Odd Mom Out Read Online Free PDF

school, but I resent how the school system superimposes its schedule on ours, limiting our trips, our adventures, Eva’s and my time together.
    I’ve thirty, forty e-mails, with nearly half being spam. I delete those and then skim through the rest of the e-mail. Nothing seems to require immediate attention, and I happily forward several to my staff members for them to handle. Eva thinks I love e-mail. She doesn’t realize it’s a necessary evil.
    But she is right about me not working today. I’ve promised to take the weekend off. It’s our last weekend before school starts on Tuesday, and Eva and I didn’t have enough time together this summer. I ended up working far more hours than I’d anticipated.
    Sipping my coffee, I breeze through the various e-zines and business bulletins that I skipped yesterday because of lack of time. I’m still reading one of the bulletins when the studio phone rings.
    “Marta, Frank here. How are you?”
    Frank is Frank Deavers, one of the former executive vice presidents of Harley-Davidson who’d left Harley a few years ago to do his own thing. I’d worked with Frank on some small jobs for Harley, but Keller & Klein wasn’t the right agency for Harley and they took their account elsewhere.
    In the meantime, Frank and I remained friends, catching up by phone or e-mail every couple of months. Frank knew I owned a Harley but dreamed of owning a restored Indian or Freedom bike one day.
    “Found that Freedom bike yet?” he asks.
    “Have you found your Indian?”
    “They are opening an Indian factory in North Carolina.”
    “Heard that.” I draw the blinds in the studio, brightening the office. Until the rest of the fog burns off, it’ll be rather gloomy outside.
    “Did you hear Freedom’s building a factory in your neck of the woods?”
    I sit at the edge of my desk. “Here in Seattle?”
    “Apparently they’ve found some land outside of Renton, and with the various Boeing layoffs they believe they’ve got the skilled workforce needed.”
    “You’re serious.”
    “Completely.”
    Wow. I love, love, love the old bikes and have dreamed of putting together a vintage Freedom chopper, but that will be a labor of love, as well as some significant money.
    “I’ve signed on with Freedom to handle franchising and merchandising.”
    If you don’t love bikes, you won’t know what this means, but it’s huge. It’s wonderful. Bike lovers have dreamed about the day the legendary bikes like Indian, Victory, Triumph, and Freedom will be manufactured again. There’s nothing wrong with Harley or any of the Japanese motorcycles, but it’s like having only two car companies to choose from—Honda and Chevy.
    Car aficionados want choices. Consumers want choices. Bike lovers want choices.
    “But we’re talking years, right?” I ask, trying not to get ahead of myself too much with bike fantasies.
    “We’re unveiling our first bike in January, in a thirty-second TV spot during the Super Bowl.”
    I’m shocked, and thrilled, and impressed. This is great news, and I’m already thinking how I can get a piece of the action for us at Z Design. “That’s expensive.”
    “We’re going to do this right.”
    There are so many questions I want to ask, so many things I want to know. “You’ll have bikes in production by then?”
    “We’ll be taking orders. The first bikes will roll out late April, early May.”
    “Just in time for summer.” Damn. I really want to be involved. Working with Freedom Bikes wouldn’t be merely revenue, it would be a chance to work with a product I enjoy, an opportunity to support something I believe in.
    “So, Frank, did you call just to torment me, or are you going to tell me there’s a way I can be part of this? Because you’ve got to know I want to be part of this. How many years have I known you? Six? Seven? And we’ve shared how many bike stories?”
    “I know.” He pauses, hesitates. “So how’s business going?”
    I notice he didn’t