From What YA Lit is and isn’t by Mary Pearson:

Who writes [Young Adult literature]?

People like me. People who find the teen years fascinating and the nuances of teen literature a challenge. I am not writing it as “practice” so I can one day write an adult book (I am asked that a lot.) Young adult books are not a lesser, watered-down version of adult books. They are not any easier or harder to read than adult books and they are certainly not any easier to write. They are just different. Just as with adult books, some teen books are easy and breezy and meant to be that way, and others, like Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, or Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, are complex and mulit-layered. They can offer social commentary, as with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, or The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart, while being immensely entertaining at the same time. They can examine our flaws and failures and our hopes and dreams in quiet, elegant prose as in Thursday’s Child by Sonya Hartnett, or with fun, quippy prose as in Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins.

The bottom line?

The bottom line is that YA books are not meant to raise children. They are everything any adult book is. They are entertainment. They are a place to see ourselves. They are a place to get lost for a few hours. They are a place to make us think and wonder and imagine. They are a place to evoke anger, disagreement, discussion, and maybe tears. Books have no other responsibility than not to make the reader hate reading.

Today was crazy, unexpected, intense, draining, exciting, rushed, and fulfilling. All before noon!

No, this is not a new member of our family. Almost, though!

Every morning before work, I take Riley on a walk. Today, this beautiful and sweet dog came up to us. I didn’t recognize her from the neighborhood, so I was wary at first. (Let’s be honest, she could eat Riley for breakfast.) But she was calm and friendly upon greeting us, and I figured her owner was just around the corner.

Wrong.

When I realized she was alone, I asked her to “go home.” (This has worked with lost neighborhood dogs in the past.) To my joy and relief, she went right up to the front door of a nearby house! Then she came back to me, and went right up to the next one! And the next one. And the next one…

Doh.

Realizing she was lost, I did the only thing I could do, the thing I would want someone who found Riley to do: I brought her home (coaxing her with kibbles), tied her to my patio, and took some pictures. For FOUND posters, of course. I taped a couple up around the neighborhood, asked my neighbor to check on the dog while I was gone, and went to work half an hour late.

(During this process, I also called Andy and my dog-loving coworker Suzie to freak out ask their advice on what to do. Per Suzie’s very good suggestion, I planned to take the dog to the vet this evening to see if she had a microchip. Luckily it didn’t come to that.)

At work, I went on Craigslist to post a FOUND listing. Before I even finished, I noticed a LOST listing with a picture. A picture of a dog that looked just like the one tied up on my patio! So of course I called the number, got the story from the dog’s owner, and quizzed him a bit. What color is the collar? What’s the dog’s gender? What’s the dog’s name? Obviously I didn’t know the answer to the last one, but I intended to find out at lunch.

A work errand allowed me to take an early lunch and swing by my house. Bella, as her name turned out to be, was still lying patiently on my patio, although she was hungry and playful when I went out to see her. Riley was wound up as usual, running and jumping and generally not being helpful.

Bella wasn’t very responsive to her name, so I asked the supposed owner for one more detail: what else was on her collar besides her tags? (Well, besides the ring for her tags. The tags had fallen off, probably during the night while she was wandering around lost in the storm.) He said that he had just bought the collar and it was too big, so he’d had to put a green twist-tie around the extra “tail” to keep it from flapping around. There was in fact a green twist-tie on Bella’s collar, so responsive or not, I knew she was his dog. Because seriously, HOW ELSE could he possibly know about a green twist-tie?!

Long story short (oops too late) I walked Bella and Riley over to rendezvous with Bella’s owner. He was obviously glad to see her. She was relatively aloof, but I’ve heard that huskies are like that. Apparently they are also escape artists and wanderers. GEE, I HADN’T NOTICED. Anyway, they were happily reunited, and I turned down a thank you lunch since I had to get back to work.

(I also showered and changed, because it was freaking hot as heck, and running around with two dogs at the same time was a workout!)

So that was my adventure. Thankfully this one had a happy ending — although I must confess I was a little sad when I got home and there wasn’t an extra puppy in my backyard. :P

Since we have a lot of travel coming up in the next few months (Andy especially) we decided to keep our Labor Day weekend relatively low-key (and inexpensive). So on Saturday morning we headed up to Columbus to check out all the cute animals at the #1 zoo in the country!

