At the risk of sounding like a Puritan...

I consider myself fairly internet savvy. I mean, I have a blog, I tweet, I Facebook, all that stuff. I know about Nigerian princes and have a good idea of how people act when they are anonymous (dreadfully.)

My kids' school held an internet safety seminar last week held by the good people at Childrenonline.org. Let's just say I'm now ready to move my family to a yurt in rural Nepal.

My kids are not online yet. They've played a few games, but mostly screen time is limited to weekends, and between fencing and tournaments and blah blah blah, our weekends are overscheduled (which is a completely different problem.) But. See it, right there on the horizon? It's coming.

Popular with the tween set is Addicting Games, I can see why. Hundreds of games from which to choose, and all free! And it's run by Nickelodeon, so great, right? Sure! Unless you walk in the room and, what's this? Cartoon naked ladies? Why, it's Perry the Perv! A hero for all young lads! Here's a description:

"There are some luscious landscapes to view, but don't get caught or it's a fist in the mouth. Can you help this pervert catch some lurid looks at the ladies?"

Oh nice. Thanks Nickelodeon, where a kid can be a kid. Or a perv. Whatever.

Also on a few fun gaming sites are banner ads for Chatroulette, which is, of course, entirely kid friendly, what with the penises and all. Come on in to my home! Check out my kid!

For research purposes, of course I had to check it out. And, well, I was curious. Unsolicited advice for those wondering about Chatroulette: don't. Just...don't. Here are the Cliff's Notes version, so you don't need to have these images taking up space in your brain. Ew.

Things I saw on Chatroulette:

--Boobs (Big ones!)

--Hairy moobs*

--A person of questionable gender wearing a Mardi Gras mask.

--Men diddling with their pants off (several.)

--A tween girl (Where are your parents, young lady?)

--More boobs.

--Couples making out (again, several. What the hey?)

--A skinhead with a rebel flag behind him, flipping me the bird.

Buh?

Not my thing.

So now I'm trying to come up with some ground rules for my daughters. Rules I know they will break and see all this stuff anyway. Oh boy.

What are your thoughts on all this? If you have kids, are they online? How do you handle it in your house? And, is it possible to get a manicure in Kathmandu?

*Click on the pronunciation button to hear someone who sounds very much like Colin Firth saying "moobs." I giggle at this stuff because I am immature.

ETA: @PauloCamposInk forwarded me Jon Stewart's take on Chatroulette. Yep, that's about it!

Dear Diary

My eight-year-old, Charlotte, needed a diary, or so she said. "I NEED one. With a lock. It has to have a lock." So I took her to Barnes & Noble to select the perfect one from a wall of contenders. Some journals were covered brush-painted flowers, some geometric designs, all were girly (woe be to the boy who wants to journal.)

She found the perfect shade of purple (with a lock) and I even sprung for a new pen, remembering how important my diary was to me. I wish I had it now for the entertainment value alone. Oh, the angst! Jennifer cut me in line and didn't even say sorry! Jason totally ignored me at recess! I hate soccer and why do we have to play it for gym!

But most of all, I remember writing about my mom. Horrible woman! So mean! So what if I got caught making prank calls randomly from the phone book? That's no reason to ground me.

Charlotte locks her door and writes in it every day. I mean, obsessively. She's either got the beginnings of the next War and Peace in there, or something is really bugging her.

Now she's at school, and I know where she keeps her key. (Right on top of her desk. Real smooth, Charlotte.) You have no idea what restraint it's taking for me not to go in there right now and read it. I know it's ridiculous. I KNOW. She's eight. What could it possibly say? Maybe I'm just looking for feedback--any feedback--on mothering. It's not like I have a boss to give me a performance review. And it's not like I'm going to find You're great at communication, Wendy, but the whole allowance area needs improvement.

Don't worry. I won't. I WON'T. She deserves a little privacy.

Damn it.

Did you ever keep a diary?

School's Out!

Today was the last day of school for my daughters. One would think a horde of girls would burst out of the schoolhouse, all WAHOO and YIPPEE because the have three whole months of no more uniforms, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks! But no. Tears aplenty. All the kids actually seemed sad to be out of school for the summer. This does not compute in my mind. No matter how much I liked school, I was thrilled to get the heck out of dodge every June (see WAHOO and YIPEE above.) 

So now that the long, looooooong summer spreads out ahead of me (have you seen how late Labor Day falls? Gah!) it will be much more of a challenge to find time to write*. And I'm itching to start my next novel. Itching! Problem is, even when my kids are happy playing and I can physically sit down to tap away, half of my mind is just listening for something bad to happen. Someone will fall. Or bicker. Or need something. Or step on the dog. You get the idea. It's tough to concentrate on a scene, to say the least. 

