Peeled PDF/EPUB Ú Hardcover

Peeled PDF/EPUB Ú Hardcover 12 1951 I was born at eleven AM a most reasonable time my mother often said and when the nurse put me in my mother's arms for the first time I had both a nasty case of the hiccups and no discernible forehead it's since grown in I've always believed in comic entrancesAs I grew up in River Forest Illinois in the 1950's I seem to remember an early fascination with things that were funny I thought that people who could make other people laugh were terribly fortunate While my friends made their career plans declaring they would become doctors nurses and lawyers inwardly I knew that I wanted to be involved somehow in comedy This however was a difficult concept to get across in first grade But I had a mother with a great comic sense she was a high school English teacher and a grandmother who had been a funny professional storyteller so I figured the right genes were in there somewhere although I didn't always laugh at what my friends laughed at and they rarely giggled at my jokes That and the fact that I was overweight and very tall all made me feel uite different when I was growing up a bit like a musk ox at a tea partyMy grandmother who I called Nana had the biggest influence on me creatively She taught me the importance of stories and laughter She never said Now I'm going to tell you a funny story she'd just tell a story and the humor would naturally flow from it because of who she was and how she and her characters saw the world She showed me the difference between derisive laughter that hurts others and laughter that comes from the heart She showed me too that stories help us understand ourselves at a deep level She was a keen observer of peopleI kept a diary as a child was always penning stories and poems I played the flute heartily taught myself the guitar and wrote folk songs For years I wanted to be a comedienne then a comedy writer I was a voracious reader too and can still remember the dark wood and the green leather chairs of the River Forest Public Library can hear my shoes tapping on the stairs going down to the children's room can feel my fingers sliding across rows and rows of books looking through the card catalogs that seemed to house everything that anyone would ever need to know about in the entire world My parents divorced when I was eight years old and I was devastated at the loss of my father I pull from that memory regularly as a writer Every book I have written so far has dealt with complex father issues My dad was an alcoholic and the pain of that was a shadow that followed me for years but I've learned things from that experience that have made me resilient I attempted to address those issues in Rules of the Road and I took them even further in the companion book Best Foot Forward The theme that I try to carry into all of my writing is this adversity if we let it will make us strongerIn my twenties I worked in sales and advertising for the Chicago Tribune McGraw Hill WLS Radio and Parade Magazine I met my husband Evan a computer engineer while I was on vacation Our courtship was simple He asked me to dance; I said no We got married five months later in August 1981 But I was not happy in advertising sales and I had a few ulcers to prove it With Evan's loving support I decided to try my hand at professional writing I wish I could say that everything started falling into place but it was a slow slow build writing newspaper and magazine articles for not much money My daughter Jean was born in July of '82 She had the soul of a writer even as a baby I can remember sitting at my typewriter I didn't have a computer back then writing away with Jean on a blanket on the floor next to me If my writing was bad that day I'd tear that page out of the typewriter and hand it to her Bad paper I'd say and Jean would r