I was born again because of Ross.

This is a story about a bicycle, and the power a bicycle had over my life when I was about 21 years old.

His name was Ross (yes, he was a he) and I first laid eyes on him when I was dog sitting for my Aunt Shirley, who lived next door to my Nana and Papa in Brant, N.Y.

Brant, N.Y. is one town over from North Collins, and it is where all my mother's relatives live. Most of them live on Brant-North Collins Road, a winding, rural, two-lane stretch that cuts through Southeastern Erie County. It is also the same road I grew up on five miles north of my Nana, my Aunt Shirley, my Uncle Joe, my Aunt Helen and so on ...

By the time Brant-North Collins Road gets to my house it is called Langford Road.

Once you pass my house, Langford Road drops down a hill, runs past Crances Superette, past Aaron Skora's house, past the Friedman farmhouse, past Fox Road and the New Oregon Church and ends in a valley, where two brothers named Ed and Mike Snashall used to live.

For the purpose of this story, I will call Langford Road Route 249, which is its official Department of Transportation designation.

Save for high-speed traffic and the usual blind spots, Route 249 is a perfect road for cycling, and its paths through the towns of Farnham, Brant and North Collins have not changed since 1935.

Ross was the first bicycle I pedaled on Route 249 that didn't have training wheels. He was a clunker of a 10-speed I spotted hanging upside down from ceiling rafters in Aunt Shirley's basement. The only fetching thing about Ross was was that under the dust, he actually had a brand name. See here. And here. 

The day I handed my aunt $25, I pedaled Ross home and pledged out loud to my mother that I would bike at every opportunity until I dropped 25 pounds. 

(A side note: At 21 I weighed 25 pounds more than I do now, which is what happens when you party in the woods at 17, 18, 19 and 20.)

Beer-belly up and feeling pretty shitty about it, I stuck to my plan.

Ross and I were inseparable. He was rusty and so was I, and we welded together like fuzzy blue corrosion. He was a boy bike and therefore had the boy-bike bar, and I didn't mind that I had a circa-1983 boy bike with a chain that required so much grease I would go to bed with oil skids on my calves. I only cringed when Ross would, without warning, switch gears every time I stood up to pedal. 

Clunk-clunk. 

But even that was OK, as I bragged to friends that I had found myself the only automatic transmission bicycle in town. 

"You're like a born-again biker," said Ro (the best friend.)

And I was totally evangelical about cycling. I'm certain I logged 300 miles on Ross in one summer. I worked as a recreation director at a day camp four miles from home, and I'd bike it nearly every day with a lock box that contained the day's lunch money on my back - 15 pounds in dimes, nickels and quarters.

Just for the hell of it, I would pedal 30 miles into the suburbs listening to the usual mixed tapes. Ani DiFranco. Indigo Girls. Counting Crows. George Clinton. When the A side would end, I'd flip it to B. Often on these 30-mile rides I would have to flip a tape three times.

A couple months in I recruited Ro, who I forced up Route 249 in 95-degree heat, holding her water bottle out like a carrot, taunting her with it until she reached the top of the hill. It was, she says, the worst and the best motivation she ever endured.

When fall came I was 15 pounds lighter and totally addicted to the road. Sometimes, when I reached the top of a steep one I would cry, not out of frustration but out of a profound sense of accomplishment. And sometimes, on those long even stretches, I would belt out whatever song I was listening to on my mother's little yellow Walkman and glare maniacally at slack-jawed, bug-eyed truck drivers as they banged past. 

When winter came I insisted on pedaling through light snowfall. December air is intoxicating and I used to pop a peppermint candy before a long December ride just to heighten the taste. 

When January came and the air howled through my ears, I would wear a headband to cushion the stabs. And when eventually, inevitably, snow would blanket my town, I would pout about how I couldn't wait to move to Florida, where I would bike every day.

But of course that didn't happen. I moved here in the fall of 2004, 25 pounds lighter and with a Schwinn bicycle I bought a year after pedaling Ross from one end of Western New York to other. 

