Pay Phone Vigilante

A Case of the Jazzies

2012-01-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

I have a cup of hazlenut creme-flavored coffee, but that's not what I want to talk about today. If I did, I would have named this post "Drinking an Entire Case of Hazelnut Creme Flavored Coffee." And then I would be too tired to sit at this desk and write. I would be running down the hall narrating like a fatally caffeinated maniac, and then later I would have to explain that it was a form of Slam Poetry. And does my place of business want to suppress such exuberant creativity?? Well, yes. They would appreciate it if I wasn't so creative at work. So I'll make this quick.

The Pack AD is my favorite band. That's what I want to talk about. And I will shamelessly promote them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67JTbDeku0Q&feature=related

I am nuts about this song, "Blackout." So nuts about it that I could run down the halls narrating about it like a maniac, even without the caffeine. I'm that jazzed about these people. They're two people, actually, two tomboyish Canadian chicks, they rock ass, and somehow their mullets are sexy in this video. I know. I can't believe I just admitted that on-line either. They are also sexy as cartoons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwM9a_kPaE

No mullets in that one, but "Haunt You" is still a driving, growling song that I've been listening to when I need energy, and the hazelnut creme coffee isn't cutting it. I turn it up especially at work when my coworkers are all talking about The Saints. I think I might be the only person in New Orleans who can not wait for football season to be over, but even when it is it's not like the subject is going to change from how the Saints are doing to female Canadian rock bands.

Speaking of work, back to it.

Waiting on a bank is worse than everything else that is bad

2012-01-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for the sale of my house to close. It's all I do, even when I'm doing a number of other things. I could be helping a kid with her homework, talking to the dog, or transferring a phone call to the Security Director because part of the hospital is on fire, and I'll be thinking in the back of my mind, "I wonder when my closing date is." There have been a few possible ones, and they've all been rescheduled for one reason or another. I have moved out and am ready to pass the house on to my buyer who is also ready to move in. Our realastate agents are ready. THE ENTIRE WORLD is ready for the closing of my house expect for the bank because I don't think that the bank is part of the real world. I think it exists in a parallel universe where it is tradition to set up a house sale, have it ready to go, and then take a nap for five years.

I don't understand. Every day I hear about how depressed the economy is because the housing market is bad. You know those people who are miserable sometimes because they want to be miserable? I think that the housing market is one of those people. I have a house that I am selling which someone wants to buy. He has good credit, and the deal works out well for both of us. HEY! Economy! This is good for you! TAKE IT!!!! Stop looking at it like it's a spoonful of medicine that you know is going to taste bad! I don't care if you like it or not, it's good for you, and it will make you feel better, and only a derranged, masochistic idiot would refuse it! Sell my house! Boost yourself! Help ME help YOU! DAMMMMMM!!! ITTTTT!!!!!!!

I go back and forth between being cool about it (letting go and accepting that it is out of my control), and banging my head againast my desk with my teeth clenched. Today I'm blogging about it, so that's new. It makes me wonder if the power of my blogging to tip the scales of the universe in my favor. I think about that when I'm relaxing and banging my head too. I think, "I'm letting go and accepting...I wonder if that means things will happen now. And then I can tell people, 'Yeah, I was all stressed about about the closing, but then I accepted that the matter was out of my control, let go, and that's when the bank finally set a closing date.'" When I bang my head in frustration I think, "I was all patient and now I've finally snapped. I wonder if that means it'll happen now. The universe was just waiting to see how far it could push me before I cracked and now that it's experiment is over, it will reward me with a closing date." And now I'm blogging and wondering, "I wonder if I'll get an email or a phone call about the closing since I'm writing about it. I can write in the middle of this post, 'I interrupt this post to bring you fabulous news! I have a closing date! The nightmarish waiting is over! The economy has decided to take one little step toward getting better and it has benefitted me! Hooray!'" But that has not happened.

And so I am still, even when I let go, not letting go because the only reason I'm letting go is because I think if I do it will trick the universe into making things happen in my favor. My will wins!...Doesn't it? No? Well, can't it just win this once? Please? You know that saying, "When we make plans, God laughs," well, just this once and I swear I'll never ask again, can it be, "When we make plans, God thinks it's the best idea ever and is so proud of you that He gives you whatever you want?" How about that? Just this once? No? Ok, well, if you change your mind I'll be over here banging my head on my desk. Thanks.

Blogging from phone - denied!

2011-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

Ok, I tried blogging from my phone and it didn't work. Damness. In no way do I blame my phone, but rather my bad technology karma.

My essence thinks that electronics are a threat and it attacks them like white blood cells on an infection. I don't even have to touch an electronic device to mess it up. Sometimes when I walk past TV remote controls they explode. This is problematic because people usually have four or five of them. So when I walk into some one's living room and five remote controls spontaneously combust, it's like setting a roman candle off in some one's house. And there's no way cover it up, like if you spill Coke on some one's couch and you dab it with a napkin or lay a cat on top of it. No, this is loud, and there is shrapnel, and oftentimes your host is holding one of the remotes and you inadvertently kill him. Which is just awkward.

I wish I were one of those techie people who can fix anything, or figure out an electronic device if given a few minutes to troubleshoot it. I'm not even sure I'm using the word "troubleshoot" correctly. It would be oh so convenient if I could blog from my phone because then, hell, I could update this baby anywhere. I'm not always by a computer, but I am always by my phone. And my essence WANTS to hurt my phone, but it knows it can't because my essence is also codependent and it knows that the phone is a gateway to people. So it lets me make calls and receive them, and has recently adapted to text messages but it gets uppity at the idea of checking my email, blogging, facebooking, or joining Twitter. Honestly, by the time my essence becomes comfortable with the very idea of Twitter, it's fad will have passed. There will be something new, possibly something combining terms like "trending" and "occupy." Maybe "Troccupy," which will be shortened to "Troc" and then abbreviated to "trc," which leaves out one letter, which then makes it much more convenient to type, dnt yu thnk? Troc will be even better and more awesome than Twitter than any of us can imagine, but I won't be able to use it because my essence's karma won't be able to get within a mile of it.

So here I am, sitting at my computer and blogging, which my essence has allowed because I've convinced it that I'm not staring at a monitor but a pile of mud. I'm karmically in tune with mud, which anyone who has grown up with me or tasted my pies can attest to. I wonder if I can convince it that my phone is really a hamster. Then I can join the millions of others on Twitter! Unfortunately, it's not fooled for long because it senses lies. I mean, it is ME.

Speaking of which, gotta go. My essence has just figured out that I'm using a device and my monitor is beginning to melt.

Where is my plot?

2011-11-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been writing the Locksmith story for about a month now. The day before yesterday I finally wrote out the whole plot so I can see where I'm going with it, and now I can't find it. You would think I might keep track of things like, oh, the plot of my novel. But no. It's probably under a piece of bacon somewhere in the house.
At least I know where my notes are from my two days with Jay, the hospital locksmith. I followed him around during my lunch breaks to get an idea of what the swinging life of the average locksmith is like. My favorite notes on my time with Jay are ones that have nothing to do with anything, really, and/or don't help my book much. Here they are:
-"Jay's storeroom is so cluttered you'd have to climb across a work table to get into and and he won't let me because he's afraid I'll hurt myself. Pshaw!"
-"To pick a lock, you must use a pick."
-"The 11th floor has a good view of the river"
-(a quote taken from Jay out of context) "Key shavin's? Key shavin's don't smell like that. You probably smell me. Does it smell like dried shrimp?"
So that's been fun. I called over at ACME Lock, which is the place Jay calls when he needs back up, and left a message with the head Boss Lady there. I'd like to interview her, and come by the see what the shop looks and smells like. You would think I've had enough of the smell of dried shrimp but no. Never!
Aside from random notes, I also like facts about locks and keys with no clear idea of why. I like that the wheels inside of a combination lock are called "tumblers." I'm also charmed by words like cylinder, pins, pick-tool, and tension bar. Yes, I think I will use these words a lot in my book. "She crossed the room, eyes piercing coldly at Burt like pins at a tension bar." Actually, that makes no sense and there is no one in my story named Burt. But I like that sentence anyway.
For this story I'm ressurecting a name I've used in a previous book I wrote that is lying somewhere under my bed. Her name is Parker. In the other book she worked at a coffee shop, and in this one she gets to have supernatural powers and help save the world. She's been given a promotion. And yes, supernatural locksmith powers! She can pick a lock like it's nothing and wears a toolbelt like a stud!
My writing goal for this week is to send out the short story I wrote over the summer (yet again, because it's only been rejected once) and to work on "Locksmith." Perhaps also update Creature Feature House. So you can look out for that too, if you're into that kind of thing, which everyone should be.

Locked

2011-10-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I wrote a blog post at home and saved it to my jump drive (a riveting beginning to this post, I know but bear with me). The idea was to blog at home and then upload it at my break at work. Work and the library are the only two places that I have access to the Internet right now. So, I thought, "Hey! I shouldn't spend work time blogging, so I'll do it on my own time and then upload it at work during my break! Work, writing, and blogging shall be done but none of the twain shall meet! Integrity is getting slung around like crazy over here!....But no. I have Microsoft Works at home and Microsoft Word at work. I can't pull up what I saved. I can't do it at the library either because they have Word instead of Works too. Which also means that (pause for seizures of frustration) I can't access the file of the new book that I'm working on ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD except for at home. Home!!! You know? That place full of humans and animals who all say that they want me to write but then get hungry for dinner or throw up the minute I begin typing? ARRRGH!!!

Anyway, I wrote the most awesome post ever, and now it's locked away in a file that I can only look at by myself at home. But speaking of locks, I have a new book that I'm working on. And speaking of books (note the build of of tension because I did not tell you about my new book right away. I learned that from writing, which is neato), Agent Sarah says that The Dylanson Obituaries have been rejected six times so far. She's submitted it to four other publishers and we're waiting to hear back from them.

