Letter from the Editor

When Cayenne was done her internship, the Herald's senior editor wrote her a letter:

Hi Cayenne,

Thank you for joining us in the Herald newsroom this week. I am sorry I missed saying goodbye to you this afternoon. I wished that I had been able to sit with you more to make sure you were getting what you wanted out of your internship. The challenging part about being the top editor is that I have to attend a lot of meetings, which mostly happened to be during your hours here. But please know that you are welcome to follow up with any questions you have or if you want to visit us again. I’d be happy to tell you about how much journalism has changed over the 27 years I have been a journalist. It’s a lot!

I cannot express how impressive your writing is for your age. If you pursue a career as a writer, whether it’s in journalism or some other medium, you have a very bright future ahead of you. I have no doubt you will excel wherever you land.

Good luck with your school presentation about your internship. I hope your classmates find it to be interesting and that they learn a lot about the Herald.

Good luck with your future!

Amy

Amy Maestas

Senior editor

Now that's a class act.

The Village of Langtang is gone

Cayenne's first story was published today, in the same paper as the news of her elementary school sweetheart's suicide.

Heartbreakingly, her article was about something equally as tragic as a very bright, capable, kind, gentle, popular 13 year old who couldn't see tomorrow through what he was dealing with today. And who had easy access to a loaded gun.

Soul-numbing horror.

All of it.

Well done, Cayenne. May your life's ups far outweigh the downs you'll write about, read about, and experience.


 
 

Tears

I want so much to write about Nepal, but all I can do is cry.

Message from the universe

So I'm working at the desk in our office at home. It's the middle of the day, the girls are at school, the house is silent except for my typing.

And then the printer wakes up and startles me because I didn't ask it to print anything.

Well that's weird.

And then a message from the universe prints itself:

Kind of cool (that Nick can print on our home computer from Phoenix).

Kind of freaky.

And a whole lot of wonderful.


   

Neptune & Firefly

"Moooooooooooooooooom!! Oh no! Quick!!"

My stomach sank. I already knew what I was going to see, so I was unprepared for how sad I was to see Firefly, the big fat goldfish, floating upside-down with his white belly bobbing on the surface. The night before, Acacia had run her hands through the little stones at the bottom of the tank looking for something, and it kicked up food the fish hadn't eaten. The crystal water became super cloudy and I knew we should have cleaned it right then, but it was 10:30pm, we were all tired, and, really, I thought these two critters were indestructible.

"He's still alive!"

And she was right. His tail was flicking and he was trying to flip over.

I grabbed the tank, rushed to the bathtub, scooped out both Firefly and Neptune and put them in a bowl of fresh water while we cleaned out the tank and all the stones.

I'm not a goldfish connoisseur. The girls won these teensy orange minnow-sized aquatic vertebrates tossing rings onto bottles at the county fair. They were never supposed to live this long, grow this big, need an aquarium, nor steal our hearts. Wasn't part of the bargain.

So I naturally assumed, with my limited fishy expertise, that Acacia had killed poor Firefly, just like I had done to our family goldfish back in the day, although I was too young to remember so it might have been all made up by my big sisters. I do remember flushing our gerbils Twinkle Toes and Powder Puff down the toilet, but that's another story.

Firefly forced his distended belly over, swam for a few seconds, and then rose upside-down to the surface again where he'd lie motionless - over and over and over. This was painful to watch. I wondered if we'd bury him next to Lupine the Baby Mouse we kept alive for ten days (she even went to a music festival in Telluride).

I googled floating goldfish and learned that a bacterial infection can cause so much air in their abdomen, they can't stay upright. Peeling frozen peas and breaking them up can be a trick to help move their bowels.

Huh?!

Or you can just drive the kids to school and go to work, and then come back to two swimmingly happy little fishies. Phew! It was touch and go there for a bit.

I emailed the girls to let them know it was a medical miracle. Firefly just needed to fart!

 

Queen of Everything

Two huge convoluted deals involving the sales of six houses have all closed - and I feel as though I've got my life back. WooHoooooooooooooooo! If any part of the house of cards fell down, three months of work would have swirled down the toilet.

I'm so happy!!


Today was my biggest closing yet, and I came home to a surprise congratulations from Nicolas:

He seems happy, too.


This is a good thing, because one of the new owners of one of the six houses gave me a little closing gift...

This should go over like a lead balloon when Nicolas gets home on Friday.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Just keeping the excitement in our marriage. Hahahahahaha! Oh I love this chair.

 
You can call me QOE for short.


 

My Little Runaway

Acacia ran away yesterday.

I took her iPod Touch after a second discussion (this has happened once before) about leaving it unattended at sleepovers and having friends post things under her name - in this case an unflattering picture on Instagram of a mutual friend - and then changing the password so Acacia couldn't delete the photo instantly. Said mutual used-to-be-friend texted me much later to ask Acacia to remove it, even though Acacia had done so hours prior and had already told her that... i.e. ex-friend tried to get Acacia in trouble by involving me. Because I realised this, my intention was only to teach Acacia why it's so important not to share her password - even with good friends who thought it would be funny.

Instead she assumed I was going to lay into her and she flipped out and yelled rude things.

Well, then she was in trouble. I already had her iPod and now she had to do chores on top of it. When I mentioned we were having fish for dinner, that was it. There was no reason in her mind to stay.

She left at 5:30pm in a tank top, shorts and bare feet, so I wasn't terribly worried. It's been in the 60s during the day, but once the sun sets it gets chilly quickly. She talked the whole time she was leaving about how she'd rather sleep in the woods and get eaten by animals, blah blah blah.

She was gone an impressive hour and a half. She gets her tenaciousness from her Papa, but in this case it was her ability to fall asleep anywhere (that would be from me) that helped her out.

Of course, the seat cushion, sleeping bag and wool blanket she slipped into the shed (I looked in there!) helped as well.


I tried to make her homecoming less tail-between-her-legs with a big hug.

"Hey - how are you so warm? It's cold out there."

"Jumping jacks. I was freezing."



Tonight she made an awesome caramelized onion risotto for us for dinner, so I guess she's not too scarred?

Found out today Cayenne had been trying to sneak food out to her sister, but I started cooking, never left the kitchen and foiled the plan.

That makes me happy.

Social media? Not so much. I thought we were doing well by having middle-schoolers without phones or Facebook accounts, but I'm really not interested in keeping them completely cut off, either. These days that would be cause for therapy down the road, and I'll already be blamed for enough!

I guess all we can do is try to teach them the rules of this crazy techno age, most of which are still being written. Starting with #1:

Never click 'send' without rereading it and imagining the whole world seeing it - because that is possible every single time.