The Schwinn cost me close to $300, and though it took me on a 65-mile ride around Lake Chautauqua in Upstate NY, and across the state of Rhode Island for a last-hurrah trip Ro and I planned the summer before I left for Florida, it lacked Ross' depth of character. It didn't have an automatic transmission. It's paint wasn't peeling and and it didn't have a name. It was of course, totally tricked out with a tachometer, dual water bottles, a flashing rear light and gel seat, and shortly after I moved to Sarasota it was stolen outside of the Selby Public Library.

Lucky for my waistline, I never chunked on the 25 pounds I lost from three years of devout cycling. And yet the road fever is extinguished. I've tried since to rekindle it (by assuming that if bought a nicer Schwinn it would return) but the compulsion to blaze 30 miles in one day has yet to sock me. 

Until now.  

Two stolen Schwinns later, I'm back at Square One with a $40 Target bike, trying to explain to Joe how important it is that he ride with me.

He's making headway. Slowly. 

Which is another story for another day ...

--

PS. Bicycle photograph by Julie Frame. For more of her work click here. To purchase photographs click here.

Once again, a bum is right.

I won't bury the lead here, or wait until the end to mention that we got the house.

And as always with me, the day I was told our final offer was accepted, I kind of already knew.

While walking my pug Thursday morning, a man on a bicycle called out to me, "Excuse me m'am."

Noticing his body was buckling under backpacks and a bed roll, I paid special attention, as homeless men and I share a kinship.

"Yes?"I asked.

"What is your name?" The man on the bicycle asked.

So I told him mine and the pug told him his.

"You're blessed today," he said. "You are beautiful and today is beautiful. Good things come to you today."

And I said, thanks. And he said, good day.

Now. Had I not mentioned this story to Joe upon immediately entering the apartment, I fear he would have outright said I was lying, when later that afternoon, after a lunch interview in Sarasota, my phone rang and Joe said, "We got the house."

And like I said, I kind of already knew, so after squealing, "WHAT? WE GOT IT?" I lowered my voice and said, "Well, I suppose the bum already knew, right?"

And Joe agreed. He's used to things like this by now. We all have guardian angels. I have bum angels and if you ask me, Joe is damn lucky to have a girlfriend with bum angels. Especially in St. Pete, where bums abound.

And so our conversation took a turn, not in the direction of bum premonitions, but in the direction of total baffled shocked. After back-and-forth negotiations this week, we never expected the homeowner to accept our final offer. We were still $18,000 apart. Sure Realtor Randy gave us hope, what with his positive percentages and all. But $18,000 is still a pretty big unflushable turd, if you know what I mean ... or at least it's a turd to be reckoned with.

Cynical journalists. We were still not convinced. Even me, the hopeful one, the dreamy one, the one with bum angels at her fingertips. Even I was not convinced.

So after work we met up with Realtor Randy at The Ale House in St. Pete, where he said he'd be sitting in full Philly Eagles regalia watching a preseason game at the bar.

When we got there we were still so unconvinced that neither one of us felt compelled to order a beer.

"C'mon! Order a round," Randy insisted.

"Nah," Joe said and I shrugged.

"You guys just bought a house. Get yourselves a beer!" He cheered, throwing his own giant stein in the air.

"We'll celebrate when we're at our kitchen table," we replied.

Randy shot Joe a look. The kind of look that said, dude I carted your ass all over St. Pete for two months looking at houses. We find one. The guy accepts your crappy offer and now we're at a bar, signing the final offer and you disrespect me, your devoted Realtor, by denying one celebratory beer?

We could not get past the fact that no one runs away with Florida real estate, not even in 2008. Begrudgingly we each ordered a brewski, and by the time the last line was signed in Randy's stack of Keller Williams paperwork, we were both feeling good and celebratory.

Later that night while grocery shopping at Publix, I noticed that Joe reached for the cheapest, smallest can of bread crumbs.