I think that's what I wrote about in my locked away post, that Agent Sarah has been awesomely supportive. She said that she loves the book and believes in it and doesn't think I should change it, but keep trying to find a publisher who loves it too. That's very sweet of her but also nerve wrecking.
"Oh good," I told my girlfriend Michelle over the phone. "Someone just needs to fall in love with it. No pressure."
"It's been known to happen," she told me, simply. "Keep trying."
"ARRRGGH!"

Despite my pirate-like protest, I am still trying. And while I wait for The Dylanson Obituaries to sell, I will be writing this new one. It's fantasy, which I've never written before but it's fun so far. It's about a female locksmith named Kelly. Because she who has the key has the power.

There are sometimes I think about driving

2011-09-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

There are sometimes, like ten minutes ago when I walked out to my car to get something, that I think about driving away. First and foremost this would have been a terrible idea because I was (and still am) on my break at work. The impulse happened for no reason I can think of. It reminded me of when I was younger and I would jump at the impulse to cut class, or dodge my bus and hide for the day instead of going to school.

Skipping a class in college, though not wise, wasn't going to get me kicked out if I did it once or twice. Hiding from the school bus though - that never turned out well. I think I only did it a few times. One time turned out especially bad, and I won't go into details, but let's just skip to the end and say that the police came out and my parents were very upset with me, and also worried that I might be crazy. (Note to mom and dad: I am, but it's not that bad) I never did it again after that, and instead dragged myself onto the bus where I slumped over and didn't look anyone in the face. This made me irresistably popular, and by that I mean that I was the mean kids' favorite target. I always got upset and never retaliated, which is a perfect combination for another kid who needed a quick reputation boost by picking on someone else. Looking back, I really wish I had just sat up straight and told off Julie Whatever Her Name Was when she threw gum in my hair, but instead I spent five unsuccessful minutes trying to pull it out and then the rest of the bus ride staring out the window wishing I could run into the trees that we were driving by.

Now when I get these impulses, I don't drive off and I don't slump over and stop talking to someone. This would not work.

Kid at Home: Mom, can I have some lunch money?...Mom? Why did you fall forward on the table? Mom? (starts tapping on my head) Mom, are you awake?...What are you mumbling? No, I don't want to go get your car keys. Why?"

But the impulses don't always happen because I want to escape stress. Sometimes it's when I'm feeling good and I just want to get out there and see things. This morning when I was walking into work I saw a photograph of a shell on the beach in the hallway and I suddenly wanted to run back to my car and drive to the beach so I could look for it. I don't even know what beach that was. It could have been a New Zealand shore. All the better! I've never been to New Zealand! What a lark! I am sure that this is exactly what my boss would have said when I called to let him know of my plan.

"Norris," I would say, "No, I won't be in this morning. See, I was walking down the hall towards the patient elevators when I saw a picture of this shell and I decided to go to New Zealand...Yes, I think it's a lark too! You're so supportive, sir!"

Speaking of bosses and such, my break is over and I need to get back to work. I'll avoid the seashell hallway, and mean girls who look like they might throw gum at me.

Woman vs. Mower

2011-08-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while I was mowing the lawn I accidently punched myself in the face. How did this happen? I would like to make something up and say that I was mowing the lawn when this thug appeared out of nowhere and demanded money, and that I leaped over the lawn mower and kicked him, and then he did a flip and threw a punch that clocked me in the jaw, and I reeled but then I recovered, and I did a cart wheel and a triple backflip and punched him right in face and knocked him out cold. The lawn mower was running this whole time, threatening to mow down the both of us, just to add tension, and once the thug was down I returned to the machine and began pushing it across the yard again, like nothing had happened.
But no. It was a hundred and something degrees yesterday when I went out to tackle the jungle that my backyard has become, and after an hour of mowing I was overly hot, tired, and aggravated. The grass was especially high in one area and the machine kept killing. So I pulled the chord to jump start it and nothing happened. Pulled it again. Sputter and then nothing. I pulled it again and the mower laughed at me and then tried to pass it off as another sputter. Lyer. It wasn't the high grass, or my mowing skills - this machine was just a jerk. So I grabbed the chord and tore it back.
"Start goddamnit!" I barked, which only made it laugh harder at me.
I took a deep breath. I gave that thing a burning glare that I hoped it noticed and felt ashamed of itself, as its mistress panted and sweated before it. But that fucking lawnmower took one look at me and laughed until it cried.
"I SAID START!" I yelled, seized the chord, and jerked it back.
My hand was too sweaty. I lost my grip on the chord, my fist snapped back, and I popped myself right on the jaw.
As I stood there, dazed, my first thought was, "Did I really hit myself?" I touched below my chin, and the tips of my fingers came away bloody. My second thought was, "I'm done for the day." I actually split my chin. What. The. Hell?
So the backyard was left undone. For those of you who don't know, I live on almost a fourth of an acre so it takes about two hours to do the front and the back yard. The front looks great, but the backyard looks like half a jungle now. It looks like those pictures you see of land that's been cleared, and you can see where the demolition stopped because there's a flat field and then a wall of forrest. That's my yard.
And also at the edge of it there's a lawnmower that's laughing so hard it's wetting its pants.

New Post on Creature Feature House

2011-07-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

Feature Creatue House (the blog just about the goings on of my little family) is back! As of today!
http://www.creaturefeaturehouse.blogspot.com/

It's the Knuckle Head's Fault

2011-04-26T12:41:00.001-07:00

Hey! I have new followers. I don't know who some of you are, but welcome aboard.

I've been reading a LOT of Hyperbole and a Half (which I highly encourage you to look up because I still don't know how to link things so that you can click on its name and become magically transported to the delight of Hyperbole) and I find that I've been inspired, not only by Allie's wacky humor and superb illustrations, but by how often she posts. She went through a phase about a year ago or so where she posted every day. There was great fulfillment in this for me and the rest of us who love reading it, but apparently not so much for her because she stopped doing that.

So here's where the inspiration comes in...hmm, maybe it's not inspiration. I don't know the exact word for it, but that's not the point. The point is that in this post
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/apparently-i-am-failure-at-success.html
which I can not highlight and magically transport you there, and is also called "Apparently I am a Failure at Success," she doubts herself. This brilliantly funny person actually doubts whether or not her magic space bears are funny. How can they NOT be? And she has a zillion followers! I'm excited just to have 16!

And so I reflected upon my own self doubts. And so now I'm blogging.

What am I blogging about today? Magic space bears!...Oh wait, it's been done. Damn! Oh! I know, I know! I will tell you about a conversation I had with a coworker this morning, which is one that we have most mornings, and that conversation is called, "Things were better in the 1960's and your generation sucks." Well, it's not really a conversation as it is just me listening to a sixty-something year old man talk about how things used to be cheaper and safer, and how now we just live in an over-priced apocalyptic nightmare.

Usually I listen to this stream of reflection and complaints without much argument.
"Man oh man!" he'll say. "Music was music back then. You had guys gettin' together, it didn't matter what bands they were in they would all just play together. And to see 'em was maybe five bucks. What can you do with five bucks now?"
I shrug.
"Exactly!" he says. "It ain't shit! Back then you could fill your tank, catch a show, and eat dinner. You can't even buy a Coke at McDonald's for that now! Unfreakinbelievable!"
When I first started working here and he would rant I would attempt a friendly debate.
"Well," I would say. "That's true, but there were also less rights for minorities back then. Including women. Which is why I can have a job now and am not looked at like a freak. Wasn't that what all that change was about?"

He would cringe. I've since then learned that the word "change" will spark an Obama rant.
That time that he criticized modern music by saying that musicians don't intermingle and perform together anymore, I brought up the New Orleans music scene in which one musician usually plays several different instruments and performs in as many bands as he or she can handle. But he just pressed on as if I hadn't said anything and cried, "Unfreakinbelievable!" So I stopped.

But today, goddamn it, I couldn't help myself. It started off, innocently enough, about the price of gas. Not bad. Everybody complains about the price of gas. If you don't complain about the price of gas then you probably just can't speak (struck dumb as you are by the price of gas) and you write it down on slips of paper to show people how disgusted you are.

So Man of the Past says, "And gas these days!"
There is a groan of agreement among our crowd.
"Unfreakinbelievable! When I first started driving I could fill my tank for less than a buck. Now? You can't even get gas fumes for that much!"
"Yeah!" Somebody Else Who Enjoys the Past says.
"And what the hell is it with all these people dyin' in car wreckss? Back when we were kids nobody died in freakin' car wrecks!"
I said, "What?"
"No!" he waves his hands at me. "We didn't have all of that."
I leveled my eyes with his. "You're saying there were no fatal car accidents 45 years ago?"
"No, no, people knew how to drive back then!"
"You're telling me that no one died in a car. Not a single person."
"No one that I knew!"
I pointed at him accusingly. "James Dean!"
Man of the Past retorted by blowing a raspberry. I wasn't sure if this was directed at me, James Dean, or the very idea that he died that way when of course NO ONE died that way back then. But in any case, the gloves were off. And, crazily enough, all of the other people who loved the past took his side.
"That was in California!" one of them said. "Those crazies!"
"I didn't know a single person who died that way!" another told me.
"Forget about it!" Past Man who started it all said.
"GUYS!" I exclaimed. "That's not possible! I'll agree that gas was cheaper, but I know people died in car wrecks! How could they NOT die in car wrecks! That's the whole reason seat belts became mandatory by law. Somebody had to have died for that to happen!"
"It's all James Dean's fault," one of them said.
"Knuckle head," said Man of the Past, shaking his head.
"I can not believe we are having this conversation," I told them, and they all shook their heads at me.

