DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

So. Here we are. It's 11:30 P.M., on the eve of Halloween, and I'm helping my daughter cut the cardboard for her "Go Mom!" sign for her costume. The mom in question, mind you, is not me. It is Sarah Palin. Perhaps I should explain: we are ardent Obama supporters, but my daughter has decided she wants to dress up as Bristol Palin for Halloween. She found a t-shirt on the web that says, "DRILL BABY DRILL" with a picture of Alaska. She will wear this over a pillow. And carry the aforementioned sign. That's the whole costume.

It's unsettling seeing one's 11 year old daughter pregnant. But as a political statement, I get it. Go Sasha.

Today was too crazy for words. But words are all I've got, so here goes:

2:25 PM: Finish Redbook essay edit while scarfing down tuna in last night's pasta.

2:30 PM: Leave for soccer game on Vespa. The game is on Randall's Island, which really should be reached via car, but this being New York, land of the $500-a-month garage, we don't own one.

2:50 PM: Pause, on said Vespa, shivering cold, in front of the Triboro Bridge toll booth. The cash only lanes do not allow one to get to Randall's Island. Or so the sign says. I do not have an EZ Pass. I go halfway into the EZ Pass lane and knock on the window of the cash toll both. "Help!" I say. A police officer comes over and arrests me for holding up traffic. "Go over there and wait until I tell you!" he yells. I wait.

3:00 PM: I ask the officer if I can just pay and go. He yells at me again, for not bringing my EZ Pass. I tell him I've never driven to Randall's Island by myself before. I had no idea I'd have to pay a toll. I say, "Look, I'm just trying to get to my son's soccer game." The officer takes pity on me and blocks every lane of traffic so I can get where I need to go.

3:30 PM: Still driving around Randall's Island, shivering and looking for the game. Pass many fields of soccer-playing kids, none of them mine. Drive into an insane asylum, thinking it's an entrance to more fields. Get yelled at again. Think to myself, staring up a the loony bin, there but by the grace of god...

3:50 PM: Find field and child, standing on the sidelines. Child gives quick, "Oh, hey," as if it were totally normal that the two of us should be standing on the sidelines of a soccer game. Then he ignores me. He's wearing shorts and a t-shirt in arctic weather.

4:00 PM: Realize I know nothing about soccer. Wonder how could it be that this most seminal of parental experiences--standing on the sidelines of one's child's soccer game--has escaped me until now, 13 1/2 years after becoming a mother. When child is put into the game on defense and the ball goes straight through him and into the goal, I have an inkling as to why.

4:15: Rush back into Manhattan to pick up the little kids.

5:00 PM: Receive call from DJ...the place we picked to meet is having a private event.

5:01 PM: Frantically text soccer-playing son to tell him the meeting has been changed. Email husband and rabbi with same. Hope they all get the message before the 5:30 meeting.

5:40 PM: Show up late for meeting with rabbi, because of subway glitches, but this is okay, as rabbi got the message too late and is stuck in traffic. Rabbi cancels. Children will have one less week to learn the Havdalah service.

5:50 PM: Wonder where the hell eldest son is. Get call from son. He's lost. Somewhere on 14th Street and 7th Avenue. Husband runs off to find him.

6:00-7:15 PM: Meet with DJ to discuss music and ceremony for b'nai mitzvah and chase toddler with poopy diaper around coffee shop. Change diaper on slime-coated bathroom floor.

8:00 PM: Eldest son, during dinner, says he needs a blue hat with a red pom-pon for his Halloween costume. Stan from South Park. Yell at son: Are you kidding me? Blue hats with red pom-pons don't just APPEAR out of nowhere at 8 PM on the night before Halloween. What were you thinking? Feel bad for yelling at son. Apologize.

8:30 PM: Go in search of blue hat with red pom-pon. Amazingly, find street vendor on Broadway selling red hat with red pom-pon and blue hat without one. Decide to cut and paste.

9:00 PM: Walk dog.

9:30 PM: Order yarmulkes and flashy disco rings online.

10:00 PM: Finally sit down and answer work email. And help cut cardboard. And locate lost Drill Baby Drill shirt in daughter's underwear drawer.

Go Mom.

UPDATE:

3:45 AM: Sit in steaming bathroom with 2 year old, who's contracted the croup.

7:30 AM: Take 2 year old's temperature: 98.6. Dance jig of glee. Briefly consider not sending him to daycare. Then consider workload.

