The Do-Over by Kathy Dunnehoff

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine the idea for The Do- Over came about like this: I’m guessing the author is an overworked woman balancing job, marriage, and motherhood (or perhaps she has experienced that trifecta in the past) when one day she stops and dreams about giving herself a day off from it all. Then, since she’s a writer, the woman takes the idea further and asks herself: What if someone really did that? And what if the escape started out as a day, stretched to a week, and ended up being a month? And what if my heroine not only escaped her town but went to another country? What would happen then? With humor and insight, Kathy Dunnehoff gives us the answers to those questions in The Do- Over.

Here’s the synopsis from Dunnehoff’s website:

When a solid wife and mother runs out of bubble bath, the ensuing panic attack drives her to Canada for more.  She realizes one foamy bath probably won’t cure what ails her, so she commits to staying away from her life for thirty days.  She changes her name, her habits, her style, her outlook, hoping she’ll be restored and ready to return home and buy ketchup in bulk again.

Her son’s visiting Grandma, and she’s sure her husband will understand.  He understands she’s run away from home, tracks her down, and discovers she’s pursuing work at the bubble bath company and the owner’s pursuing her.  Like any pro-active husband, he pitches a fit, cancels her credit cards, and flies his mom in to bring her home.

But home doesn’t look the same from a distance, and her new friends, the strip-club-loving Red Hat Society grandmas and a pack of lesbian jazz singers, help her discover home right where she’s planted.  But thirty days goes quickly and even Dorothy had to make a decision about whether or not to click her heels back to Kansas…

The things I enjoyed most about The Do-Over were Dunnehoff’s understatement and sense of humor. For example, she describes a character’s night filled with strange dreams this way:

“All she knew was that her night had been filled with men. Not any she knew personally, but ones she’d come to know pretty damn personally by morning. There were men who touched her and whispered in her ear the kind of things she couldn’t believe her unconscious mind was capable of inventing. There were things she didn’t know men could do. Maybe they were things real men couldn’t do, but the secret men in her dark dreams were all kinds of capable, flexible, muscular, and excitedly creative….There’d been handcuffs, public parks, and if she remembered correctly, produce involved. She may never be able to look at a salad bar again without a measure of desire.”

I laughed out loud at that! I love that she didn’t give the specifics of her dreams but left me to imagine the “things” on my own, especially regarding the salad bar. That passage also told me a lot about the protagonist—that she was not the sort of woman who’d even think X-rated thoughts.

If you enjoy books with plenty of humor, and you can relate to how a harried woman might overreact if she ran out of her favorite bubble bath, then you’ll definitely enjoy The Do-Over.

Dangerous Delusions and Bad Photography

Way, way, waaaaay back in the days of film photography, I had a camera that took some really amazing pictures under difficult circumstances, such as in dimly lit museums where no flash was allowed and through glass or wire mesh fences.  This made me think I knew how to take good pictures.  My first digital camera, a gift, was apparently a decent quality camera, as well.  So I happily transitioned into the world of digital photography and continued to believe that I was a good photographer.

Unfortunately, modern technology products do not last long.  Even if you manage to resist the planned obsolescence built into every one, its physical life is short.  My lovely digital camera only lasted a few years.  I optimistically viewed this as an opportunity to acquire a new camera with a lot of fancy-schmancy features that my old one didn’t have.  I particularly wanted one with more zoom since I planned on going to a Chris Isaak concert and was hoping to get some really nice close-up shots.  I also wanted one that was small and easy to use.  At the time, these did not seem like unreasonably high standards.

After much research, I selected a snazzy new camera and trotted off to my first Chris Isaak concert.  But things did not work out the way I hoped, and the zoom did not compensate for my distance from the stage.  Further experimentation with the camera in a variety of other places led to the identification of more shortcomings.  In other words, I blamed the camera for all my bad pictures.  So I did more research and bought another new camera with an even bigger zoom and even more exotic features.

I was confident I had made the right choice this time—until I started taking pictures with it.  Well, actually, my initial efforts were fine.  But then I started fiddling with all the extra settings.  The quality of my shots rapidly plummeted, descending to a level that I’ve never reached before.  This is one of the picture I took of Chris Isaak at my second concert.  Trust me, it really is him.  The good news is that I did get some nice pictures to go with all my bad ones. 

 
 

But it was at the Portland Japanese Garden where I hit rock bottom and took substantially more bad pictures than good ones.  I unknowingly stumbled upon a camera setting that created picture after picture like this.  And that’s one of the better ones of all the bad pictures I took there. 

Now here’s where the delusion that I’m a good photographer becomes dangerous.  Once again, I blamed the camera, not the idiot holding it.  To do so, I did have to ignore all the good pictures I took, but somehow I convinced myself that another new camera would make all the difference.  I felt I had learned so much from all my mistakes, I was sure to make a better choice if I tried again.  Besides that, the third time’s a charm, right?

To prove just how serious I was about making this new one be “the perfect camera,” I took the unusual step of actually reading the manual before going to my third Chris Isaak concert.  As a result, I did take some pretty good pictures.  But I also had to sort through a whole bunch of bad shots to get to the good ones.  Here’s a classic.  Not only was the photo blurry, but I cut off most of his head. 

Then there’s this one which is in focus.  Too bad there’s no one to focus on.