"You never buy that little can," I said.

"We're homeowners now. We're going to be poor for awhile." He said.

I smiled and clicked my heels. In my head of hopeful girly bubble thoughts, I catalogued this moment under The Most Rousing Line Of The Night and proceeded to the check-out.

--

PS. The illustration above is by New York City artist Kelly Mudge. To purchase this hauntingly excellent painting click here.

Patience & chance.

When the Property Appraiser asks you earlier in the day if you know what time the election results will be in, you know it's a hairy race.

My coworker Kyle is in the Supervisor of Elections media room waiting for votes to be tabulated, as I sit at a downtown diner waiting for him to phone me with results. We could be here for awhile. This is, after all Florida, and inevitably the system will snag on some 5,000 votes, providing endless fodder for newspaper columnists tomorrow.

Kyle and I have been profiling political candidates for months now. Public defenders. School Board candidates. County commissioners. Sheriff candidates. Hospital board members. State legislators. When I was assigned my first interview six months ago it was with an assistant public defender vying for his boss' seat, and I thought I'd keel over from boredom. 

And now, sitting at Word of Mouth Cafe on Osprey Avenue, eating a Mediterranean salad, surrounded by the usual retried foursomes, I think I finally have a grasp on two things - patience and chance.

If interviewing politicians taught me anything this year, it's that some things are out of our hands. We campaign like dogs, then wait for someone else to decide our fate. It's a control freak's worst nightmare. 

Joe and I bid on our second house last night. When we got home from work, Realtor Randy was waiting at our apartment with a folder stuffed with cryptic paperwork ready to be signed.

To reassure us that our lowballer wasn't a complete joke, he said there was a 95 percent chance the homeowner would counteroffer and 25 percent chance he'd accept the bid straightaway. Since the first house we bid on prompted Randy to snort,"1 percent if you're lucky," Joe and I decided these were promising percentages.

Since we weren't so lucky the first time, we expanded our house hunt further north in St. Pete; prowled neighborhoods that weren't Old Northeast. Old Northeast, we determined, was a great place to live if you were a 50-year-old dentist who smoked pot. So we jotted down dozens of new addresses. Some of them on napkins I pulled from Joe's glove box.

The first time we drove past the house we bid on yesterday, I pooh-poohed it. It had no front porch - a deception that Randy later translated into Realtor Language for me: "It has no curb appeal." 

Parked outside the place, I scoffed, "It has no nose."

"Yeah," Joe concurred. "It's nothing special."

But I wrote down the address anyway (out of habit), and when I compiled a list of prospective homes I inadvertently e-mailed Randy the listing that night.

We've toured the home twice now and even though Joe's father, an attorney, warned us that we should never ever get emotionally attached to a house we do not own, we couldn't help but be optimistic about Randy's percentages - 25 percent/95 percent.  Together they equal 120 percent!

So we fell asleep last night dreadfully optimistic, gabbing about how we'd furnish our office, how we'd carry our kayak two blocks to the bay, how my father would help us build a porch, how nice it would be to finally have a kitchen table. Given our addiction to caffeine, we snickered about how suitable it would be to live in a neighborhood called Coffee Pot Park.

Joe called earlier today to let me know that the homeowner countered our offer with a number higher than what we're willing to pay. So I guess the next step is to counter the counteroffer. 

It's a volley. Our Realtor bumps an offer. His Realtor bumps it back. We tell Randy when to spike and the homeowner tells his Realtor, "Don't touch it. It's out of bounds." 

Joe says this is how countries go to war. It's maddening that we can't communicate on our own. 

Ah ... Who knows if we'll get this place. The 12-year incumbent Property Appraiser is, as I type this, losing his race. 

I can't stand when things are indeterminable. 

--

PS. The illustration above is by Portland, Ore. artist a.t. whim. Check out her shop. She rocks. (Note: Her Aug. 16 blog about her adopted pug, Alice B. Toklas.)

