I wrote this for my amazing grandmother on her 90th birthday, and now I will share it with you.

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I started writing this at least five times, trying to choose the right memory. There are so many; the warm summertime kind, when you and me and Gaga and Andy would sit on the patio chairs and chat, or you would cover the ground with Barbasol and let us skate around outside; the quiet, private kind, when you would hold me on your lap on the swiveling blue and white chairs in the living room and nurse my wounds, real or imaginary, on my knees or in my heart; the funny kind, when you would lay between me and Andy and tell us stories that got progressively stranger and sillier as you fell asleep, still talking, or the way you'd rub my legs to wind me down for bedtime and I'd kick you when you stopped too soon. I could choose any of these or a million others, but the light I'd shine on my memories of you would illuminate too small a fraction.

Houses are just buildings that can be bought and sold - the heart of a family is the people in it, not where they put their things. Even so, my strongest and most comforting memories of childhood happened in your house, and no amount of "home is where the heart is" can make me feel less love for the house we grew up in. My memories of the houses I lived in then are hazy, but I perfectly remember the way the kitchen carpet felt on my feet, the way Gaga's alarm clock lit numbers on the ceiling, the smell of the sun porch in the winter. When I think of my childhood, I realize it's inextricably linked to that house. All of the moments there made me who I am - the shaving cream on the ground and the bedtime stories, but also the forgettable, everyday moments - the moments of just existing in a house full of such incredible love. Every moment I have with you, my best friend, is a memory worth telling.

A quick message to the not one, not two, but THREE people who have reached lupschada.com with the search query "if you were born in 1976 how old would you be now":

Math is even faster than Google. I know, it's hard to believe.

Cheers!

Look, it's the circle of life. Hakuna Matata or whatever. This is the new puppy Wicket:

Wicket and I went to Prospect Park with Ranjit and Jon to burn off energy and work on our gamboling problem. While we played, a very little boy and his mom wandered over to watch us. I said to the little boy, "Would you like to pet the puppy? He's very nice."

And the boy said, in a very thick possibly-Hungarian accent, "But he's a vampire!"

"No!" I said. "He's just a sweet baby."

His mother explained that they were pretending that all dogs in the park were vampires. I amended. "You're right, he is a vampire, but a particularly friendly vampire."

Little Gypsy decided it was okay to pet and confided that he had a special song that kept him safe from the vampires anyway. I asked if he could teach it to me - to keep me safe too - and he whispered conspiratorially, "Eet's 'I Been Verking on zee Railroat!!"

Goddamn, I just miss that dog's sharky brown face and her sassy-pants way.

1996-2007

There has never been a better, browner dog. There is a soft, furry part of my heart missing tonight.

I've begun and discarded countless entries in the past few months, if by countless I mean more than three but less than ten (or, if you actually can't count, it's literally true). I haven't gone this long without updating in the five-plus-year history of lupschada.com, and I have nothing to say for myself. I mean, that's my excuse - I have nothing to say for myself. Perhaps the problem is my Livejournal account, where I exhaust the daily inanities that would once have fueled my musings here. Perhaps, in my old age, I am all mused out.

Perhaps I have put so much of myself into the writing I do for work that I have no excess cleverings to spare. Never let anyone tell you that getting paid to do what you love won't change the way you look at it. Unless you are independently wealthy or overflowing with credibility, the abandon with which you once threw around your talents will come to resemble the assembly line routine of all the other work you've ever done.

This is not true if you are Stephen King - if you are Stephen King, you can wake up in the morning and write a story about zombie blue birds in love. If you want, you can throw in the kind of sex scene an eleven-year-old girl will read, like you did in It, that will haunt the girl well into her 20s and offer her distasteful terminology unbidden at inopportune moments. For this, you will be paid generously and five million people will read it.

I'm not Stephen King, but it's okay. I'm very glad for the opportunities at work. I don't even mind how it's reframed by feelings about writing. It forces me to look elsewhere for creative outlets; I now own a butane torch for the burning of things (specifically silver clay, but I don't want to limit myself). But I can't update this site with jewelry, can I - it's not how text-based media works. So I will try harder.

I will.