Oh yeah? Well, when I was your age...

My 11 year old son is bored.

"There's nothing to do", he wails, drawing out the "o" until he's completely out of breath, stretching and kvetching simultaneously. It's 8pm on a warm, summer night. He returned just a few hours ago from four days at our lake house, riding horses, kayaking, swimming, and fishing. Now he's bored.

I can't help it. It frustrates me. "Jack," I say, ordering myself to speak in a conversational tone, "we've got a basketball hoop, ping pong, PS3, a computer..." "I know mom!" he sounds as exasperated as I feel, "I don't feel like any of those things. I want to do something!" (How is it that these things don't constitute doing?) He proceeds to use the family room couch as a gymnastics mat, a trampoline, a...anything other than a device for sitting.

And then it happens. My mouth opens, and before I can stop myself, I become my mother.

"Do you know when I was your age we weren't even allowed to sit inside on a summer day? We spent the whole day outside! From morning until the street lamps came on at night!" Do I stop there? Oh no, I have to make my point! "The only kids' shows on tv were a couple of cartoons (albeit really great cartoons), and they were only on Saturday mornings! Between 8 and 10am! You have got it good, my friend. I wish I'd had what you've got!"

Jack's eyes roll to the back of his head. He gives me the look I used to give my mom when she'd tell me how hard her childhood had been. How they didn't have toys, and they had to play dolls with plastic soap bottles, or some such nonsense.

"Hey Jack," his older brother calls from across the room, "wanna play basketball?" Jack jumps off the couch and races to the garage door. Not nearly as much from an immediate desire for the game, I realize, as an immediate desire to end our one-sided conversation.

My mom was a teacher. So not only did this mean that she always (except for once, when I was in the fourth grade) took the teacher's side, but she was also off during the summers. I have great memories of trips to the public library, reading lists, lounging at the pool. But I'm sure, she thought of this as not only my summer break, but hers, too. And she would probably have liked a day or two to herself. Because as wonderful as my memories might be, I'm quite sure I belted out a few "I'm bored!"'s myself (wait till she reads this, I can just hear the comments!).

But I digress...my son wore himself out playing basketball and slept soundly until about 8 o'clock this morning when I heard "Mom?" (here it comes), "what are we doing today?"

There remain nine, long weeks of summer. What are your kids doing to beat the boredom?

Pain In the...Back?

The last two call outs for stories from Chicken Soup didn't suit me very well. One was for a book about weddings; planning your wedding, wedding days, etc.

I've been divorced for three years.

The next one was looking for stories from people who are caregivers to elderly family members. A great idea for a book, I think. Just not a topic (fortunately) I have experience with.

But I digress, another call-out showed up in my inbox yesterday. This one is for a new title they will be publishing in May 2012. The book will be focused on how to handle back pain, whether occasional or chronic. They've teamed up with a Havard Med School doctor who will provide medical facts for the book. They're looking for stories from those of us who have suffered or continue to suffer from back pain. Now THIS (unfortunately) is something I do know a great deal about. I'd tell you more, but I think I'll save it for my submission.

Some suggested topics for the book (these came straight from my email):

• How your back problems started
• How you felt/feel physically and emotionally; what were/are your symptoms
• What you have done to reclaim your daily life despite the back pain
• What treatments you have pursued, both successful and unsuccessful
• What advice would you give to fellow back pain sufferers
• How you have used your mind to help you with your back
• How you have adjusted your life to accommodate your back
• Silver linings
• And any other topic you think would be helpful to someone else in your position

Hey, if you've had to deal with the pain, you might as well get something good out of it!

SUBMISSIONS GO TO http://chickensoup.com Select the Submit Your Story link on the left tool bar and follow the directions. Submission deadline is July 31, 2011. Good luck...and happy writing!

Do you hear that racket?

There is as cacophony in my head. Drums pounding to the rhythm of my heart, stress pumping through my veins to the beat of the blinking cursor on my blank page. With each thuh-thump, a new series of words courses: tuition payments, gas prices, career success, summer schedules, editors' deadlines, essay topics, tweets, blog posts...the list goes on and on. I am feeling a sense of overload. How can I feel so...busy...when it seems as though nothing's getting done?

I was driving between my office and the park for boot camp yesterday when suddenly the racket got so loud it distracted me from my own thoughts. What the...? Then a fat, brown, winged bug hit my windshield and bounced off. Half a dozen more were zooming past the row of traffic ahead of me.

Then I realized that buzzing cadence in my head had gone external - the cicadas in the county are louder than my own humming stress.

I was cutting the lawn last weekend when I felt a hundred pairs of eyes on me. Bug eyes. They were all over my cedar fence. I don't know if they are always this brown color, or if they camouflage themselves, but I couldn't see them at all until I was pushing the lawn mower right up against the fence. It was like a cheap horror flick!

But I digress, at least those damn bugs'll be gone in another two weeks. Then I'll be left with the pulsing rhythm of my own deadlines. And maybe that's a good thing. It drives me to get things done, and to sit up and take notice when things aren't getting accomplished.

Time to focus on finishing up those three essays in my "WIP" (work in progress) folder...