My favorite things are so much better than Oprah's.

Favorite sad love scene: Faubourg Saint-Denis from the movie Paris, je t'aime

Favorite ice cream: Dippin' Dots

Favorite lighting: Strings of fat white bulbs like those in Olive Garden

Favorite Canuck band: The Arcade Fire

Favorite Hollywood dog relationship: Adam Sandler & Meatball

Favorite imported coffee: Timmy Ho's

Favorite radio show host with a pleasing voice: Howard Stern

Favorite radio show host with a grating voice: NPR's Ira Glass from This American Life

Favorite Tampa Bay news anchor to wake up to: Ginger Gadsden

Favorite inappropriate T-shirt that I own: I ♥ Camel Toe

PK With a Vengeance

After two months, my sister PK got a job. She's working at a preschool during the day and an Italian restaurant at night. I never see her anymore.

She moved in with my friend/coworker Kyle in Sarasota and, as illustrated by this photo, she has her own bathroom.

She's decidedly less gung-ho in spirit than when she first moved here. See June 10.

Without further ado, here's PK Part II.

But first, a word from her roommate:

"I tell her it's like living with my mom, which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing because I love and miss my mom."

Aww.

--

How did you spend your last two months?
It varied. Sometimes I’d have an interview so I’d come back, clean the house, go to the beach, come back and cook dinner.

Was this a positive experience for you?
I loved it.

Even though you freaked out every night because you didn’t have a job?
Even though I freaked out I loved it. Despite the stress of not having a job, it made me realize that I will make the best housewife. It is my true ambition.

Have you taken any steps toward that ambition?
Um. Are you kidding me? The steps would be to try to find my Prince Charming, but obviously that’s not happening.

Why?
Because I realized I’m the oldest 22-year old on the planet.

What about that one guy who took you to the Rays game?
Asshole. He was the most immature 26-year old I ever met. I told you what he told me.

What was that?
That I’m an effing tease.

And how did you respond?
I told him, ‘I didn’t intend to lead you on. I’m sorry if I did.'

And then you hung up the phone?
Basically.

Have you heard from him since?
He tried calling me and I didn’t pick up.

You like living with Kyle?
Yes. We’re both sort of … I don’t want to say dorky. We both sort of just find stupid things funny. We make each other laugh.

And you have your own bathroom with a yellow theme?
Yes.

What do you enjoy most about your new independence?
Coming and going as you please. Not always … you know having Dad be like, where you ram-rodding to? And Mom … you know how Mom would say it: ‘You just came home and you’re already going again? It would be nice if you spent one night home.'

Do you miss mom’s cooking?
Yes certain things. But lately she was catering more to Dad’s likings than mine. I’m not one for a chuck roast. You know what I mean. ‘Oh would you like me to make you something else, because I’m making your father a chuck roast.'

How do you like my bed? Entertained any gentleman callers in it?
UGH. I don’t plan on it either I don’t have any health insurance. A man might sit on my bed because there’s no place else to sit in the house, but there hasn’t been any physical activity if that’s what you’re looking for.

Have you discovered any favorite Sarasota places?
I like the Publix that’s nearby.

The one on Ringling?
Yeah. I discovered it after work one day. I fell in love with it the minute I walked in.

People call that the ghetto Publix.
Maybe that’s why I liked it. I’ve got the ghetto ass.

You do.
And the cashier was this big mama. And she was the friendliest, nicest cashier ever.

How I spent my summer Faycation

I ran into Ian (remember him?) Tuesday morning in Sarasota near the downtown mermaid fountain a few hours before Hurricane Fay was supposed to ravage Sarasota.

I asked Ian, "Where will you stay in the event of a hurricane?"

And Ian said, "Come here. Come closer. Let me tell you something. There are some people in this town who would get offended by that question. Having said that, the question isn't, 'where will I stay in the event of a hurricane?' The question is, 'why isn't the hurricane here?'"