To them, I am the young one in the office which my kids think is funny. Me, who can not link a word on my blog that, when clicked on, will magically transport you to a website.
Maybe, just for my coworkers, I'll figure out a way to click on a word that will magically transport them to The Past. They can bring ten dollars with them, and that should feed and cloth them for about a year.

Sick advantages

2010-11-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

Today I am sick and home from work, and I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "You lucky duck! You get to stay home while the rest of us slave over the things we usually slave over on a Monday!" And this is true. But do I consider myself lucky that I'm at home and you're not? Not really. I would rather be at work, and have the ability to smell and breathe through my nose than be home drinking microwaved honey because the lining of my throat is gone.

But enough about the linings of my internal organs. Today I have the opportunity to finish the short story that I started over the summer. For those of you who like to keep track, the summer officially ended two months ago. And I'm still not finished with the first draft of this thing. This is the one I started about Michael and Betsy, but it's evolved tremendously since then. Now, I'm not saying that the actual writing has evolved tremendously. I'm saying that the story itself has ended up in a totally different place than I expected it to. The writing itself is about the same. To give you an example, whenever I find myself stuck I tend to write things like this:
"So," Betsy says, twirling a lock of her hair on her finger. "What should we do now?"
"I don't know," says Michael. "Gen's stuck. Until she gets her shit together we're just gonna sit here at this booth in this diner."
Betsy stops twirling her hair and looks around. "When did we get to a diner?"
"Hell if I know," Michael shrugs. "She forgot to mention that's where we are, and that we're sitting across from each other, and that we've got that disheveled look like we've been up all night."
Betsy rolls her eyes. "She's so bad with setting."
"I know. You would think after writing for 25 years, ten professionally, she would have learned a thing or two about that."
"Seriously, how many fucking writing workshops does she have to go to before she figures it out?"
"I don't know, but until she gets it together I'm ordering more bacon." He holds up his mug. "Garcon! Coffee!"
Betsy looks at me, the writer. "Genevieve, that line is from 'Pulp Fiction.' What are you going to do have us hold up the diner in a few seconds? Who are you, Quentin Tarantino?"
I feel embarrassed at having been corrected by one of my own characters and I change Michael's line.
"Garcon!" he hollers, holding up his plate. "Bacon!"

So anyway, I get to do a lot of that today, which I wouldn't be able to do at work. At work I would just be answering the phone and frightening people on the other line with my croaky, demonic voice.
"Safety and Security," I'd growl, then cough. "This is (hack, wheeze!) Gene-(wheeze)."
"Is this some sort of sick joke?" they'd ask.
"Sick, yes," I'd reply and cough up a lung. "Joke? Only in that God has a sense of humor."
Click.
So let's thank heaven I'm not in that position today. And now, to write. Somehow I have to get Betsy and Michael out of that diner. I don't like Betsy's attitude and Michael's had more than enough bacon.

Let's not get specific

2010-11-12T13:08:00.000-08:00

After a few months of not blogging I could either give you specifics about the craziness that has kept me away from my blog or I could just write as if no time has gone by...Yes. Yes, let's do that. Let us just say that after many emails from distraught fans threatening to shave their heads and other desperate measures, I've decided to take up the blog again for the good of the people.

I will start by marveling at the fact that it is 2010 and I have just learned how to laminate something. How long has the lamination process been around? Since some time around the invention of penicillin? When you consider that technology becomes obsolete within weeks of hitting the shelves and is changing at a constant rate, I am about 500 years behind the times. My cell phone just rings. That's right. It flips open, which apparently no one's does anymore, and it rings. It does not access the internet, answer my email, Tweet, pay my bills or impersonate me on Facebook. It just rings. And I swear, the shameful look on my children's faces every time I flip my phone open would just bring you to tears. In their eyes, it's like I'm flipping off the world. It's as if I'm saying, "No, I have not upgraded my phone because I don't love my children and I want their peers to think that we are less poor than people who live under a bridge because even those guys can update Twitter from Facebook."

But here's the bigger problem - I don't care. And I'm not sure how many people really do. Eventually I will upgrade my phone because I care about what people think, and that's really it. Personally, I could care less if my phone even knew how to do the one thing it does half the time.

Oh! It also sends and receives text messages. There. My phone has the essential survival equivalent of a house with plumbing and electricity. Can humans live without plumbing and electricity? Well, yes. Technically. But to go without it when I don't need to is the same as deciding not to socialize with the rest of the world anymore. I would be "that lady" down the street who uses candles, an outhouse, and a well. But dude, that wouldn't even be the crazy part. My phone would flip open! Children would ride their bikes past my house and text their friends, "Ridin past ole Flippy again," and they would text him back, "PEDAL FASTER!" or something in a text abbreviated language that I'm not hip to.

And because I worry to nail-biting capacity about what teenagers, their friends, and family think I will eventually upgrade my phone. And then I will be one of those people who stares at her new phone as it rings and has no idea how to answer it because it is also Tweeting, looking up movie times, doing my taxes, and making ice all at the same time. I'll hand it to one of my more technology savvy friends and say, "Um, can you answer this for me?"
They'll say, "You push that button."
And I'll tell them, "No, that's the soda dispenser."
"Oh, right. Then you slide your finger across the screen like this..." She demonstrates by sweeping her index finger across the screen and a Swiss army knife/fork and spoon pops out the side.
She strokes her chin. "What does this button do?"
She pushes it and accidently hacks into the Pentagon. The ringing stops.
"Well," she says looking at me. "If it's really important they'll call back, right?"
"I guess," I say.
It makes a dinging sound.
"Oh!" my friend pipes up. "Popcorn's done!"

Let us hope now that I've learned how to laminate things for the office, that lamination technology doesn't suddenly take off and reach a level that I can't wrap my English major mind around. The day my boss tells me to fax something, and send out work-related email using the our new, souped-up (with blue tooth!) laminator I'm going to run screaming from the office.

Moving through it

2010-08-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I cleaned my room a little, but I didn't do it the way I wanted to. I went in with a garbage can, opened the closets, and threw away one scrap of paper at a time, when what I really wanted to do was go in with a bottle of lighter fluid and a match.

I don't want to stay in this. I want to move through it. It's just going slowly. There's over a decade of love letters, gifts of apology, and worn out clothes in those closets. The kind of clothes I look at and think, "I remember the date we were on when I wore those pants." They're the husband and wife closets. They were my mother and father's closets. There are still things in there left over from my mom and dad, along with all of the thoughts and feelings on paper from my marriage. It's two closets for four people. Chris moved out a year ago. My parents sold me the house seven years ago, and they don't live there anymore. Purging those closets hurts. But on the other hand, I AM the knuckle head who's kept everything.

It's hard to do this without drinking, smoking, or using someone else as a sexy distraction. But I don't want to stay in this grief. I want to move through it. It's been long enough.

I listen to "Willie" by Cat Power. The lyrics have nothing to do with my life or the way I feel. But the sound of it sings my soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk8lk5Swgks

Long, drawn out yawn, then scream

2010-08-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

I can only blog briefly. I'm at work. Had to write something. anything. Claire's acting workshop is over. Yesterday was the final performance. Went wonderfully. She kicked ass, and wants to get back on the stage already. Her mother is exhausted. Lots of stress this week. Soooooooooooo much to write about, and not all stuff is bad.

Still....AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhyawwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn...zzzzzzzzzz.

Rock Lobster

2010-07-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Things have been going ok lately. Claire and Emma had their combined birthday party on Saturday, and despite predictions that we would be slammed with rain, there was only a light 15 minute drizzle. Since most of my small guests were on an inflatable water slide, it pretty much went unnoticed.

Claire started her acting workshop this week. She is in a heaven that is specifically designed for Claire. She LOVES it. It's in a building that looks like an old church that's right next to the Norco refinery. It's so right next to it, it looks completely out of place. There's this enormous, stinky, pipe-lined refinery pumping white smog into the air, and off to its left is a two-story Spanish-style building that looks like it's been there for eighty years, with a sign in front of it that says "River Parishes Performing Arts and Cultural Center."

I think Claire has really found something here. When she tried softball, she got all suited up, got out there, took one look at the field and refused to play. I mean that her feet were locked into the earth. I know because I tried to pull her. When she attempted guitar she made it eight lessons in before she finally admitted that she loved music but not enough to form calluses on her fingertips. But when I picked her up the other day from her first acting lesson? She was alive. Something had connected for her and it was all she talked about on the ride home.

Still, I thought, give it a few days and she might lose enthusiasm. But it's only grown, and she was beside herself with 11 year-old glee when she walked out of the workshop yesterday with her eyes locked on a script. She was smiling as she read it.

"Hey, what's that?" I asked, catching her attention.
"It's my lines for a skit. FOUR skits! I'm in four of them!"
"A real actress can do five! Get back in there and demand more lines or no supper!"

I didn't really say that. But the rest of it's true.

What are Emma and Christopher doing? As far as activities go, Christopher hasn't started soccer yet, and Emma enjoys drawing and being anti-organized-group-of-anything which I totally support because it means I don't have to drive her anywhere. Plus, I secretly admire her anti-comformity. They are also getting really cool taste in music. They've discovered The B52's and every time we get in the car, the first song they want to listen to is "Rock Lobster." This makes up for Katy Perry and Kesha, and gives me hope that my children will not develop the musical taste of a stick of sugarless gum. I know, some of you are thinking, "Hey, sugarless gum is pretty good." No. It's not. And now you might be thinking, "You know, Gen, you can really be a snob." Yes. I am. When it comes to music, Top 40 pop generally makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

So what am I up to? I'm working, writing, not drinking, not smoking, not overeating, hanging out with my kids, catching up with my friends when I can, calling a lot of AA and Al-anon people, and later on tonight I plan to watch "The Runaways." I know it doesn't sound exciting, but NOT exciting is just what I'm going for nowadays. There's very little drama, and a lot of clarity. For instance, because of my growing spirituality and sobriety I am quite clear on the fact that Kesha's song "Tik Tok" was written by a five year old Satanist in a mental institution.

