It’s been a long, nose-to-the-grindstone week, and I just now noticed it’s late Thursday evening, and the blog has not been written. It’s high time to fix that, so I will.

This has been a writing week, as in facing down the problems with a manuscript and attempting to make those problems go away. Are we there yet? The answer to that question is the same one my mother used to give to a carful of travel-weary kids when we finally crossed the border from Nebraska into South Dakota on those long ago summer vacations. “Not yet,” she would say. “It’s a long way from Yankton to Summit or Marvin,” as the case might be, and the same is true here as far as the crashing climax for Clawback, Ali Reynolds # 11, is concerned—NOT YET. 

The nicest thing that happened to me this week was receiving an e-mail from a lady whose message included a photograph of a library copy of After the Fire. The photo showed the book with several different colored paper markers sticking out of it, ones she was using to keep her place on the poems that really spoke to her—poems that made her feel less alone in a sixteen year marriage to an alcoholic. It turns out that some of my own hard-won wisdom in that regard gave her strength to face her own similar difficulties and also lent her the hope that there might still be something better waiting for her if and when she finally finds a way to leave or change her own situation. Believe me, I’m cheering her on from the sidelines and hoping that, whatever she decides, one day she, too, will find a happy ending.

And speaking of endings. Today I learned that Sally Kim, my editor at Simon and Schuster, is taking a new position with another publishing house. It’s a big step up for her and a great career move, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a little blue about it. Sally has been a star as my editor, and she was the spark plug behind the Ali Reynolds/Joanna Brady combo novella, No Honor Among Thieves, that will be coming out later this fall. She helped hammer out a peace treaty that actually makes publishing history since Ali belongs to Simon and Schuster and Joanna resides with HarperCollins.

It’s been a lovely sunny day here. We’re out on the back porch and have been for most of the afternoon. Below our hill, I can hear sirens on 405. That’s not a surprise. In the last two weeks, the Washington Department of Transportation has, in its infinite wisdom, removed a working HOV lane from the only north/south thoroughfare that runs through Bellevue. The formerly free HOV lanes for 2+ are now over-priced tollways, Hostage Lanes, as people like to call them because they mostly don’t have exits where people need to . . . well . . . exit.

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the paper saying that the people earning the lowest wages, the ones with the least flexible schedules, are also the ones with the longest commutes. The tolls on 405 are not for minor amounts, and they escalate as high as the four dollar range per camera during the times when people have to actually . . . well . . .commute. To get from one end of the other means passing at least two cameras. In other words, someone making minimum wage loses a full hour’s worth of wages EACH WAY a day to tolls or else spends an extra hour a day stuck in traffic. Two if a city bus happens to burn up on the freeway as one did during yesterday’s morning unrush-hour.  

In the meantime, the city fathers are busily removing lanes from other secondary north/south routes in order to turn them into bike lanes. One of those secondary streets, formerly 2 lane, is now reduced to one lane and a bicycle lane. That means that if a mommy trying to beat her child’s daycare pickup deadline happens to get stuck behind a city bus—stopping to pickup and unload passengers AND THEIR BICYCLES, she’s screwed. By the way, the fine for a late daycare pick is $24 per every four minutes. 

It seems to me that the people dictating traffic policy have gone to war with ordinary folks—the regular working class people who pay those incredibly over-the-top Washington state gasoline taxes. Those taxes are supposed to be used to build and maintain roadways rather than subsidizing buses or bicycles or launching off on a ridiculously expensive project to dig a tunnel under Elliott Bay. By the way, when will bicycle riders start paying their fair share? Obviously they’re not paying late daycare pick up fees.

As for PUTTING PHOTOS OF DEAD ANIMALS ON GAS PUMPS to discourage people from BUYING GAS? People still have to get from home to work and back again!! Whatever happened to common sense?
Since I don’t commute how is it that I know so much about this? Here’s the deal. My daughter commutes. She can’t reach anyone at the Washington Department of Transportation for the purpose of venting during rush hour. (After all, they have flexible schedules. They’re already home.) So she vents to me. Daily. She used to be able to use the express lanes on 405 to go to Doggy-Daycare with her son after work and after school. If she bites the bullet and pays the toll, it won’t  work because there’s no Hostage Lane exit at her exit. (Crossing the double lines to get off at an unscheduled exit is good for a $186 fine.) There’s also no exit from the Hostage Lane at her Doggy Daycare exit.
So today I’m writing about this from the comfort of my back porch. You might be saying to yourself, “How dare she write about this? What can she possibly know about driving in rush hour traffic on 405?” Maybe not much, but I seem to know more about it from here than some of those traffic engineers who spend their lives in Kumbaya Land down in Olympia. I especially like the ones who, armed with clipboards and algorithms, regularly turn up on TV with the all the talking heads to explain to us with perfectly straight faces that Seattle has NO traffic problems. Except when the President comes to town. Or when the President of China comes to town. Or when the Seahawks play. Or when a bus catches fire on a freeway. Or when a semi loaded with salmon tips over. Nope, no problems at all.
If you believe those engineers actually commute on 405, then I’m willing to sell you my “ocean-front property in Arizona.”
I didn’t set out to write a rant today, but it turns out I did.
Sorry about that.