Deanna Davis

A Discovery at the Scene of the Grime

Had I not carried this child for 9 months and been fully conscious (perhaps too conscious) when I birthed her, I could not claim her as my own. We never have to ask Malina to do her homework, clean her room or do her laundry (at age 8).  She's organized and responsible, detail-oriented and prone to saying things like "Mom, they sent a lunch account notice home A-GAIN. I don't know how many times I have to remind you about this. At some point they're just not going to let me eat."

With guests in the house (and their twin one-year-olds), Malina is sleeping on the floor in our room for the next week because she gave up her room to allow extra space for them (not only willingly but uncharacteristically pleasantly), and she actually took the initiative to put clean sheets on the bed without being asked.  Yes, weird.  Yes, nearly unheard of.  I know.  I don't understand it either, given my well-documented aversion to housekeeping of any kind (see several chapters in Laugh, Cry, Eat Some Pie for vivid and disturbing details).

In any case, I walked into my (quite messy) bedroom this morning to spy Malina's little corner of the room tidied just so, with sleeping-bag bed neatly made, clothes uniformly stacked on the makeshift bed, books stacked with precision on her pillow, and her slippers placed "just so" at the foot of the bed.  I again had to ask myself "can I really claim this child as my own?  It just doesn't make sense...my genes could not possibly produce a child this meticulously tidy and organized." 

To prove it, I'll let you in on a little secret:  I then had to take a snapshot of her mini-domicile from four different angles to make sure it ONLY  showed her bed so it wouldn't reveal the "chaotic but warm and lived in" nature of the rest of my bedroom (AKA the "scene of the grime").  Here's proof:

I'm thinking something skipped a generation.  No doubt about that. But we all have to celebrate our own strengths, right? RIGHT?

 

Bonding in the Buff

It dawned on me this week that I've subjected some of my long-term staff members and colleagues to really unfortunate opportunities to bond with me.  I'm a fairly transparent person about much of my life (who wouldn't be when they tell their deepest, darkest secrets to tens of thousands of people each year from the stage and the page).  But what I realized after training my new executive assistant and event coordinator, Karen, is that at times my life is perhaps too transparent for comfort (mine, theirs, and sometimes both).

Karen started her first "official" day with me only two days after the recent flare-up of my back injury.  I'd been confined to bed, high on narcotic painkillers, shuffling around like a little old man (when shuffling was even an option) and in excruciating pain.  Karen's first full day on the job consisted of carting me to my physician's office and the pharmacy, along with a few personal and professional stops along the way (involving a massive order of chocolate bars and a healthy taco salad to balance them out), all while I took a critical conference call replete with routine yelps and the occasional expletive.

The pain had gotten so bad by the time we reached the medical appointment that they ended up giving me an injection of some kind in...well...a rather sensitive portion of my anatomy.  Because we were in the process of rescheduling other meetings and appointments when the nurse came in to give me the goods, Karen was unfortunate to witness the baring of more than my soul that day (if you know what I mean).  When she wheeled me out of the doctor's office she noted just how memorable her first day had been and that she'd been exposed to so much more of the business...and me as a human being...than anticipated.  Indeed.

I got to thinking that Karen's not the first one to face the, uh, naked truth about the most intimate aspects of my life.  When my Business Development Director, Katie, began working for me eight years ago as a grant-writer for a local non-profit, she started the day before a critical proposal deadline.  When proposals are due, you do what you have to to get them out the door.  So, as the nursing mom at the time of a bouncing baby girl with the capacity to chug milk like a frat boy strapped to a beer bong, I hooked on my breast pump and facilitated our entire strategy meeting together while affixed to my "mobile lactation station."  Don't worry, I asked her first. (Oh, my human resources friends out there are shaking their heads and quaking in their boots...don't worry...no lawsuits have been filed...yet).  And I knew she was the right woman for the job when she simply shrugged and said, "my sister has about a billion kids.  I won't even notice." 

And so, it seems that I do much of my long-term bonding in the buff.  And I guess that instead of leaving the "pen a bestselling exposé revealing all of the sordid details of your employer's private life" to them, I'll just do it myself to get it out of the way now.  I am a writer, after all.