I know, I know. Am I saying that "Rock Lobster" DOESN'T sound like it was written by crazy people?

We were at a party
His ear lobe fell in the deep
Someone reached in and grabbed it
It was a rock lobster

I'm not saying that doesn't sound nuts. What I'm saying is, I could hang with those people in that wing of the psycho ward. We all choose our crazies. I'm much more comfortable with the dudes who can come up with "his earlobe fell in the deep" than with the crazies who write lyrics like this:
I'm talkin about everybody gettin crunk crunk
Boys tryin' to touch my junk junk
Gonna smack him if he gettin too drunk drunk

And no, I don't allow that song when it comes on the radio. "Your Love is My Drug" is ok, my kids know that one, and even with that one I find myself reaching for the seek button and thinking, "Am I being too overprotective? What's the line here? She's singing about an unhealthy obsession with someone, but atleast she's leaving her junk out of it."

And now I'm just babbling and I need to get ready for work. Work is a whole other blog post. It's been crazy in there since the beginning of hurricane season, because that's mainly what my department does - makes the game plan for 14 different hospitals spread across the city in the event of a hurricane and/or mass evacuation.

I must now evacuate my bedroom in search of breakfast and more coffee. And if I can't get the song "Tik Tok" out of my head, which is now stuck there, I might be joining my people in the psycho ward sooner than planned.

Morning Share

2010-07-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Good morning, my lovelies!

I was kicking around on IMDB, avoiding work, when I came across this movie title "I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With." So of course, I had to click on it. It seems like an extremely depressing movie about a lonley compulsive overeater, but looks like it could possibly end well. Because sometimes those movies end that way. But then, I think it was an Indie film and sometimes those end even more depressing than they started out. There are no rules! The guy could fall even deeper into his addiction and the movie could end with him stuffing his pockets full of cheese and then jumping off of a bridge, and then no one would notice that he's dead because no one noticed him before anyway. I don't know, I haven't seen this movie or even heard of it before, I'm just speculating about the end of Indie films in general.

Though if I had to guess, "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With" is a comedy. I'm basing that theory both on the title and the tagline which was this, "Sometimes love is just a big bowl of wrong."

And that was it, that was my share. Sometimes love is just a big bowl of wrong. I love it! Bon appetit!

Wild Tomboys

2010-07-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

No one else can mow my lawn but me. I might not do the best job, and I might let the grass grow too high before I finally get to it, and I know that I sound like a total dude when I say it, but dammit, no one else is touching my lawn. (wouldn't it be funny if that was the end of my post? But no, I've got more to say.)

I don't exactly know why that is, but it might have something to do with me getting in touch with my inner tomboy. Some people need to get in touch with their inner child. I'm working on getting in touch with the wild little girl inside of me, the one who demanded a Pixie cut in the 2nd grade so she could look like Peter Pan, the one who wanted to play whatever the boys were playing at recess because she thought that jacks, scratch-n-sniff stickers, and My Little Ponies were boring. Though, ok, I did like My Little Ponies. I couldn't resist their mystique and the darling little combs they came with.

But anyway, not only do I love mowing the lawn, I love my lawn mower. I don't know anything about how the engine works, or how to fix it if it breaks, but I love pulling the rip cord that jump starts the machine, and that it takes two or three pulls to get it started. Every time I pull the cord and the engine stirs, like someone groaning when you try to wake them up, my own motor begins to awaken. My heart beats faster and I feel stronger, more powerful. Because every time I pull the cord and the engine doesn't start, I root my feet into the ground, summon all of my upper body strength, and cry, "Machine! I command you to start!" Then I jerk back, the engine roars and I laugh, mad with power. Then the neighbors stop inviting me to their dinner parties for a while. But I don't care because then, once the engine starts, I get to mow the lawn.

The joy goes beyond a love for the smell of freshly mowed grass. I love reshaping the terrain. Running over a patch of long-haired-hippie-like grass and making it a respectable, clean-shaven citizen that can run out there get a job. I even love pushing the machine in rows back and forth across the yard. I do not know why. I would explain it if I could, the thing about pushing the machine. The only thing I can figure is that it takes a certain amount of strength, not a Herculean amount, but some, and I've always prided myself on being strong. I was ashamed of that before because I was afraid that being physically strong made me unfeminine. And now I just don't give a fuck. It makes me who I am - a person who loves wearing the grass and dirt that shoots on my legs, the sweat that drips in my eyes, and the smell of gasoline on my hands when I refill the tank. And then I love taking a shower and smelling like myself again - only a clean self who has accomplished something, something domesticated, responsible, and filled with a motor's hum.

This gives me and the kids a smooth yard to slip n' slide on, which my tomboy also loves. Getting out there in shorts and a T-shirt and belly-racing the kids across the three-lane slide.

My character Pam is a tomboy too. No, she is not me. But she's got a bit of me mixed in there because I'm her momma and my imprint is unavoidable. She's a landscaper and she's good at it. She loves to be outside and when she's inside sometimes she'll stare out of the window with only a vague awareness that she wants to climb out of it.

I was working on a scene with she and her friend Jess, where she's helping Jess address invitations to her ex-inlaw's anniversary party. Pam is a single mom who never married her daughter's father, and Jess has two kids and is in the middle of a divorce. Jess is involved in her ex-inlaw's 40th anniversary party because she and her ex-husband's sister have been talking about throwing it for the last four years. The invitations are ruby red because, after 15 minutes of internet research, the ex-sister-in-law discovered that ruby red is the official 40 year color, symbolizing that their passion is still alive and strong after all those years.

Jess couldn't imagine her ex-in-laws, Carol and Doug, having the amount of passion as suggested by the color of the anniversary invitation. It had a sultry red border with a white background and loopy-script, red lettering. Way too fancy, Jess thought, for a barbecue. "After 40 years they're still hot!" it boasted. Jess thought of Doug in his kahki shorts and gray T-shirt with the big trout on it. His red face and two chins. Carol with her wide hips, that she complained were extra wide from having twins as if she'd delivered them at the same exact time. She had short, curly hair and sparkly silver eye shadow. They were hot for slot machines, Jess thought, but said nothing to her ex-sister-in-law who was glowing with her parent's success at marriage.

"How do people stay together for 40 years?" Jess asked Pam, as they were stuffing invitations into envelopes at Jess's kitchen table.
Pam looked at her as if she'd just asked her the square root of 786,321,094.
"God, I don't know," she said. "I've never been with anybody longer than six months."
Jess set down the invitation she was stuffing. "You've never told me that."
"It's true."
"But Alex's dad-"
"Mason and I weren't together. We just fucked."
"For three years."
"That's like a two week relationship." She thought for a moment. "And relationship is too strong of a word for it."
"So why did you keep sleeping with him?"
Pam shrugged. "I don't know." But she did know and she decided to say it, but she couldn't look at Jess when she did. "He always held me. He was good about that. They don't all do that, but with Mason it was a guarantee. I knew if I stayed with him he'd hold me all night."
"Yeah?" Jess said.
"Yeah." Pam glared at her. "If you tell anybody I'll ram those tacky invitations up your ass."
Jess threw up her hands. "Who would I tell? When would it it even come up?"
"These things sometimes do," said Pam.
Jess laughed. "I'm not gonna tell anybody, loony bird."
Pam knew that. That's why she'd told her.
Both of them looked at that fiery invitation like the color of it could engulf them. They felt like such failures. Jess because her marriage had only made it ten years, and Pam because her six month relationship had been an affair. Not even with someone available.

Don't worry, things don't end sad. I but before they end happily I'm going to make them feel like total shit. Writing is my power trip, like mowing the lawn. This is where my mad laughter rolls in. Mwahahahahahahahahaha!...Awe, dammit,now the neighbors are avoiding me again.

One or some or every or all

2010-07-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

My problem with the word whatever isn't with the word itself. Whatever means (and I LOVE this definition) "one or some or every or all without specification." It's the way people use it that makes me want to smack them with one or some or every or all of my limbs.

It's because it's so cocky. Here's an example:
me: "Claire, would you put away the dishes? I can't pay you your allowance on Friday if you don't do what you're supposed to."
Claire [walking towards the sink]: Fine! Whatever!
me: Off with her head!

Do you see how "whatever" was completely unnecessary? She was going to do the dishes, she agreed with what I said, but she was NOT using the word the way it's meant to be used! She did not have a genuine "whatever you want mother, I want one or some or every or all of what you want" attitude! She was sarcastic about it! SARCASTIC! Who does she get THAT from???....oh.

Or "whatever" is used as bait. See if you can relate to the following dialogue:
Genevieve: Grandma, what do you want to do for Mother's Day?
Grandma: (sighs) Oh. Whatever.
Genevieve: What's the matter?

Now, would I had been prompted to ask that if the "whatever" had been a truly carefree statement? Probably not, but then I think I can count on one hand the number of times that it truly has been. My friend Thomas is one of the only people I know who I don't second guess when he says it because if there is some hesitation or problem he says what it is without baiting the other person into trying to find out what's wrong. Which is usually a disastrous quest.

person 1: Do you want to see a movie tonight?
person 2 (shrugs, looking glum): Whatever.
person 1: Um, ok. We don't have to if you don't want to.
person 2 (more emphatic and hostile): I said WHATEVER. I don't care what we do.
person 1: Yeah, but you seem to have an opinion that you're just not telling me. Are you ok?
person 2 evades the question, looks off into the sunset. A tear falls.
person 1: Are you still upset about the fight we had yesterday?
person 2: God! If you don't know - whatever!