How about you? What keeps you from either writing or doing whatever it is you want/need to do? Kids? A loud neighbor? Lack of sleep?

*I realize there are people out there who have actual full time jobs who find the time to write, so maybe you don't feel so sorry for me. But just roll with it, okay?

Trying something new

Yesterday, my family took a trip to the American Museum of Natural History for about the gabillionth time. On a rainy Sunday, this is not the brightest idea unless you enjoy being run down by strollers, but my kids love it and I frankly couldn't think of anything better to do. This time, to mix things up a bit, we took sketch pads and a camera for art projects. That's them up top, sketching the fossil of a somethingosaurus.

I'm not much of an artist (to say the least), but I tried as well. Mine didn't turn out so great. More like a stick dinosaur with a fat head. But I'd been writing several hours per day for the past week, so using my brain in a different way was a relief. We came home, printed out our pictures, and arranged a collage that looked like we'd all dropped acid.

Fun, though. And afterwards, I had a breakthrough with one of my scenes I'm re-re-writing.

What do you do to get your brain unstuck?

Back to my true love for a while

I know I posted a few weeks ago about starting a new novel, but I've been having trouble getting started. Maybe it's because it will require a TON of research and maybe because it just seems foreboding to start a huge project, but I've been working on some short pieces instead. And you know what? I enjoy is so much more. I've always been a short story lover, ever since an English teacher long ago assigned dear Flannery as homework.

I think I have about 15 subscriptions to literary magazines, and I read many online. I just prefer the structure, the freedom to explore unsavory characters, the experimental voice, and the themes often found in short stories. Of course, I read novels as well--every night. But many times I find myself thinking that I would have edited out about 1/4 of the book. No one is asking me, though, and maybe it's a reflection of my attention span.

Anyway, I do realize that this means I'll likely be toiling in obscurity for a good long while. Oh well, I'll be toiling happily.

How's your writing (or any other project) going?

Why Facebook is evil and I'll never forgive Melanie for telling me to join

Four reasons.

1.Because high school friends can find you and they will post lovely montages like this:

Can you find me? That's right, there, in the blue. Hang all over him, you little tart.

2. You will spend far, far too much time talking to said high school friends you haven't seen in 20 years and other people who write on your wall. As if you didn't spend enough time online. Get back to work, slacker.

3. People can kidnap you. I haven't quite figured that one out yet, but I've been bound and gagged in a potato sack, accosted with a spicy burrito and taken to Cancun, and handcuffed and thrown into a box. Scary.

4. You get a sad reminder that other people still have more friends then you. What else is new.

So, will you friend me? Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease? I'm Wendy Cebula.

Two weeks in July

Over the weekend, I found a photo stuffed into my copy of Revolutionary Road, which I was re-reading months ago. It was taken in July at the Southampton Writers Conference. That's me, in the peach-colored top, squinting into the sunlight along with the other wannabe novelists. How hopeful we all look. Holding court in the middle is Meg Wolitzer, our group leader. (She was a fantastic teacher, by the way.)





I sometimes think of my fellow SWCers and how their writing is coming along. I only keep in touch with one other person from the group (and I won't say who because she's bashful), and she's doing very well. Are other people submitting? Revising? Did anyone give up? It was a craft workshop, so the majority of time was spent critiquing each other's first chapters and attending lectures. For 14 days, we were all serious writers. Jobs, kids, spouses--they all took a backseat for a short time. It was wonderful.

I hope they are all still writing.

It was just that kind of weekend

It's freezing on the East Coast, so all I did all weekend was watch movies. One was an all-time favorite, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Which, incidentally, I'm pretty sure I saw in the theater when I was 11 years old. It was rated R, so that means my mother probably dropped me off at the mall and my friends and I bought movie tickets for Black Stallion Returns. Then sneaked into Fast Times.* Masturbation! Teenage sex! Drugs! How appropriate!

I read about a book coming out soon called Free Range Kids--that pretty much describes my childhood. And somehow I survived.

Anyway, not the point. I noticed something about the teenage actresses from movies in the 80s: no one looked pin-thin, like many today. Everyone looked, well...healthy.

Observe....

Jennifer Jason Leigh, how cute was she back then? And who didn't want to be Madonna? This is a much better look then, say, this:

Or this:

I'm hungry.

Yikes.

We also watched Beetlejuice (with the kids, who loved it, although I didn't remember quite so much cursing when I saw it last. Oh well.) and a really bleak thing I ordered from Netflix called Half Nelson (most assuredly WITHOUT the kids, since it's all about drug addiction.) Can't say I recommend the latter.

So, how was your weekend?

*Sorry, mom! It's true!