8:00 AM: Drop off child at daycare.

I’m a bit overwhelmed by my to do list today. In fact, instead of composing this blog, I should be doing all manner of other stuff this morning, but I figured this would kill seventeen birds with one blog entry. Instead of keeping the to do list in my head, where it usually lives, I’ll set it down here, on virtual paper, so I can find it again. I guess that’s one advantage of blogging.

1. Finish editing Hell is Other Parents manuscript and hand it in by its due date, tomorrow.

2. Write one more essay for Hell is Other Parents, if possible, by tomorrow.

3. Edit Redbook essay that was due last week. Sorry, Jeannie. I meant to get to it.

4. Prepare for the Afterbirth comedy performance on November 6th. Meaning, cut a 2800 word essay down to 1700, as per instructions, then practice it and memorize it.

5. Walk dog.

6. Create new flier, as promised, for my speaking agent.

7. Schedule tomorrow's Star Trek ADR session for my son.

8. Write proposal plus first chapter for second book of my two-book contract with Hyperion and get it approved, otherwise find job at Starbucks to pay rent.

9. Finish reading Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober's book, Getting to 50/50—this one’s a revolution, folks, about fathers and mothers sharing equally in the burden of work and parenting, and it’s backed up by airtight research—and write appropriately gushy blurb.

10. Attend 13 year old son’s soccer game at 3:00, the first I’ve ever been to--as in ever--since he just started playing this year (“Face it, Mom, I’m just not a sports guy,” he said when I tried to interest him in the game as a young kid.) Can’t skip it, because I missed all the other games while I was on book tour. Apply to pre-schools for 2 year old son. Apply to new middle school for 11 year old daughter. Don't even ask.

11. Apply for open assistant professorship teaching writing at the New School by November 15th; convince the search committee that, though I myself have never taken a writing course, I’m at least more qualified to teach one than Sarah Palin is to run a country.

12. Run my dying father’s business.

13. Plan trip to London to meet with Dad’s partners.

14. Plan emergency b’nai mitzvah for my two eldest on November 22nd. (Since my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 2-6 months to live, we’re marking the occasion here in New York now, right now, instead of in Israel in the spring as originally planned.) This one has a sublist:

-Meet with rabbi tonight at 5:30

-Meet with DJ tonight at 6:00

-Figure out where to rent 200 chairs

-Ride the kids to practice their new Torah portions, instead of the ones they’d been learning, the Havdalah service, and “The Sounds of Silence,” my dad’s favorite song and the one he asked my son to play on the guitar at his funeral, which both kids will perform at the Bar Mitzvah, so Dad can actually be alive to hear and enjoy it.

-Buy Tallises (traditional Jewish prayer shawls) for the kids, yarmulke’s for the guests, a suit and shoes for Jacob and an outfit for Leo. (Sasha’s dress we already have; I bought mine online from Target last night. Let me know what you think. I hope it fits.)

-Write a speech and figure out if I can read Rudyard Kipling’s If, his classic poem about manhood, to my kids—adding in a line about being a woman, for my daughter—without breaking down in tears at the ceremony.

-Compose booklets containing the service for guests. Go to Kinko’s and get them printed.

-Stop worrying about how I will pay for this party and just throw it on the credit card and pray for a miracle. Perhaps you would like to buy my book?

So after a morning of cleaning up glitches and being scolded by an independent bookseller on my facebook page for linking only to Amazon, the site is up and running. I'm pretty satisfied with the way it looks, although I wish it could be, for lack of a better term, fancier. Check out authorbytes.com to see what I'm talking about. They do great work. But I can't afford the $3500 price tag right now. The software from the Author's Guild is primitive, so things I'd like to do, like resizing photographs or allowing someone to click on the book cover itself to buy the book are either impossible to do, within the constraints of the tools, or I just haven't figured them out yet.

I'd be happy to hear any and all feedback. And I promise to post here periodically, so check back when you can.

So I just spent all day teaching myself html and building this website (she said, proudly) after coming home from Book Club Expo and being scolded by everyone there for not having a proper author site. I thought facebook would suffice. Apparently not.

The site is definitely not in its final form, and I want to add a section of author photos somewhere, plus my old war photos and magazine clips and all that other stuff, but I have a manuscript I have to hand in in four days, so this is the best I can do for the moment. If you find me out here in cyberspace, feel free to leave a comment, send an email, buy my new book.