Notice how Person 1 clearly does not know? And would like to know? But the constant repetition of the word "whatever" does not help? And see how Person 2 DOES seem to care quite a bit? I would like for those of you in the audience to please write this down, "I will never manipulate another person by misusing what is a fine word in and of itself for the purpose of evil."

Now, the word "whatev" is a different story. Whatev makes fun of whatever with no ill will. Let us explore this theory by tweaking the dialogue between Persons 1 & 2.

person 1: Do you want to see a movie tonight?
person 2: Eh. Whatev.
person 1: Hee hee hee! That still doesn't answer my question, but you are quite obviously playing with me and not being passive aggressive or confusing. I love you.
person 2: I love you too.

SEE? See how different that turned out? See how that could easily end in fantastic sex, which is the ultimate goal of one person asking another person out to see a movie in the first place?...And now my friends who read this will never agree to see a movie with me ever again.

"Whatever" arouses suspicion in the same way that the term "no offense but..." immediately puts me on my guard to be offended.

"No offense, Gen, but I don't want to come over," has a totally different effect than "No, I don't want to come over." A person simply saying that he doesn't want to come over is one thing. Maybe he's tired. Maybe he doesn't feel like driving. But "no offense" sends red flags because I don't trust it. Why would he feel like he has to say no offense? Does he think my house smells like cabbage? And maybe he doesn't, maybe he really does mean, "I hope I don't offend you in my decline of your offer, but I have had a long day and if I have to get in the car one more time I might snap and shoot everybody." Which is understandable. But still, the "no offense" triggers doubt.

And then some people use it to excuse themselves from whatever horrible thing they are about to say.
"No offense, Gen, but I don't want to come over to your house because frankly I don't want to smell like cabbage."

This dude thinks that by starting out that sentence with "no offense" he excuses himself from being offensive. It is, in his mind, a verbal contract. "I will begin this sentence with the words 'no offense' and so whatever words come after it do NOT make me an asshole." Oh, but they still do. Sorry.

Then there are times when people use it in the strangest ways.
"No offense, but can you pass the butter?"
Now I am confused. I will hesitate before I pass the butter because I must pick that question apart to find the offense in it. Surely there must be some or the person who said it would not have had to begin the sentence that way.

Clearly, children, "no offense but" causes mass hysteria. Let us eradicate cockiness by doing away with both "whatever" and "no offense but."

Having said all of this, it is highly entertaining to watch a no offense person paired with a whatever person.
"Hey, no offense, but the reason you don't have any friends is because you're a total bitch."
"Whatever!"

And this is why reality tv is so popular.

Ok so, no offense, but I have to get ready for work. SEEE! See how bitchy that was? The girl knows what she's talking about! Atleast one or some or every or all of the time.

More coffee is in order

2010-07-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

It's morning. I'm thirsty. Thirsty for more coffee. Morning will end soon and I will be one of those people who drink it past the AM hours. And I don't care. Because without it I will be staggering through the halls of the hospital, hand to my aching head, moaning like an un-caffeinated zombie.

I came across an interesting poem by Erica Jong today. This is it:

You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.
Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what is
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.
To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

So according to this poem, I already have coffee...[peeks hopefully into empty mug] Damn it! Poetry has never steered me wrong before! Wait, wait, maybe I'm reading it wrong...maybe it means that the materials to build a mug of coffee are already at my feet. I just have to get up and put it all together...Damn it! No interpretation suits my needs! The whole point of motivational writing is to suit my needs!!!!!!!!!!!

I have to get back to work. This also does not suit my needs. However, a paycheck most indubitably suits my needs. All this talk of suits. I don't like suits. I'm much more of a jeans and T-shirt girl. But to say that something does not jeans-and-T-shirt my needs makes no sense.

More coffee is in order. Then I will blog about how I feel about the word "whatever." Its use is rampant and someone's got to say something, goddammit.

Kicking Activities

2010-07-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so yesterday WAS my only post for the day. I meant to blog more. Really and truly I did. Real life got in the way. It always does that and it's really annoying and she and I are going to have to sit down and have a long talk. It would go like this:

me: Hello, Life. Thank you for coming in to see me on such short notice.
Life (taking a seat across from my big, important desk): Sure. Can we make this quick? I gotta be somewhere.
me: Yes, that's what I wanted to bring up. You're too busy.
Life (getting up and beginning to rearrange the furniture): Uh huh.
me: And it's very stressful and distracting.
Life (repainting the walls a color I don't like): Ok.
me: And I would like it very much if you would stop for a while. You know, maybe take a break?
Life (ripping up the carpet): HA!
me: It's just that...hey, are you listening?
Life: Of course. Go on.
me: Well...see, you're doing it right now.
Life (bringing in dogs off the street who begin to eat my desk): Doing what?
me: Everything! Stop it!
Life (gazing at me, turning her head slightly and then reaching for my hair): You would look fabulous in gray.
me: AHHH!

On second thought maybe I'll cancel that meeting. Anyway, time's is busy. It's about to get busier since I signed Christopher up for soccer and Claire for drama. This means driving to places after work. Oy.

I gave Christopher the choice between football and soccer because they go on at the same time and, though Life thinks that I'm two people, she's wrong, and I can't be both places at once. So I asked him which he preferred, sure that he would say football, and was surprised when he said soccer.

"Really?" I asked. "Not football?"
"No," he said.
"How come? I thought you wanted to play football."
"No," he said, and thought a moment. "I don't wanna be tackled."
"That makes sense," I said.
"And I want to kick things."
"...That makes sense too."

I mean, hell, I'd like to kick things most of the time.

As for Claire, I think it will be fantastic to give her drama a proper outlet. When she begins to fly off the handle at home I will simply pick her up, toss her into the van, deliver her to the stage, and say, "Here. Go nuts. Run free like a dog in the park."

So what is Emma involved in? I need to call back the place where she was taking yoga. She wants to get back into that. What she really wants to do is join a shopping club, but I have told her that there is no such thing. If I could, I would go inside of her brain and erase all memory of what a mall is, and then hide their existence so she never learns.

What am I involved in? Apparently soccer, drama, and shopping. And driving. Lots and lots of driving.

The People Will Give Strength Unto Their Poet

2010-06-30T07:21:00.001-07:00

This is not my only post for the day but I just had to share this from The Writer's Almanac:

One of Czeslaw Milosz's poems was inscribed onto a monument in Gdánsk, Poland, for shipworkers who were killed by the government in a protest. At the base of the monument was a line from Psalm 29, translated by Milosz: "The Lord will give strength unto his people." When he went back to Poland the following year, members of the trade union put up a banner that said: "The People Will Give Strength Unto Their Poet."

Rock the fuck on!

Hey, I could blog!

2010-06-28T02:25:00.000-07:00

It's almost 4:30 in the morning. I've begun a new writing schedule that involves getting up this early because I don't like myself. No, not really. It's because I've decided to approach this writing thing like a real part-time job. Wait, I might have mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, I did! In my last post! Oh dear God, I need coffee and have not brewed it yet. Anyway, my schedule is two hours a day every day before the kids wake up, and five hours on the weekends that I don't have the kids. I like. I'm a momma first, and I'm still getting the writing done, which was only happening sporadically before.

So when the alarm went off this morning the first thing I thought was, "Need to get up. Need to to get my rough draft notebook." Ok, that's a lie. The first thing I thought was, "Did I see Cameron Diaz in my kitchen last night or was that a dream? Must have been a dream because I can't imagine why she'd need to borrow my cheese grater when she could easily buy one of her own. But maybe she's a cheapskate." It went on like that. But eventually I started thinking about writing and while I was lying there convincing myself to get up I realized, "Hey! I could blog! Blogging is writing! It counts! AND I HAVE INTERNET AT HOME!!!!" This last bit is something that I will probably rejoice over for a while, so my suggestion is that every time you read it take a deep breath and know that my excitement over things like Internet, central air/heat, and movie stars in my kitchen will subside over time.

I haven't written anything too personal in a while, have I? It's mostly just been about condiment sprees and whatnot. I like whatnot. That IS something personal about me. It's just that when I think of personal updates for some reason I automatically think of a romantic update and unless you count the mosquito that sucked the blood out of my ankle, which is the most action I've gotten in a while, then there are no romantic updates.

The kids are good, and things at home are going ok. Grief over the divorce is eeking out in weird ways. Last week when I was at work Chris called to say that he had my child support. It wasn't a bad conversation. He said he had money for me and the kids and I said, "Ok, great thanks," I hung up the phone and then burst into tears. At my desk. Luckily there were no customers in the office. I went over to my coworker Lisa to talk to her about it. She's been divorced before.
"I don't understand, why am I so upset?" I said. "It was a good conversation. It was fine."
"Sometimes that's worse."
I stopped crying and gave her the kind of confused look that you can imagine giving someone who has just told you that good is worse than bad. This conflicts with what we learned in kindergarten. Good is good. Bad is bad. Bad is when you eat finger paints because the colors are pretty and then you throw them up. Good is when your ex husband calls and says that he has your child support. Right?
"When the conversations are civil, or even when they're nice, they remind you of the things you like about him," she explained.
"Yeah."
"This is just going to take time. You're gonna be ok, it's just hard to get through, especially the first year. Why don't you go take a walk?"

I went out of the back of the hospital around the hazardous waste dump, which I actually kind of like. It's where those red containers go, the ones that the nurses pitch the needles into after they give you a shot. The hazardous waste dump is where all of the containers go to have their contents incinerated. I just think it's neat to know where they go, and comforting to know that they're not floating in the Gulf of Mexico.

The good thing about crying at a hospital is that it's not considered unusual. Most of the people who go there are emotional. Either they're upset about a dying relative or their own diagnosis, they're worried about a loved one in surgery, or they're happy because someone just had a baby. Let's just say that in the last few months, I've gone outside to cry a couple of times and no one's looked at me funny. It's not like crying at the mall. This is a place of high emotion and grief. I walked outside and let myself cry, not thinking any thoughts in particular. It was just a purge.

