over and asked, “Does the yarn break?”

“Chloe,” her dad said warningly. But I ignored him and answered her question. Tried to. It took a while to figure out that she thought the width of the scarf was due to me secretly cutting the yarn. So I showed her how the yarn folded into rows. While I did this, her dad took Steven and left again, apparently deciding I couldn’t kidnap a kid with knitting needles in my hands.

Chloe asked more questions and I tried to answer. I wished, then, that I had one of those little knitting kits for children, because she was so fascinated and so clever, I felt like she’d be a natural at it. You know? But I didn’t have one, and I stopped short of telling her to ask her father for one.

Then my husband’s hair was done and we got up to go. I turned to say goodbye to Chloe, but she was busy getting nagged at by her dad.

Maybe it’ll occur to him to buy her a knitting kit on his own. She can knit, then, while he plays with his phone.

Or maybe she’ll take a knitting class when she grows up.

fish in hot bean sauce

When I first met my husband, I didn’t think that people ate fish fins.

Now I know that it’s the best part of the fish to eat.

We went looking for this restaurant that my coworker Jennifer Y recommended. It didn’t have an English name, she’d told me. The Mandarin name was, phonetically in my mind, “Lao Di Fun.” She wrote down the characters for me and I put the piece of paper in my purse.

But today, after the haircut, I realized that I was carrying a different purse and had neglected to transfer the Mandarin-inscribed paper to it.

We decided to look for the restaurant, anyway. We went to the shopping center where we knew it to be. It was full of restaurants with Chinese characters all over the windows and glass doors. We found parking near the most likely looking one and went in. My husband, who is Chinese but doesn’t speak Mandarin, made me do the talking. (I’m not Chinese, and I don’t speak Mandarin, either, but I was the one who’d gotten the name first-hand from Jennifer Y.)

“What’s the name of y’all’s restaurant?” I asked the hostesses.

“Spicy Szechwuan,” they said, in heavily accented English.

“Um… What’s the real name, though? Does it have a Mandarin name?” I asked.

They told me. It wasn’t Lao Di Fun. A waiter joined them. He asked what I was looking for. I said, “Lao Di Fun?”

They said, “What?”

I said, more carefully, “Lao… Di… Fun.”

They couldn’t understand me. Then, after like fifteen minutes, one of them goes, “Wait — do you mean Lao Di Fun?”

I said yes. They said, “Oh, it’s next door.”

Next door, the same basic thing happened.
What’s the name of this place?
Classic Kitchen.
The real name?
[Something in Chinese.]
Do you know where Lao Di Fun is?
What? What’d you call my mama?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun! It’s over there.

Next restaurant over, same thing happened.
Hello. Bamboo Dumpling House.
Lao Di Fun?
What in God’s name did you just say, Caucasian Woman?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun is over there.

And again, and again, and by now y’all are realizing that Jennifer Y must have given this place a very strong recommendation, and that we must trust her opinion. Well, yes. That, plus my husband believed that a place without an American name on the door must be very authentic and therefore worth trying.

We went in a big circle, with the last waitress pointing back across the parking lot to the first restaurant we’d entered, before giving up and deciding to eat at Alias Spicy Szechwuan.

(I suspect that Alias Classic Kitchen was the real Lao Di Fun, but that they literally could not recognize their own restaurant’s name coming from my mouth.)

We got menus with several pages, but my husband suggested we focus on the House Specialties section. In that way, we ordered “Fish in hot bean sauce,” (but one-star mild, please), plus fried string beans with ground pork. The waitress directed us to the “appetizer bar,” where we selected marinated cucumber, marinated seaweed, and pan-fried pork rind for our three-appetizer plate.

