draft halloween blizzard, sled, 12 pack of diet soda

If I were going to get a book length manuscript published, I think my best, most prolicate, work is about me. So memoir. How to plot that out?

I have been thinking of doing something a little different. Publishing a bunch of memoir pieces but without a narrative thread. Is such a thing doable? All things are possible but, realistically, would any publisher publish a book that had my old man matha fucking, my "I am going to bring you down, Father" in the same book? Or 'I'll be good" and 'my pants fell down in a food store'.

favorite story:  after the 1992 Halloween blizzard in Minneapolis, when 36 inches of snow fell in one blizzard and kids trick or treated in that blizzard singing christmas carols, I was in between homes and Rosie and I were staying with Joni and Cary.  I shoveled a path from the street to their drive way so I could pull my car off the street for the snow plows. And then Rosie and I decided to walk the several blocks to a small cluster of shops nearby, mostly just to get out. We were all feeling cooped up and Joni and esp. Cary were not used to little girls all day long. And Rosie was not used to being cooped up.

I bought that sled, which thrilled Rosie. And I hauled her home in it, easy to do with all that snow. Walking to the shops had been arduous. Walking in large mounds of snow, because snow drifts a lot higher in places than the total snowfall measurement, had been exhausting. She thought I bought the sled to pull her home and give her a toy to use in the snow.

We had gone into the hardware store because we had trekked in and out of all the shops, for something to do. All shops were packed because everyone was getting out, waiting for the city to plow streets so folks could resume normal lives. NO one could drive for a couple days, which is unusual in Mpls. Usually one can get driving soon after a snow fall ends, the plows are out before the snow stops. But this wallop of a storm paralyzed even winter-adept Minneapolis for a couple days.

So we went through the hardware store single file. Virtually anything useful for winter was sold out so when we got to the back of that hardware store and I saw one, last purple sled, large eough for three children, I grabbed it. Rosie squealed in delight. And I was happy to pull her home.

But I bought that sled beause I was a diet soda junkie in those days and I wanted the sled to haul home a twelve pack of diet coke.

I also bought packages of frozen Byerly's wild rice soup, which is awesomely delicious. For reasons I no longer recall, I bought a package, one serving, of that wild rice soup for JOni, me and Rosie but I chose something else for Cary.  Maybe it was the ham in it. She was fussier than Joni.  Something about that soup lead me to believe JOni wouldn't like it.

I bought a few other things, all seemingly heavenly treats becaduse it had taken just about a whole day to get to those shops and return home. When I upacked the soup, with JOni, Rosie and Cary watching me pull out each treat, when I said I had not gotten wild rice for Cary, she was crestfallen. When I tried to offer her my wild rice soup, she wouldn't take it, wouldn't admit she was hurt but she was.  I wanted to understand my blunder but she wasn't talking.

I had been scheduled to move that Nov 1st into my next home, my things in storage. The moving company had called early in the day and informed me that I would be their very last move, and probably not for a few days. With my things being in storage, instead of an apartment underpressure to be empty so the next tenant could move in, my things could wait. Sounded reasonable.

The move delay was understandable but a stress on us all. Joni and Cary had been gracioius hosts. We had shared dinner most days, taking turn cooking and cleaning up, but we had worn out our welcome. It was me, but also a 9 year old child is a lot noisier than a house with two forty-somethig lesbians who have never had kids. It was harder on Cary than Joni who was, after all, a child psychologist.