This isn't something I do often at work. Most of the time I'm just silly. I think I might have annoyed Audra the other day, in fact. A nurse came in and explained how he had lost his I.D., and then ordered a new one but then found his old one and I directed him towards Audra because she processes the badges. I walked in with him and both of us began to tell his story at the same time. Audra held up her hand and said, "Ok, wait. Start from the beginning."
"In the beginning," I said, "God created light. And it was good."
Audra closed her eyes. "Thank you, Gen."
"Or was it Earth?" I asked, suddenly doubtful. "I don't know, I don't read the Bible. How did all that go?"
"Thank you, Gen, I can take it from here," she reiterated and left me in the wake of my theological confusion.

That's what I'm like most of the time at work. I'm not usually crying out by the hazardous waste dump. Besides, sometimes that place smells horrible. It's not only where used needles go to die, but pieces and parts too. Lungs, spleens, fingers, and random bodily tissues. Sometimes when I walk past that place the stink will stay in my nose for an hour.

Jess, the character I'm writing about, is a medical librarian. She loves literature, but she also loves the pulmonary artery on display in a jar in the library window. It's a warning to everyone about what can go wrong. What went wrong in her marriage is not visible. She can't remove it and study it in a jar. She can only get rid of the things that remind her of it, which is partly way she's having the garage sale.

Her driveway is aligned with power tools she can't identify, a folding table with glass vases she never used, mismatched dishes, and the rice steamer that she got at her wedding shower, which she used twice in ten years. She arranged these things and others on either side of her driveway, and when she walks down the middle of it, it reminds her of walking down the aisle on her wedding day.

I'm going to try hard as hell to change the story just enough so that no one reads this thing and says, "Oh my God, she's writing about Chris and the kids!" I don't mind writing about myself and my own grief. I just don't want to libel them. So Jess's kids, her ex husband, and her in-laws are different. They're fun to write about, actually. But the grief is the same, and some of the circumstances. I did have a garage sale to get rid of stuff that neither Chris nor I wanted anymore and I was tired of looking at it. And the kids' hard questions are in the story, but then they are questions that children of divorce generally ask.

I'm going to go work on that now. It was lovely to blog at home!

Jess & Pam

2010-06-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

I, me, Genevieve, that chick who answers the phones, have been sticking to my writing schedule. I know, I know, it's crazy. And I feel fucking awesome. I LOVE it. What I am writing has no structure, has no plot at this point, it's just stuff about Michael, Betsy, Betsy's sister Jess, and Jess's friend Pam. I love these people. Michael and Betsy you've met. Jess and Pam are two single moms who live next door to each other. To get an idea of what they are like, here is a sampling of them talking to their neighbor Lindsey.

Lindsey, a middle aged woman in tight workout clothes, tennis shoes, makeup and jewelry, has stopped by to talked to Jess at her garage sale, but not to buy anything which is what Jess really needs her to do because her electricity bill is overdue and if she doesn't pay it in four days it will be shut off. And her ex-husband is late on childsupport. So she's really hoping that Lindsey will buy something that was his, like the table saw or the free weights or the juicer. But instead Lindsey is asking her about Greg, her ex, and how he's holding up, which is the last thing she wants to talk about.

Lindsey shakes her head when Jess tells her that Greg has had his own apartment for five months now. "I am just so sorry you two split up. You were so happy when you moved onto the block."
Jess nodds, definitely not wanting to talk about happiness. She picks up the juicer off of the folding table hoping that Lindsey will notice it and will suddenly need to buy it. But instead she makes it worse by saying, "How are the kids?"
"Lindsey! Jess!" says Pam, walking across the yard with a glass of orange juice in her hands. She's wearing jean shorts and a blue tank top with her hair pulled back. Pam and her daughter Alex are always dressed like they're ready to climb trees. She sips and says, "What's goin' on with my bitches?"
Jess smiles. Pam always makes her do that.
Lindsey sneers. "Hello, Pam."
"How are things in Troop 11?" she asks Lindsey.
"All right."
"You through fattening up the neighborhood?"
"What?"
"I think she means cookie sales," Jess explains.
"That's right, the cookies," says Pam.
Lindsey beams. "We did great! Farrah was the top seller again."
"You should be proud, ," Pam tells her. "Cookies are a tough racket. No room for pussies."
Lindsey's mouth drops open and she walks off.
Jess turns to Pam. "What the hell was that?"
Pam shrugs. "Chattin' up the neighbors."
"Why'd you have to talk to her like that?"
"Come on, Jess. Cookie sales? Her mom's troop leader, of course she's got to prove herself. You think she sold all those cookies because she wanted to? She was FORCED."
"Well, could you chat up the cookie moms after they buy something? I need to make atleast $112.23."
"That's specific."
"Electricity bill."
"Shit. When's it due?"
"Wednesday."
"Ask for an-"
"I've already asked for an extension. That's the last day before they cut it off."
Pam stares at the ground. Then she looks up and says, "I've got some stuff I've been meaning to sell."
"Pam, I asked you if you wanted to go in on it with me yesterday and you said no," says Jess, aggravated.
"That was when profits we're going to me. Now they're going to you," she says, heading to her garage to fish for things.
Jess doesn't say anything. She wants to tell her that she doesn't need the help, but she can't.

That, as always, is a shitty rough draft. Don't know where it's going. It's somehow loosely connected to Betsy and Michael. It's also in past tense, by the way. Don't know why I was compelled to right it in present tense here.

Harper Lee - woman of mystery

2010-06-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have one hope about Harper Lee and it's that she's been writing her ass off for the last 50 years. She hasn't published anything, but that doesn't mean she hasn't been writing and, maybe, stashing it all under her bed. Fifty years is a long time so maybe she's had to buy a few beds just to cram novels underneath them, or maybe she just has one really enormous bed or maybe she sleeps on top of a storage unit. That would be more convenient if she really stopped to think about it.

And let's say that she will not stipulate in her will that she wants all of it burned in the event of her death. Let's think happy thoughts like that. Because that means that when she dies there will be an entire body of work just waiting to be published. Twenty five new books, maybe? 38? I don't know, however many fits into that storage unit that she sleeps on top of.

I'm not waiting for Harper Lee to die or anything, I'm just saying that when she does, as sad and horrible as that will be, maybe there will be more of her stuff to read. Because I do so love her writing.

I say all of this because on Sunday I went with my friend Thomas to see the play version of To Kill a Mocking Bird. I couldn't imagine it as a play until I saw it. There are so many different settings in the book and then there's a narration which I love even more than the dialogue. The prose in that book is gorgeous. But it works on stage. The narrator was there - Scout as an old woman. She sat on a rocker in one corner of the stage telling the story. She also played the knothole of the tree where Scout and Jem find the presents that Boo Radley leaves for them. Scout would pretend to go up to the tree to take something out of the knothole and she was really going up to the old woman who was handing her the trinkets. I thought that was neat, the old Scout passing things on to the younger version of herself.

And I think what I really love about theater is how much of the setting is in the actor's imagination. When Atticus had to shoot the mad dog down the street, none of us had to see the dog to know he was down there. We didn't even have to see the street. The actors were just pretending the dog was coming down the street, and they pretended so well I forgot that, really, they were flipping out and pointing at a wall.

So I would like to read more by Harper Lee. And I can't because it's all underneath her bed. Why would someone who writes so beautifully keep it all to herself? Seems selfish. But then maybe she's like Boo Radley, just afraid to come out, and maybe I should respect that. Maybe I would be more inclined to if she left me some prose in a knothole. Just a paragraph, perhaps.

Egad, what if she did and I discovered that her style has completely changed? What if she genre-hopped into scifi? I'll get an excerpt from To Drill a Mockingborg. Or mystery! Who Killed a Mockingbird? Or worse. Bird erotica. To Thrill a Mockingbird. You can't make a play out of that! Well, you could but I imagine that it would be restricted to brothels and aviaries.

Jesus. Maybe Harper Lee should have all this stuff buried with her. Who knows how her style has evolved in the last 50 years. Still. It would be nice to know.

You don't have to win another Pulitzer, Harper! We still think you're awesome! And we are torn between wanting to respect your privacy and wanting to raid your storage unit for possible short stories! Or maybe, dare I say it, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. A western called Scout's Last Stand. Where...she's 45 years old and she finally admits that she should start wearing something besides overalls. Hmm, there's no Western angle to that. Uh ok, also, there's a cow in it. This is gold, Harper! Quick! Write it before I am compelled to!

4:55 pm

2010-06-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've got five minutes left of work and nothing left to do but stare at the clock. It would be so much more classic and dramatic if a whistle blew but then that might disturb the patients in other parts of the hospital.

4:56 pm
Yesterday I drank so much coffee I think that it has now replaced the water in my blood and so now my veins are filled with coffee and whatever else blood is made of.

4:57 pm
What the hell IS blood made of? One of my smart friends is going to answer that, aren't they? One of them who is incredibly intelligent but also a smart ass will say, "It's made of red."

4:58 pm
Does it really take me a full minute to type a sentence? Wow, I thought I was faster than that. Do you guys remember the band Faster Pussycat? Man, they sucked. I don't even remember any of their songs, they sucked that bad.

4:59 pm
Maybe I should have another cup of coffee before I leave. I hear it's good for my circulation. The coffee-to-red content in my blood is off. Need to balance out.

5:00 pm
Time to hit the road.

Condiment Crime Spree

2010-06-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I did not watch the president's speech about the oil spill, even though loved ones and I are directly affected by it. I heard snippets of it while I was flipping through the radio in the car this morning, but I really wanted to listen to music and not the news. But when my bud Jennifer sent me an article about a 74 year old woman who was arrested for pouring mayonnaise into a book drop, I couldn't put it down.