Ian went on to outline some kind of Matrix-esque theory about the cosmos - essentially his version of Murphy's Law. How puppets anticipate things. Not people. How government and newspapers are puppet masters. And how, if I were to sit on a bench wearing the Santa pajamas pants I was wearing when I approached him, how HE should be the one to ask ME where I'm staying in the event of a hurricane. 

So I looked down at my Santa hammer pants, which belonged to my friend Ricci before she moved to Africa, and I suddenly thought: touche Ian. I look like a slob. You look like a slob. For all anyone knows, we're a street couple.

So I backed away slowly and let him rant some more about his being a scientist and a journalist, and how some people say he looks like Jesus when he wears a headband. Feeling like an asshole for reminding him that he was homeless, I said, "I'm gonna skedaddle, Ian. But can I take your picture first?"

And he said, "Wait. No. Not without my headband." 

So he grabbed his headband and his ball cap, laughing like Muttley because Jesus didn't wear a ball cap. And I snapped his picture, waved goodbye, headed back to PK and Kyle's house and promptly took a shower and changed my pants.  

I was instructed by my editors to hunker down in Sarascrotum for the night and to be prepared to churn out a series of bang-up stories chronicling the destruction. Our publisher even pushed deadlines back a day to accommodate the coverage. 

Since all downtown offices were closed, all government offices were closed, Sarasota County schools were closed, stores windows boarded up and bottled water sold out, I ate leftover Chinese takeout, parked myself on the porch and invented "Fay" puns for the newspaper.

Should I Fay or should I go?

Oh Faymate. Come out and Fay with me.  

Would you like me to put the storm on fay-away?

Do not disoFay me!

My Western New Yorker friend Sam and his wife Beth were staying at a resort on Sanibel Island near Fort Myers, when the storm was scheduled to make its first Florida landfall. Around 10:30 a.m. I received an e-mail from Sam that went something like:

"Last night we were evacuated from the island. As non-residents we are not cool enough to weather the storm. I am pretty sure this state is full of wimps. I generate more of a storm surge when I take a leak in the toilet. We were going to venture out to the Bass Pro Outdoor World, but they are not open ... even though they sell survival gear. Anyway, I strapped on my rain suit and went out to try and make it look bad outside. Here are some pics. The coffee here is OK and I didn't lose my swizel stick."

If anyone has good storm photos (and this goes for the New York readers, the Kansas readers, the Colorado readers, the Missouri readers, the West Africa readers, the New Mexico readers, the UK readers, the Germany readers ...) please email them to blog.lance@gmail.com. In the meantime here's my sister Heelya in our backyard after a blizzard in North Collins, NY. 

    

Meet Pete.

Pete sits at at the bus stop on the corner of 8th Avenue and 2nd Street in my St. Pete neighborhood. I pass him nearly every evening when I'm walking the pug.

He's always pounding cans of Natural Ice, wearing a blue Dilmah Tea cap and white tee-shirt.

I walked past Pete today at 7 p.m. and I asked him, "Do you think we're gonna get this hurricane?"

And Pete said, "Nahhh. Ain't even gonna rain."

"They say it's calmest just before the storm."

"Yeah," said Pete. "I heard that before."

"Are you waiting for the bus?"

"Nahhh. Just drinking beer."

"So this is your hangout?"

"Yeah. I'm not allowed to drink at home."

Pete is very smiley and loves my pug. He likes to alert me to the fact that there are several pugs in the neighborhood.

He lives at a halfway house on 2nd Street, where he's not allowed to drink. So he sits at the bus stop around the corner with two 4-packs of Natty Ice from CVS.

He said he likes Natty Ice because, "it has the most amount of alcohol," - 5.9 percent to be exact, a figure he repeated twice for effect. 

There's a Bucs game on tonight. He said he was pre-gaming. 

On the subject of hurricanes ...

I'll be in Sarascrotum Monday night covering Fay. The last time I covered a hurricane the only property damage I could find was an overturned port-a-potty. Stay tuned for spillage and storm surge. 