*A note on my butt: Thank you to Karen for securing this fabulous picture from your anonymous friend, aptly titled "Emma's Butt" for use in this story.  I guarantee the above-rendered butt is far easier on the eyes than my own.  Enough said.

This Says It All

I SO LOVE this video.  It almost (and I stop at ALMOST) makes me want my very own swagger wagon.  I'm thinking this might be my new theme song, too...

Son of a...

This is the scene I found when I checked on Carsten just before bed tonight.  It appears that he had selected one of his book collections after "lights out" and proceeded to read every single one of them prior to passing out with a heap of evidence all around him.

All I could think to myself was, "SON OF A..." but I figured that ending it there might be misconstrued by some. 

Here's the translation of the actual thought: "SON OF A(N) AUTHOR!"  Way to start 'em young!

My Life in 18 Seconds

So, this is my life in 18 seconds.  The real-time, true-life depiction of my daily experience, starring Carsten, Malina, and yours truly (radiant in my end-of-the-day-make-up-free glory).  I'm thinking this exchange will seem vaguely familiar to most of you...

Can Identity Theft Be Cute?

Ok, with identity theft at an all-time high and everyone being as careful as they possibly can to protect their sensitive information, you'd think I'd have jumped on the bandwagon by now.  But evidently identity theft can be at the hands of unexpected people at unexpected times in unexpected ways. 

For instance, my son, Carsten, had been doing various craft projects on the floor of my office and was actually quiet for an extended period of time (always blissful but never a good sign).  On this particular occasion, though, his uncharacteristic silence had allowed me to complete my deadline that morning so I was grateful to say the least.  When I looked down at him, though, I realized what activity had bought his silence. 

Sometime during the previous twenty minutes, he had switched artistic mediums from crayons and markers to the deposit stamp for my bank account, and (innovative modern "artiste" that he is) decided to use himself as a human canvas.  

And so, I ended up sending him to his childcare center that day literally covered (yes, including some of his most delicate regions) in stamps that say "Deposit to the Account of Applied Insight, Deanna and Michael Davis, (insert our bank name here), (insert our checking account number here)."

I have to say that in this economy, if I'm going to be the victim of identity theft, I'd like it to be at the hands of a really cute thief (done).  If only everything else were so simple.  Wish I'd had the sense to take a picture of his handiwork, but his cute face will have to suffice!

The Stuff You Usually Don't Share with Others

Yep, there are things you usually don't share with others because they're either too absurd or too embarrassing or both.  Fortunately or unfortunately my life is an open book, so I figured I'd let you in on three of the ways that I either significantly worsened or re-injured my aching back in the last week:

1)  Getting overwhelmingly tense while laying on the couch competing against my husband watching Jeopardy's High School edition.  And here I thought I wasn't competitive, but my rock-hard muscle fibers told a VERY different story.  I won't belabor the details of my win but will share that I correctly answered the question about Beowulf (literary geek that I am) AND I won final jeopardy that day simply because I bet more conservatively than my husband on a topic that neither of us had a clue about despite our combined 47 years of education (including three advanced degrees).  Yet all of the high schoolers answered it correctly.  I'm not sure that this is something to brag about but it's all I've got.

2)  Slipping on one of my son's Little Golden Books that somehow wedged its way under a massive pile (and I mean several metric tons) of laundry in my bedroom.  I surfed halfway across the room on that bad boy before coming to rest in a heap on the floor that was close in both size and disarray to the original pile of laundry.  Malina heard the commotion from across the house and came running, asking "um, mom, why would you do that when your back is hurt?"  Excellent question.  This is why I'm safer in bed than in any other square foot of my own home.

3)  Trying to open a cheap bottle of wine with a cheap corkscrew so I could enjoy a glass (or whatever one does with cheap wine) while watching Saturday Night Live after editing my book all evening long.  I'm not sure if the wine or the ice pack helped more, but the combo seemed to work.  For a while at least.  The front desk clerk at the hotel found it quite amusing and just a bit tragic that I finally limped all the way down there to have him open it for me. 

Life is far more amusing that anything you could make up, don't you think?

What Goes Around Comes Around

Let this be a lesson to all of us:  What goes around comes around. In more ways than one.