While we waited, I ate all the seaweed and most of the cucumber. We each tried a piece of pork rind but didn’t try more than that. I looked around at the restaurant’s decor. It was nicer than the average hole-in-the-wall in that neighborhood, with a semi-typical red and black color scheme. They also had the requisite aquarium full of fish, all of them flat and pinkish and happy-looking. A group of Chinese women came in with one white guy, who talked very loudly about the girl among them who was his girlfriend and the fact that she spoke Chinese and Vietnamese and therefore “spied” for him at Vietnamese restaurants, and then said loud Cantonese words to the waitress, who smiled very politely as she walked away. Behind us, a baby ate rice from a yellow baby bowl her parents had presumably brought from home. When she was done, she proudly flung the bowl on the floor.

Then, finally, they brought our fish to us. Whole, on a giant plate, in a pool of spicy, oily red sauce. Damn, y’all, it looked good.

“Look at his little head,” I said. “It’s so round.” His face was all covered with sauce, and they’d been good enough to remove his eye, so I didn’t feel as bad as I otherwise might have.

My husband, who is very gentlemanly, filled my rice bowl with rice and put a piece of fish on top. I tasted it. “This is really freaking good,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s fresh,” my husband said.

“Yeah, it tastes fresh,” I said. “It’s all like, soft and stuff. Like it was never frozen.”

“It’s one of the ones from that tank, baby,” he told me.

I looked over at the tank full of pinkish fish. “Aw.”

I felt bad for, like, three seconds. Then I remembered that all those fish were going to die, anyway, so they could at least die making people happy. Right?

First we ate the flesh that didn’t have bones. Then we ate the flesh that did have bones, putting it in our mouths whole, eating around the bones and removing them with chopsticks. Then, we sucked the fins. Then, we spooned the fish-speckled sauce onto rice and ate that.

This is gonna sound crass, maybe, but one of the things I like about eating at Asian places is that I can relax my table manners a little and no one minds.

At one point, I was sucking on my fish fin and staring into space, experiencing the chili flakes and oil and vinegar and something mysteriously sweet, and the waitress walked by and caught my eye. “Good?” she asked.

I nodded. “It’s very good.”

We’ll find Lao Di Fun next time, maybe. I was glad we found this place this time, though, whatever its real name is.

Lest you think my honeymoon was nothing but the drama surrounding the Epic SCUBA Fail described below, I will assure you now that Hawaii is every bit as awesome as everyone says. I kind of already figured, in fact, before we even set off, that it would be futile to try to describe such a well known travel destination, or even to photograph what’s been photographed so many, many times by professionals.

What was unique about our trip to Oahu, then, was something Dat-and-Gwen-centric: the additional evidence that we make a good team.

WARNING: FRUITY, SMURFY, SACCHARINE WORDS AHEAD.

Part of the reason my boyfriend fiance husband and I get along is our shared ideas about adventure: 1) We like to have “adventures.” 2) We find adventure in little things.

Late one night, a couple of years back, the Houston freeway known as 290 was closed for repairs. That’s our normal route home. Our alternative was a long, parallel, four-lane road called Hempstead.

Hempstead is one of those industrial roads that’s mainly frequented by 18-wheelers. So it’s not only lined with giant metal buildings full of giant hunks of metal, but also the occasional pancake house and strip club.

When you drive down Hempstead in the wee hours of the night, you’ll see that a few of the buildings are lit up and full of moving machinery, and so presumably full of men who eat pancake specials and give parts of their paychecks to strippers. If you like, you can peer into the buildings, analyze the vehicles in their parking lots, and imagine all sorts of stories.

From the middle of Houston to the edge, it’s a long ride down Hempstead. We rode slow and silent for quite a few minutes before Dat pointed out, “We’re on an adventure.”

“I was just about to tell you that!” I said. Because I really was. Because we’re always on adventures, me and Dat.

So imagine us as those two people, but riding down a freeway under mimosas the size of mainland oaks and trees that dangle mangoes, in our rental car that was upgraded to a convertible for cheap. Imagine us walking down beaches full of tourists from all over the world, as well as locals of every flavor. Every other person there has a story – some that they told us and some that we had to construct on our own. And everyone has cameras, and you get to see what they think is important to capture with them. And then you trade cameras with strangers and hope for the best. Even when they can’t frame a shot for crap, it’s a memory preserved for you.