Roots

I'm frustrated and tired. I'm wringing my hands and drowning in the sound of Gordon Lightfoot. My pug is asleep next to me, with a pug baby clasped between his paws. He's snoring, and I'm wearing Joe's noise-canceling headphones.

In my living room, Bob Costas is commenting on Olympic marathon runners. Olympic marathon runners with bodies like spaghetti strings are running through my living room.

Today, Joe and I embarked on Home Tour No. 4 with Realtor Randy. And I must admit, I'm decidedly less starry-eyed than when we began this housecapade two months ago.

Of the two of us, I'm the hopeful one. Not Joe. He's the cynic. But today it was me who spent the duration of our real estate look-see with my hands on my hips and a bitchy scowl across my face.

My friend Liz, who reads this blog, wrote me an e-mail recently that said:

"After three weeks of my own house hunting, I found one. I put in an offer and wouldn't you know, it's been accepted. I'm gonna be a homeowner. One of my many dreams is actually going to come true. It's a ranch in the Lakeview Wanakah area off Route 5. I'm scared, excited and nervous all at the same time."

Congrats Liz. I take this as a sign that a house with four walls and a functioning shitter is bound to come my way soon. It's always excellent to hear from you.

(Liz and I played soccer together in high school. We were both forwards. Liz had better aim than me and was faster and more sprite-ly, but we worked in tandem for years, both on and off the soccer field. We were first clarinet chairs in band; clarinet partners until the day we graduated high school. Band geeks really. When all our friends decided they were too cool for band, we begrudgingly stayed the course.)

So why the sourpuss?

Buying a home is a huge emotional undertaking. For me it means planting roots, the likes of which I've not been very good at.

I can't help but picture a big old grandaddy tree when I picture the physical act of home-buying. Say what you will about the ease of buying and selling, and how your first house aint your last house. Buying a house means planting your ass somewhere for more than a year, and let's face it: I've not planted my ass for more than a year anywhere since leaving New York four years ago.

In my Oma's address book, in the spot where my name is written, Oma has five different addresses scribbled, four of which are scribbled out:

Heron's Run Drive, Hawkins Court, Osprey Avenue, Pattison Avenue and now 8th Avenue.

An address has it's own heartbeat. Arteries that run from your place to amenities. Veins that run from your place to neighbors. All of my Florida addresses have had their fair share of veins and arteries. Previous to playing musical apartments, I spent 22 years in one bedroom. The arteries were longer, fewer and more likely to clot in North Collins, which is why I moved.

Granted home buying and apartment-leasing aren't that different. Both mean staking out a spot on some street, on some corner on some dead end - your own earthly space in some earthly town - where at night stray cats moan and homeless men wander, where across the street when no one is watching, the cook from a Chinese restaurant dumps used vegetable oil in a dumpster, where Starbucks serves $5 Frappachinos and where Chipotle serves cheap burritos and guacamole.

It's just a bigger commitment, and other than my pledge last year to go fishing every Saturday morning at 8 a.m., I've never had problems making commitments. It's the owning-property-in-Florida bit that's got me going batty. Owning a house in the Sunshine State wasn't a part of my master plan.

We all have neuroses. Veering off course is mine.

I did a Google search for my hometown the other day and I came across this essay I wrote my junior year at Buffalo State College. My first thought upon reading my standard preachy prose was: Jesus H! What a hung-up old biddy I am. I've changed so little, it's ridiculous. I'm still making a fuss over some kind of rural paradise.

It's sick, folks. If you get your hands on my diaries from ages 9 through 18, you'd piss your pants reading things like: "By the time I'm 22, I want to be in Florida writing for a newspaper. By the time I'm 23, I want a pug. By the time I'm 25, I want to be writing a book."

Old souls die hard. Take this sentence from that same college essay:

"I was a sarcastic kid who thought my life was a big Jeff Foxworthy joke."