Super villian Joy L. Cassidy of Boise, Idaho was arrested moments after she dumped a jar of mayo into an Ada County Library bookdrop. According to the Associated Press, police said that she is suspected in "10 other condiment-related crimes" that have occured since May 2009. Librarians have also found reading materials covered in heinous toppings such as syrup and ketchup. Despite this, "Cassidy was released from jail and faces a misdemeanor charge of malicious injury to property."

She OUT? She's loose?! There's a maniac out there with a refrigerator full of ammo! Do the cops think that just because she spent a night in jail she's reformed? She probably spent the whole time cooking up a scheme with Grey Poupon! Who knows when she will strike again! I don't trust her as far as I can throw a cup of molasses.

Quick! Lock up your borrowed books and periodicals! Return them directly to the librarian behind the desk and avoid any suspicious characters as on the way in, especially if they're holding a jar of relish! And don't be fooled if there's a hot dog in her other hand! It could be a prop! That relish could have malicious intent!

See why this is more fun than news about the largest oil spill of all time? Which is messed up in so many ways and on so many levels that it makes me sick to hear too much about it so I have to force myself to stay informed? I'm not saying it's a good thing to ignore big news completely, it's just that every so often when your head gets full of Republicans and Democrats slinging horseradish at each other, and environmentalists are telling you that the world will soon become an uninhabitable place unless you stop using fossil fuels and you know it's true but still haven't changed your lifestyle because no one else has changed their lifestyle yet and the few Americans who have are considered freakazoids, and fishermen are out of livelihoods, and hoods are out of oysters to eat, and oysters have no place to live anymore, and it feels like no matter who you vote for they never turn out to be Superman or even the Green Lantern, and just when you begin to lose your Peter Pan-like innocence and belief in hope, goodness, and a sense of humor, you can turn to articles like this:

"Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay"
http://www.theonion.com/video/soccer-officially-announces-it-is-gay,17603/

ps- If you want to read the mayo article here 'tis:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_condiment_vandalism

Beastly Misspellings

2010-06-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

This will be short, but it didn't fit in with my other entry today and I wanted to share.

The kids have a new babysitter and I went over the rules with them as I always do when a sitter comes. No other kids over, do what she says, brush your teeth, be on your best behavior, etc. So Emma made a list of expectations for herself while in the sitter's care. Though I don't remember all of them word-for-word, I remember the last one precisely:

1 - Brush my teeth
2 - Keep my room clean
3- Be on my beast behavior

The question is, since this is Emma, was that REALLY a misspelling? We'll never know. But if she's is ever in a rock band I'm going to insist she call it "Beast Behavior."

Also, in other kid fun, I made Christopher eat all of his corn last night and he tilted his head back and cried miserably, "OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH! I WISH CORN NEVER EXISTED!"

Dig the drama.

Scrubbers

2010-06-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

Today I am wearing scrubs in the office. Just in case I need to do emergency surgery on the fax machine. One must always prepare for the unexpected!

But seriously, I am wearing scrubs because I have become a clumsy bastard. Scratch that. I have become MORE of a clumsy bastard. Two weeks ago I was sipping a cup of coffee at my desk when I accidently spilled some on myself. I don't mean that I sneezed and lost control of the cup. I don't mean that someone bumped into me. I mean that I went to take a sip and spilled it down the front of my shirt instead of into my mouth. Like a baby trying to stuff a spoonful of applesauce into her mouth.

"No big deal," my boss said, when I showed him the front of my shirt. "I got extras."

He leant me an oversized button down shirt that's meant for security guards. It wasn't the most flattering apparel, but then neither is a light brown stain in the shape of South America across my chest.

The office had a good time with that. For the next couple of days, any time I drank anything I would hear, "Careful now! Sloooowly." But it died down after a few days of successfully getting food and drinks into my mouth without incident.

Until this morning. I was driving to work with a red plastic cup full of au lait. (environmentalists take note: this will be a strong argument for me not to use disposable cups) It was in the drink holder next to my left-over red plastic cup from yesterday. Sigh. Yes, my car is just a big garbage can for used coffee cups. As I got closer to work I decided that I would take the time to toss the cups when I passed a garbage can on my way to the office. So I lifted my fresh cup and set it inside my old one, the logic being that when I finished the coffee I could toss both cups out at once. I wondered if there might be a little coffee left from yesterday, but then I thought (and I am not making this up), "No. I wouldn't leave any left. I always drink it ALL." So I didn't even check.

So the next time I took a sip I was surprised when yesterday's coffee splashed onto my shirt. All of it. All down my light blue blouse. Five minutes away from work.

Then I remembered a quote from a book I was reading last night. It's the one that the judge gave Chris and I each a copy of at our divorce trial, called Mom's House, Dad's House: Making Two Homes for Your Child. This book is...not fun. It's informative and helpful, and at times comforting but only in a way that I would imagine it would be comforting to talk to someone who was bleeding from both knees if I, too, were bleeding from both knees, because we could commiserate and say things like, "Is this normal? Do you feel this way too?" and the other bloody kneed person would say, "Yes! I'm going through that too!" Much nicer is when one is comforted with words like, "Everything is going to be better from now on. You're going to be ok." And not, "You MIGHT be ok if you are able to make it through this chaotic period without becoming bitter, getting stuck in your breakup, fighting in front of the kids, putting the kids in the middle, getting involved with someone else too soon, getting involved with someone never, getting drunk every night, starting a sleeping pill addiction, and or going bankrupt. Just jump those hoops. You'll be fine in eight years."

Anyway, the quote is about this stage (there are seven, according to the book) that I'm apparently going through called Stage 5 "Off the wall- Troubled but separated." During this phase, and also phase four, which is the intial breakup, "Sometimes day-to-day functioning seems impossible or continues at only marginal levels This dysfunctional reaction is common but dangerous as people are especially accident-prone in both this and the next stage. (p.31)"

So. What this means is that I won't be filling my cup with any piping hot coffee for a while. Just iced for me, thank you. But it won't help with clothing stains. Or flack from my coworkers, who were actually, nicer than expected about it. Melissa went down to the laundry room and found me some clean scrubs. Then she dug out a bottle of Tide and told me to soak the blouse so it didn't stain. Then she told me to get help with my drinking problem. Which was funny.

But not as funny as when my boss came in and found my wet blouse hanging up on the back of his office door. He had taken vacation yesterday and we all thought that he was going to be gone today too, so I figured it would be ok to dry my shirt back there. When I walked into his office, he was standing there transfixed by the blouse before him, brief case in hand.

"Um, Boss, I can explain..." I said.
"I don't I think I've worn this before," he said, in a daze, like he was really trying to remember if he'd worn it or not.
"It's mine."
He looked at me. "Well, that makes more sense."
He went to his desk to put down his things. Although he didn't ask why it was it in his office, why it was wet, or why I was wearing scrubs, I felt the need to go on.
"I kinda spilled coffee on myself. A lot of it."
"Goodness gracious, girl!" he said, in full Alabama accent that usually comes out when he begins sentences with, "goodness gracious."
"I know."
"You're gonna have to start bringing spare clothes or wear a rain jacket or something."
"Sorry. I can go get a new shirt at lunch."
He waved his hand at me. "Naw, don't worry about it. It's Friday."

So at my office if you spill coffee on your shirt on a Friday you get to wear scrubs. I'm learning the rules as I go along.

The next stage according to the book is Stage 6: Learns to wear bibs to Starbucks. I will be reading that chapter closely.

Back in the schwing of things

2010-06-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

I have returned! Well, really, I retuned Sunday night, but this is the first opportunity I've had to write. At all. Kinda been slacking with the writing and sending things off to be published on a regular basis plan.

"Really, Gen?" I say to myself. (aren't you glad to be privvy to my inner monologue?) "Really? Do you REALLY want to be a writer? Because if you do you might need to write on a regular basis sometime."
"Well, goddammit!" I yell back at myself, shocked at my own audacity. "I'm a busy woman! There are children to feed and clothe! Dishes to do! Bills to pay! Pets to walk! And - and - so forth!"
"And whining to do about how you're not further along in your writing career than you'd like to be. Don't forget that," I add, because sometimes I can be a sarcastic pain in the ass.
I raise a finger to argue with a staggering point, and fail to come up with one.
"Fine," I say. "I'll write."
"On a regular basis!" I fuss.
I sigh. "Yes, on a fucking regular basis."
"No matter what's going on!"
"...Well, how the hell am I going to make that work?"
"The same way you make all those other things work. Find a way, dude. You whine and worry atleast 15 minutes a day, why don't you substitute it with writing?"
"But then I don't get to worry and whine."
I give myself an exasperrated look.
"Alright. I'll do it. Are you happy now, mother fucker?"
I smile. "Yes."

Wow, I swear at myself a lot.

But in other news, the kids are back home as of yesterday! Yay! And I'm getting internet back in the house today! Yaaaaaaay! Which also means that my next blog entry won't be rushed because I won't be writing from work! Yay for everyone, including my coworkers!

That's it. I promise a more entertaining, adventurous post next time, where in I am not mostly talking to myself. Oh! By the way, the trip was great. Jennifer fed me homemade sopapilla cheesecake and hanging out with her and Tom rocked.

But just so you don't feel that you've walked away from this post with nothing to gain, here is useful trivia: By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. One should carry a stout pole while travelling in quicksand country...when placed under one's back, it helps one to float out of the quicksand.

And here is useless trivia: Francis Bacon died in his attempt to find a better way to serve food. He caught a case of pneumonia while attempting to stuff a chicken with snow.

Trippiness

2010-06-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend I am going to Tenessee to visit the Jenn. Who is this, you ask? What do you mean, who is this? Don't you know me and my life story? How can you claim to know me so well and not be familiar with the main characters on the stage that is my life? Do we really know each other AT ALL??

