Writing update: Between my producing job at Mattel and my “300 Days of Content” project, writing has come to a screeching halt. My brain is using a completely different set of muscles, which, I guess, is good for the working muscles, but not great for the ones that aren’t being used. I can literally feel my facility with words, and my feeling for language, lessening. I’m hoping this is temporary, and that maybe as these new muscles become more toned and efficient, they can take less effort, and I can achieve more balance.

Life Update: Last night I went to hang out with my brother and sister at my sister’s family’s apartment. They’ve been having issues with fruit flies, which of course is annoying to her. This prompted my brother to say that his apartment gets large waterbugs, which he really hates. They have no problem wishing death unto either of these species of insect.

I contributed that our apartment has crickets. One can hear them chirping in the eaves. Sometime I’ll see a blurry-something skitter across the floor and at first I’m alarmed, thinking it’s a spider, but then I put on my glasses and realize, it’s just a cricket. In which case I ignore it and let it go on its way.

“Obviously, I can’t kill a cricket,” I said.

“Why not?” my brother asked.

I thought about it. I’ve never heard of crickets being dirty like flies, and they don’t bite. And there’s the fact that I don’t like to hear things crunch. But none of these are the real underlying reason.

“Because of A Cricket in Times Square.”

They looked at me blankly.

I’ve run into this with younger people, but how can people of my own Gen X era not know A Cricket in Times Square?

“It won a Newbery Award!” I tell them, as if that will clear it all up.

“It was a cricket, and a kid who worked at a newsstand adopted it… and it could sing, or play its wings like a violin or something…”

A glimmer of recognition in my brother’s eyes… “Was it a cartoon?”

“Yes! Not a series, but like a TV special.”

Through the magic of the internet, you can watch it here: (I don’t know why it’s age restricted. I would say it is safe for all ages.)