This was me at 19. And I tell you what, I'm not that different. Ask my parents. The only difference was ... well, I never once wrote about home-buying in a diary. Truth be told I had no idea where I'd land.

So to quell my anxiety I consulted with John Steinbeck, whose observations have always resonated with me.

This passage is from Travels with Charley:

"I had promised my youngest son to say good-bye in passing his school at Deerfield, Massachusetts, but I got there too late to arouse him, so I drove up the mountain and found a dairy, bought some milk, and asked permission to camp under an apple tree. The dairy man had a Ph. D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the very few contended people I met in my whole journey."

I was lying on my stomach in bed around midnight when I started this post. The A/C in the apartment was turning my toes into ice cubes, and Joe, to heat me up, had brought me in a cup of hot coffee. As he turned to leave he blew me a kiss, which filled me with a kind of red mercury that anyone who has ever been in love, is familiar with. And I sipped from the coffee I was holding and re-read the Steinbeck passage I was typing, and determined that what I was looking for I couldn't seek.

Contentment is as exotic an adventure as any. I never wrote about contentment in diaries. I think from this point on I will.

--

PS. The illustration above is by Boston, Mass. artist Karen Preston. For more of her work click here.

Nana barked.

This is the latest letter I received in the mail from my Nana. She wrote it on a piece of bark that fell from her birch tree:

Hi Heidi -

Oh yes, it's me again!

How about that I found this piece of bark that came off our birch tree, and thought it looked like parchment paper. A-ha! The lights came on and I says, I think that's sturdier than TP, so I'll send a note to Heidi.

You never know what I'll use next. Maybe I better get some note cards or something, right? You'll begin to think that I've lost my marbles. Or just that I'm plain cheap. I like being different. Besides, this came from my yard, and I love the white birch very much so I had to send it to you - whom I love also!

The only downfall is that it came off in small strips and is hard to write on.

Saw your mom today. She says you may be home next month. Good. I hope to see you then. Have a good week and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Much love!

Nana

PS. Hi to Joe.

Grilling & drilling politicians.

If you had lived in a synthetic bubble all your life, and one night were freed at about 8 p.m. on 8th Ave North in St. Pete (where I live) and heard what I hear now, you might think the world had ended or that aliens had finally arrived.

The cicada bugs sound like a dying game show buzzer.

If I were allowed to open the windows in my apartment I might hear them more often, but instead I'm forced to take in their grating mating call from my balcony, which is why it's so important Joe and I find a house with a porch. (For more on our house hunting shenanigans click here.)

I love the cicadas. I love that they're so obnoxious. I love that there are 2,500 different species of them and that they make the loudest known insect-produced sound in the world.

Cicadas are the one rural thing this city has going for it - another reason why I love them.

I'm sitting on my balcony with two citronella candles at my feet and a fire on the grill. The sun is slipping behind Kim and Russell's gargantuan house and Cubbie is roaming the yard below. Joe is watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, slamming together patties of ground chuck and my sister PK finally, doggedly got a job. It is a typical Monday night and I'm in a fantastic mood.

I have about two hours of tape to transcribe from an interview I had Friday with a state representative. That much I'm dreading.

But before I go, I think it might be fun to point out that last week I interviewed two state representatives in Sarasota, both republicans. The first one said he didn't buy global warming and that plenty of people feel the same way. 

"Ambulences aren't all of a sudden going to run on hydrogen," he said. "They're not going to run on nuclear. The technology isn't there. At the end of the day when somebody wants to go to the hospital they want 300 horsepower under the hood. Not three horses ... This is a capitalist country. We would have figured something out by now. Some entreprenuer would have figured out a cheaper way of producing energy and made himself a gazillion dollars. It's economics."