Tweeting for Two

I’ve been looking into an iPhone app that will allow me to tweet to two different twitter accounts. I’m tired of logging into one, tweeting, maybe copying a tweet, then logging out, logging back in under my second account, etc. I can’t be the only one with this dilemma.

Certainly not. I have a personal twitter account. And I manage my company’s twitter account. I also have a blog, geared towards my own freelance writing. In this post-recession world, it’s par for the course to have an employer, work for yourself and manage a social network or two on a personal level. If I can speak from a woman’s perspective for a moment: It’s something we have known for many years. We are mothers, we are employees, we are employers, students, teachers. We are talented and driven, insisting that we can (still) have it all. Hell, many of us need to have it all, lest we can’t afford the rent now that we’ve been laid off, or our hours have been cut, or we are finding ourselves in a one-income household (read: divorced) with kids heading towards college (read: tuition).

So, we’ve created a brand for ourselves. A personal brand on Facebook, where we post comments about our kids, our social lives, our weekends, our hobbies. Then when the economy started to tank, we put our skills to work. For me, that meant writing resumes and cover letters for friends and family. It also meant the small freelance writing career I’d started on the side years ago was suddenly booming, as corporations let go of entire departments to save overhead and turned to folks like me to help them get things done. Compared to a full-time employee with a full-time salary and benefits, I am the perfect solution. An hourly rate paid on a project-by-project basis, no overhead, no bennies.

This blog overlaps my personal and freelance professional worlds: I write journal-style about my life as a mom and a writer. I don’t, however, crossover into marketing territory, preferring to leave that to my full-time career as an Account Manager with a small marketing agency. Not only do I manage clients and projects, but I also handle our agency’s social media footprint, recently adding a Twitter account to the repertoire.

Hence, the search for a Twitter app that will allow me to kill two birds (I can't help it, these puns just write themselves) with one stone.

Is it important that I keep these worlds separate? Or does my name become synonymous with both my agency life and my freelance life? The marketer in me is not as well known as the writer, the mom. Can these worlds combine? Do I begin blogging on communication, not only as it relates to parenting and writing, but as it relates to marketers and brands? Or is it time to start a new, third blog?

But I digress...I did find the app I was looking for in Twitbird. Two accounts simultaneously – and free! Looks like I might need to upgrade to Twitbird Pro – that should hold me…until I reach the 16 accounts limit. Yes, I am a marketer. I am a writer. I am a mom. I love each of these parts, each of these personas, and just like a good brand can not market using one format (read: facebook) alone, neither can (or should) I. Because all of these parts of me add up to one person with a great deal to offer. And if I can do it all with a little bit of grace and style, and not too much stress overload, then why not?

Walk With Me

“Walk with me?” my mom asks as she laces up her Reeboks and grabs the dog’s leash. My mom had been walking nightly for a few months, in addition to the Jane Fonda tapes she’d forced herself to sweat through a few times a week. Occasionally I’d join her as she’d bend and twist with Ms. Fonda, grunting and swearing under her breath. I’m sure it didn’t help that my young, thin frame could bend every which way, and hold a pose while I ate a slice of pizza.

I’d walk with her sometimes, too, my pace a bit faster in an effort to keep up with her long legs. After a few minutes of walking in companionable silence, we’d start to talk. About school (mine, as a student, hers, as a teacher), homework, friends and anything else that was on either of our minds.

It was the early 80s and things were changing across the country and in our home. Thriller was the album of the year, President Reagan was shot, the AIDS epidemic made it into the U.S., and my parents were getting divorced. Jane Fonda and Reeboks provided a safe outlet for some unwanted change heading into my teen years.

As I focused on high school dances, weekend mixers, and which Benetton sweater looked best with my Docksiders, my mom continued her walks. Our relationship was going through the rocky path of a teenage girl trying to find her own way, one preferably far from her mothers’. Joining her on her walks was something I did less and less. She continued to ask though, just like always. “Going for a walk, Beth…” she’d leave it open-ended.

If I was angry with her, my refusal to join her stood as a reminder of my growing independence, my ability to tell her no, and maybe, sometimes, even to hurt her. There were times, though, when she’d walk out the door and I’d feel guilty. I’d wait a few minutes, until I knew she’d made it to the top of the street and turned the corner, heading towards the main road. Then I’d run through the back yard and take the shortcut through the woods, coming out on the sidewalk just behind her. My mom would pretend not to see me, and I’d pretend I’d been there all along. But we both knew, once our strides lined up, that everything was okay again.

Every night, season after season, year after year, she walked. Old age took our beloved dog, and I earned my coveted driver’s license, but still mom walked.

She walked through my engagement and marriage, the birth of my three kids, my separation and later divorce, six college degrees, (five hers, one mine), and her own career changes.

Looking back now, as a mother of three, I realize that those walks weren’t taken just for her physical health. She walked – and still does – to clear her head, to take a short reprieve from the demands of a busy, single-parent household. And she invited me on those walks not just for companionship, but as a way to get me talking, to keep us connected in ways that became more difficult as I grew up – and apart.

As a single parent myself, I know about needing a time-out from the daily grind. I know about needing to clear my head, and about wanting to stay connected to my own three kids, who are growing faster than I can keep up. So I lace up my own walking shoes and turn to them. “Walk with me?” I ask the room at large. My daughter takes my hand. And we do.