Yes, that is me PETTING A FLAMINGO. It’s okay to be jealous.

This red panda is demonstrating Law #1 of the Animal Kingdom: Animals sleep A LOT. At first it seemed like every animal in the zoo was doing their best Riley impression. Fortunately they started to wake up as the day went on.

That frog is just cute.

This is Colo, the first ever gorilla born in captivity. She’s a bit of an old girl now, but her expression is still so alert.

That orangutan was EMO. And I don’t know that woman, I just thought she made the picture more interesting.

Andy loves feeding lorikeets, even though they are the same at every zoo and almost always pee on him. This time no pee, but they did flick the nectar juice on his shirt.

The otter gang was adorable, as was the sleeping koala. I totally would have cuddled them if cuddling them wouldn’t have gotten me kicked out of the zoo.

I cuddled these guys instead.

After (FOUR HOURS AT) the zoo, we were hungry but not in the mood for park food. So we let our handy dandy Garmin (GPS) tell us what was nearby and edible. The closest options were Wendy’s or “Morganhouse.” We had no idea what Morganhouse was, but hey, it was a holiday, we were going to be adventurous goshdarnit!

Well, it turns out that The Morgan House is pretty freaking awesome. Located in a beautiful (but not pretentious) suburb called Dublin, The Morgan House is like Cracker Barrel meets Pier 1 Imports meets delicousness. 75% is a split-level store, currently filled with Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas decorations, cooking spices and supplies, vintage clothing, jewelry, furniture, and more. The other 25% is the restaurant, but of course we went in the store entrance and were walking through thinking “WTF Garmin?”

When we finally did find the restaurant part, we decided this place was too quirky not to try, and BOY was that the right decision. I got a chicken pot pie SERVED IN A FLOWER POT, and Andy got a roast beef melt served on a croissant. They also gave us complimentary banana nut muffins to start, so I was all, You had me at banana nut!

Afterwards I got a massive throbbing headache so we went home (skipping the Chihuly exhibit at the Columubus Conservatory, but we’ve seen his stuff at Phipps in Pittsburgh so I don’t feel that bad about it).

Sunday night we went to a friend’s house for dinner and several rounds of Trivial Pursuit for the Wii. That is an AWESOME game, let me tell you. But you have to play the Hardcore Battle Mode (which is totally not what it’s called). My main contributions for the night were answers relating to Dooce and LOLcats.

Last but not least, today we made niu rou mian (and by we, I mean Andy) and then went to another friend’s house for a BBQ, cornhole, and croquet. Yes, CROQUET. I didn’t play, but I don’t think anyone else really did either. I’m pretty sure one of the dudes just made up rules off the top of his head and everyone went along with it.

So that was our labor day. A whole lotta days, but almost no labor!

Number of new words written today: Like 30, counting this blog post.

Number of FedEx shipments made today: 53 billion. Divided by 53. Or maybe a billion.

IT WAS A LOT OF FEDEX SHIPMENTS, OKAY?

His father had given him the journal shortly after he left—how long ago now? Three years?—and had, in white-out, written the words “WANT JOURNAL” on the cover. In this book his father had written as inscription and directive, “Write what you want. Every day, or as often as you can, write what you want. That way, whenever you’re confused or rudderless, you can look to this book, and be reminded where you want to go and what you’re looking for.”

- From Max at Sea by Dave Eggers (basically a partial retelling of Where the Wild Things Are)

—

I was going to write a different post to go along with that quote, but despite gorgeous weather and a really lovely outing with a coworker, today has turned out kind of crappy. I’ve got sharp shooting pains in my head/neck/shoulder area, I skipped my writers group, and I got in a fight with someone I love. (Two fights, really.)

So instead of that post, which let’s just go ahead and assume would have been both cute and profound, I’ll just sum it up with this:

Obviously I did not hit my 50k in 1 month mark. But I’m not stopping or giving up. September is the new August. I won’t forget my goals, the things that I want. I know where I want to go and what I’m looking for. I will get there, I will find it.