And here’s a fascinating pair of pictures.  How did I manage to get a completely black shot AND a completely white shot?

        

Now that takes creativity. 

I also had a fantastic aisle seat at the concert.  So I was able to get some pictures like this one of Chris coming up the aisle.  Ten seconds later, I could have gotten a clear shot of him.   Wouldn’t that have been a great picture!

If only….

Instead, I waited until he was much, much closer.  Oops again!

 

But that’s okay because with the practice I got, I was all ready to get the perfect close-up shot of the lead guitarist, Hershel Yatovitz, when he came up the aisle later on during the concert.  So how the heck did I manage to focus on the tiny sliver of the bass player, Roly Salley, in the background, instead of on Hershel?  That’s the sort of photographic trick you can’t pull off when you’re trying to do it.

I have learned a lot from these myriad experiences.  Reading the manual really does help because digital cameras are so much more complicated nowadays.  You don’t have to use all those wonderful capabilities, but you do need to know what not to do.  Taking multiple shots of everything increases the odds of getting a decent picture.  It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s easy to delete all the ones you don’t want when you’re viewing them on your computer.  Of course, that does mean you need to carry an extra memory card and camera battery for all the triplicate pictures you’ll be taking.  However, the most important thing I’ve learned is it’s NOT the camera.  Although no camera takes perfect pictures every time, the real problem is me.  I’m just a bad photographer who’s still clinging to a dangerous delusion of competence.

Shame on me.

by Dee Ernst

A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reads ‘Embarrassing my children is a full-time job.’

Ain’t it the truth.

We don’t mean to do it. At least, I don’t. But it seems that the very act of parenting requires us to say something or do something that completely humiliates our children. The kiss good-bye. Buttoning the coat when it’s 15 degrees. Going up to the front door instead of texting, ‘I’m here’.

And then there are the endless questions that, when our child is alone, are harmless, but when asked in front of another human being, bring the world crashing down – Where are you going? When will you be home? Are the parents going to be there? Are you really wearing that?

Now, in the age of Facebook, there are even more opportunities. How many of us have been tempted to post that adorable baby picture, you know, the one naked in the sprinkler? The only thing holding us back is the inevitable aftermath. What killjoys these kids can be.

My oldest daughter, Ashley, recently turned thirty. You cannot believe how hard it is for me to say that. When she was fifteen, I did something that completely swept away all previous moments of embarrassment. This outshone every bad haircut, the uncool sneakers, even the pink sweater with the kitten face on it. I got pregnant. I didn’t do it on purpose. Really. But apparently, this was big deal. None of her friends had forty-year-old pregnant mothers. Poor kid. Not only did she have to face the raised eyebrows of her peers, but she had to endure the endless stream of joy and happiness – not to mention TWO baby showers – that required a fixed smile on her face and her participation in 1,276 conversations about baby names.

And then I added insult to injury by actually giving birth. For months she refused to go anywhere with her little sister Carrie because, as she explained several times, “People will think she’s MINE”.

I’d like to think that the years have softened her memory of that time. It was stressful for all of us, for several reasons. True, she lives on the opposite side of the country. And she has changed her name. But we still talk all the time, and a few times she has mentioned that she thought I was a pretty good mother, so I’m good with it.

But now, I have another fifteen-year-old to deal with. She has lots of friends, all lovely happy young women, who, I think, like me, but when they visit they remain sequestered in her bedroom, only emerging to feed, and she hurries them out before I can talk to any of them. I’m not sure what she’s afraid I’ll say, but the message is pretty clear. So, I try to play by the rules. I let her listen to her music even though I’m driving and it’s my car, I don’t question her within fifty feet of another human being, and only text when necessary. But I just did something that may give Carrie an edge over her sister in the “She did WHAT?” department.

Last week, driving Carrie and her friends home from drama class (how redundant is THAT?), her friend said that she followed my blog and couldn’t wait to read my next book. I said, very calmly, that my next book was not appropriate, and that she probably shouldn’t read it. Carrie’s mouth dropped open. She executed the rarely seen double-face-palm. Here’s what happened next –

She: Oh, my God! What did you do?
Me: I wrote a book for grown-ups.
She: But my friends are all going to want to read it.
Me: Tell them not to.
She: Sabeen said she felt funny about your first book, and there was only kissing.
Me: Tell her not to read it.
She: Did you really write an X-Rated book?”
Me: No. Only R-Rated.
She: Can’t you publish it under another name?

Now I ask you – did I do this to publically embarrass my beloved daughter, not only in front of all her friends, but on what could possibly be an international stage? Of course not. I published this book because I had written it a few years ago and thought that I should at least give it a chance in the self-pubbed world. I love the characters, the story – yes, there’s sex in it, but (seriously ) only to move the story forward. And because my friend Jean, while I was writing it, kept saying “You need a little more”.

I’m sure that the two teen-aged sons of E L James, now that her face and real name have been splashed all over creation because of her best-selling series of erotica known as “Fifty Shades”, are taking some ribbing from their mates about their mothers’ book. I don’t feel sorry for them. I’m sure as soon as Mum buys them twin B.M.W.’s with that boatload of money she’s made, they’ll be just fine.

So – a major shopping spree with Carrie may be the only thing that saves me from a place in Bad-Mother-Hell. I’m really hoping for the best.