Memories preserved in me, all jumbled on a page:

Oahu = very beautiful plants, mountains and shoreline surrounding thousands of structures from the ‘70s and older, all peppered with tiny slivers of new-new expensive stores and rentals.

Every single person there is mixed or in a mixed couple, and it’s the only place I’ve ever been where absolutely no one gave us a second glance for being a Caucasian chick with an Asian guy. We were even mistaken for locals, once by an irate tourist seeking King’s Hawaiian bread and once by a snooty salesman in the Ala Moana shopping mall. I felt like I was in the idealized future of my fantasies, where everyone is mixed and no one can hate people based on ethnicity. And it really seemed that no one in Oahu did. But it was more than just that – all the locals were well versed in multiple cultures. And they were all obviously proud of their fellow peeps. It was beautiful.

Everyone asks how the sushi was, and we never even tried it. We didn’t get the chance. Mostly we ate in Chinatown, where the merchants were having a contest to see who could offer the cheapest dim sum. Everyone there spoke Cantonese (even the Vietnamese people) but told us they were learning Mandarin. They have “bubble tea” there, but it’s mostly bubble slushies. Our cha siu = their char siu. Our dried plums = their li hing. Chow fun = look fun. Red bean = “black sugar” or azuki bean. Yellow bean = non-existent. But everything was good and fresh – especially the plates including ginger. A lot of the restaurants used noodles from the one noodle factory that still made them by hand. And they were so, so good. I never appreciated chow fun until I ate it in Honolulu, y’all.

The way all signs in Houston are in both English and Spanish? Is the way all signs in Honolulu are in English and Japanese. All the employees at the mall spoke Japanese. All the Japanese people carried LeSportsac bags, and you could get the knock-offs of them in Chinatown.

Locals in Oahu seemed to come in two sizes: manapua-eating size, and surfing-all-day size. Guess which size I’d be if I lived there? Yeah. Hawaiian food is sweet and rich. I normally love sweet/rich food, but the Hawaiians had me beat with their sweet fried chicken and their two-starch plate lunches and the buttery, buttery fried sandwich bread. No, we didn’t try poi, because we didn’t go to any luaus. The McDonalds in Hawaii Kai advertised fried taro pie, but no, I didn’t try one. I was too stuffed with coconut manapuas (kinda like round kolaches or baked bao) and the hole-less Portuguese donuts called malasadas. No, we didn’t try the shrimp trucks. I feel like we disappointed everyone back home with the fact that we skipped the tour-book stuff and mostly ate Chinese food. But it was good, so I don’t care.

The groceries and gasoline weren’t much more expensive than in Houston. Only a few random things, like orange juice, were expensive. They sold hard liquor in the grocery stores. They sold Japanese candy at every drugstore. The Wal-Mart was a little more expensive and had less selection than Texas Wal-Marts. (Yes, we went to the Wal-Mart just to see if it was different from our Wal-Mart.) The Old Navy, however, was exactly the same. Stores with only Japanese stuff were 3,000 times more expensive than the other stores. The sales tax was, like, 0.0001%.

That’s all. I’ll stop here because it sounds like I’m obsessed with food and ethnicity and money, I know. But I don’t know how else to describe what we did there. I mean, we spent most of the time driving around the edges of the island in our rented convertible, saying “Oooooh!” and “What if we lived there? Or what if we lived there?” and “OMG, can you imagine if that was your elementary school?” and clicking zillions of pics of everything that’s been photographed a million times before.

And being on the beaches, beaches, beaches that, no matter how much better or worse they are in relation to each other, were all five gazillion times better than our Gulf of Mexico’s. Hours and hours just staring at the clarity of the water and wanting to cry over it. Marveling over the rocks and the vicious undertow. Holding up handfuls of sand to each other and picking out our favorite individual grains.

And, you know. Having adventures together. Incidentally being in love. I can’t describe it better than that. I can only say that I can’t wait until we do it again.

Because we will, some day.