So I fired back something like this (minus the Toby Keith reference at the end):

"Don't you think we're seeing that now? Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is a big motivator. We're beginning to realize it's not the cheapest, most efficient way to power our cars so entrepreneurs are starting to perk up. (Hello T. Boone Pickens.) The market is ripe with money-making potential. It's like when the Wright brothers first started experimenting with flight. Believe me there's money to be made. Dependency on foreign-made goods ain't what Toby Keith sings about."

And then, after chalking up global warming to sunspots and volcanic activity, this same legislator said he supported state-funded research on alternative energy. What we should be doing, he said, is using service tax revenue generated by offshore drilling to support university research on tidal energy.

"I could see ourselves cutting back on fossil fuels," he said. "Over the next 10, 15, 20 years I could see Florida getting 30 percent of its energy from tidal, 10 percent from solar, 10 percent from wind, throw in some nuclear, throw in some natural gas ..."

I couldn't believe it. Towing the party line is one thing. Tripping over it is another. And tidal energy, eh? Surely he got the e-newsletter from treehugger.com. 

Ugh. I'm headed to the couch. Dinner is through and it's ice cream hour now. The cicadas have hushed and the mosquitoes are out. I'm off to itch my bug bites with credit cards and transcribe interview tape. 

Goodnight nation.

Dreaded adulthood.

At a writer’s conference this summer in Boulder, I asked our guest speaker, novelist Pam Houston, how she triumphs over writers block. Specifically procrastination.

Procrastination, I cried is a writer’s most debilitating self-inflicted wound.

“It’s not procrastination. It’s fear,” she snapped. “The problem isn’t that you don’t want to write. It’s that you’re afraid to write. Fearful that you’ll fuck it up, that you wont be able to put into words just how blue the sky was.”

Just write that the sky was blue, she said.

Think small. Start with what you can control. Something silly and insignificant so that you wont get overwhelmed by the exhaustive process of writing.

I always said I’d rather lay bricks than write a story. It’s easier. Which of course isn’t always true, especially if you’re a skilled mason who prides himself on a job well done.

So lately what I’ve been doing is this:

If I’m writing about a tree I’ll start with one branch. I’ll write about how one branch is bent at an angle that resembles a feeble elbow. And how the white blossoms on the tip of the branch look like thirsty white tongues.

However, writing for an audience all these years has taught me that, though the average reader might appreciate flowery sentences and clever metaphors, they appreciate good storytelling more.

So I usually start by writing about procrastination. And in the fluid act of writing about procrastination my stories (usually) take off.

In my angst-y teenage years I invented characters who were bulimic and self-mutilating, who crawled out their bedroom windows at 2 a.m. to catch trains to Toronto, where they would inevitably move in with an alcoholic sketch artist in a space above a Canadian nightclub.

When I was feeling wistful my stories turned to the fringes of a grape field, where I played baseball with my father and my sisters. My mother brought us popsicles from the garage and in the summer heat they would melt and leave red snakes on my arm.

Often I fell asleep in the throes of writing and I’d wake up the next morning with ink on my face. As a result of this pen-wielding ferociousness I now have a permanent indentation in my middle finger.

Anyway. It seemed writing was easier then. I wasn’t on deadline. I wrote what I wanted. I was inspired by everything and callous to nothing. I felt trapped by adolescence and as a result would write myself into adulthood. My town was small with little to do. Our only neighbor was an old woman named Wilma who had a candy jar in her kitchen foyer with brown butterscotch glued to the lid. Sometimes when she got stuck in her bathtub she would call my mother to come help her get out, and so I started writing about elderly women and bathtubs and how shitty it must be to get old.

My imagination roamed and I had little distractions, save for creating the ones I might one day have when, god forbid, I got older.

And now that I’m older, I'm happily distracted and stalling because freedom is a doubled-edged sword.

So this morning I made a concrete plan. To stop being afraid of fucking up the blue sky and to start writing small because it’s not so much procrastination that’s holding me back but dreaded adulthood.

PS. In honor of kicking procrastination my friend Kyle started a blog named Lorenzo. His post detailing the breakup between he and beloved QB Brett Favre brought tears to my eyes.