Sorry. Didn't mean to get all crazy girlfriend on you. We still buds? Will you still accept my text messages and coffee invitations? Awwww, you're like the best blog-reader in the world!

Aaaaaaaanyway, this weekend I'm going to visit THE most bitchin' Jennifer in the whole wide world - Jennifer. We've been buds since the tenth grade when I sat in front of her in English class, and both of us for the most part just exchanged shy smiles in the way that unpopular kids communicate without talking. Eventually we did start talking and we haven't stopped since. Jenn is actually the basis for the character Ana Pritchard in my book. Together Jenn and I wrote short stories, drew comics and wrote blood and guts stories to go with them, established The Bullshit Bandits, suffered from a Beatles obsession, ate too much cookie dough, ogled boys that we were too shy to talk to, ogled John Cusack who I think liked us and couldn't decide between the two of us so he had to let us go. You know, normal teenage stuff.

As an added bonus I am meeting someone that you blog commentators know as Tom. Tom the word verification master. The cool thing about this is that, though the Toms and I have known each other for a couple of years, we've never met. He's meeting up with Jennifer & I and the three of us are going to hang out. What will happen when three naturally shy people get together? Shy, creative people who all enjoy John Cusack, cookies, and The Beatles? That's easy. All hell breaks loose! The citizens of Jenn's hometown won't know what hit 'em!

Seriously though, during this time when I'm learning that my friendships with truly good people are (que the sensitive, New Age music) one of the greatest treasures in my life, it is absolutely stellar to have one of my oldest and bestest friends meet one of my newest and bestest friends. Whom I have never met (I can only say that for the next two days, so I'm trying to cash in on that shit). I may (sniff!) cry when we all get together! And then Tom and Jenn will feel uncomfortable, look at each other and one will say, "Sensitive, isn't she?" The other will say, "I KNOW," and while they commiserate I will eat the rest of the cookies.

In other related traveling news, yesterday I took a field trip to the pulmonary department on my lunch break. My boss, also a former smoker, once told me that there are blackened lungs in a display case there. He said any time I get a craving it might not be a bad idea to take a walk up to the 9th floor and check it out. So I did.

First of all, I think it's interesting that they've put a department of people who have a hard time breathing on the 9th floor. It's like they're purposely trying to wind these people. If the elevator should break and patients are forced to take the stairs, the ER will have to send stretchers to the third floor to pick up people who have passed out trying to reach the 9th floor. Sickos.

Anyhoo, It took me a while to find the display. They don't have it out there right in front of the patients or anything. Though part of me wonders if they should, in a "this is what could happen" kind of way. Of course, that department is for people who have already developed problems so it would really be more of a "this is what has happened" or an "I told you so" kind of thing, which isn't very helpful. Walking through that wing of the hospital was almost as good as looking at a diseased lung. I heard the inhale and exhale of machines breathing for people, and once I looked into a room and saw a young man getting out of bed with the struggle of someone who was 40 years older than he was. And there I was walking along, breathing unassisted, having jumped out of bed that morning in the pink of health.

I had to ask a nurse where the lungs were. Took me a while to build up to that too. I felt funny pulling someone aside and saying, "So where are the lungs?" But in the end, that's just what I did.

"Hey, uh," I said, suave as ever. "I work in Safety and Security and my boss said you guys have smoker's lungs on display?"
She smiled. "Yeah?"
"Um, can I see 'em?"
"Are you a smoker?"
"I was. I quit. I want to stay quit."
"Well, come on."

They were in an office passed the break room, a place I never would have barged into on my own. There were four of them.
"Are those real?" I asked. "Or are they replicas?"
"They're real," she told me.
"They're not soaking in anything."
She explained something to me, something about why they didn't need to be in formaldehyde. But I wasn't listening. I was looking at them, those parts that were once part of someone, that looked like giant, moldy cauliflowers behind the glass.

I walked out of there, not wanting to ever smoke, or frankly eat, ever again. I know that this is something that I'll forget in the throws of a craving. That's when I make phone calls and wait for that moment to pass. But it helps to remember for the most part.

I think I'll enjoy this weekend's field trip much more. Everyone's lungs will be in their proper rib cages! No respirators! Only company that rocks!

Word verification: bigbagofawesome - (of Turkish origin) What happens when three, non-smoking shy persons get together for the purpose of introductions and silliness.

Here is some random stuff

2010-06-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't like my usual posts because I ordinarily like to blog something with a storyline to it. This will not. Here is some random stuff, for no particular reason.

May Swenson said that poetry is "based in a craving to get through the curtains of things as they appear, to things as they are, and then into the larger, wilder space of things as they are becoming. This ambition involves a paradox: an instinctive belief in the senses as exquisite tools for this investigation and, at the same time, a suspicion about their crudeness."

When I talked to Emma on the phone this morning she said, "Momma, I'm going to be a scientist and a writer and a traveler when I grow up. And when I'm rich and famous I'm going to give my money to poor people, manatees, and panda bears. Poor people are kind of like endangered animals aren't they?" I told her they were in that they could use help too. And also, everyone - pandas, manatees, the poor - are happier and brighter when Emma is in their lives.

There is a book called The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in 19th Century America. It's a true story about a riot that started over two actors' different interpretations of Hamlet. Twenty people died as a result of this disagreement.

Here is an edgy poem:
The Murder Suspect, Moments Before He is Confronted by Police
by David Starkey

He sits in the driver's seat of a borrowed
Corolla, Red Sox cap tilted low over
his anguished face. Across the street, two cops
huddle together, whispering, gesturing
once in his direction—yet he can't find
the will to turn the key and pull away.
In the passenger seat, a Styrofoam
container of half-eaten beef chow mein,
cold rice stuck to the tines of a plastic fork.
The backseat is piled high with clothes.
In the glovebox, a loaded .38
snubby and half a box of cartridges.
He cracks the window to better hear the swish
of willow branches in the November wind.
There's a gingery taste on his mustache,
and he wipes it with his sleeve as a blast
of heavy metal erupts from a pickup
rumbling down the street. His fingertips
tingle—probably with cold, possibly
from something else. There's a needling twinge
above his heart, a flash of memory:
purple blouse, a braid of golden hair, a splash
of crimson on gray tile. The cops begin
to saunter over. Then, as he reaches
down, fumbling for his pistol, they run
toward him, guns drawn, shouting out his name.

Here is a fact: Yesterday I went grocery shopping for myself and picked out things I like to eat. I usually pick out things with the kids in mind and compromise. What can I feed them that all of us can stomach and that will be good for us at the same time? Before Chris moved out, he was also a factor in my shopping. After years of shopping for other people, I'd forgotten what I like. Turns out it's mostly fruit.

Here is something beautiful:
Since Feeling is First
by ee cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Here is another fact: I really miss my kids. They come back from their dad's next Wednesday.

Here is something else: "lady i swear by all flowers" is my favorite line.

And finally, here is something I've been listening to a lot. It's a Fleetwood Mac song that comforted me as a kid because of the way it sounds. I love the visuals in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfGrNr3MAfU

My Name is Smitty

2010-05-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

I crawled into work this morning from a late night of dancing. I don't think I've ever said that before in my life. But nevertheless, I went to Cajun Dance Night at Tipitina's and danced with a half dozen old guys, all who have more energy than most of the young men I know. This is probably because most of my guy friends are fathers of young children and it takes more energy to chase and potty train a two year old than it does to dance for three hours straight.

I went with a few friends, only one of which had been there before. That's Sarah. Sarah's been inviting me to go for a while and I've been hesitant. When Sarah dances she feels alive, graceful, and beautiful. When I dance I feel as graceful as a gorilla riding a bike. But I would like for that to change. There have been times in the past and I've really been able to cut loose and have a great time. If my friend Danielle is reading this, she is probably thinking of some blackmail footage she has of me dancing at her wedding reception. That night I was drrrrrrrrunk. And they played "Highway to Hell!" At a wedding! Who WOULDN'T dance to that? Anyway, when I look back I think that every time I've been comfortable enough to dance, there's been gin & tonic involved. Or vodka. Or Maker's Mark on the rocks.

I'm not drinking now, though. So how was I supposed to get up and dance last night if I wasn't able to drink my embarrassment away? Easy. The guys there won't let you stand still. If you stand there against the wall, they'll come up, grab your hand and pull you on the dance floor.

"I don't know how to dance," I told the old guy who took my hand. He had no hair, a long gray mustache, knee high socks and sparkling eyes.
"That don't matter, sugar," he said. "I'll show you."
Turns out that a lot of the dancers there love beginners because they get to teach. And I suspect that the old dudes jump at the opportunity to lead women around the dance floor, twirl them around, and show them how to waltz.

Sarah took to the floor like a pro, but me, Jan, and Lisa had to be pulled out there. After a dance we'd compare notes.

Jan fanned herself after a dancer kissed her hand. "That was fun, but I'm too dizzy. He twirled me constantly!"
"Mine kept giving me pointers but I couldn't hear him," I said.
"My mom's neighbor dragged me out there," Lisa said, looking grossed out. "I grew up with that guy, I babysat his kids! He's Mr. Frank, but he said to call him Frank on the dance floor! I danced with Mr. Frank! Blech!"

I only had one weird experience with this guy who did not like to talk or smile. He had solid white hair and Harry Potter glasses. The only time he spoke was to order me not to look at his feet.
"Don't look at my feet," he barked.
"Sorry," I said, eyes darting up, looking over his shoulder.
"It'll mess us up," he explained.
"Gotcha," I said.
Two minutes later..."Don't look at my feet!"
My eyes popped up again. "Yes, sir."
"Look over my shoulder!"
"Got it. I'm looking over your shoulder, not at your feet."

There were all sorts of people there, not just crazy old dudes. Couples - young, middle aged and elderly but still spry enough to two-step. There were single men and women cruising for dance partners, moms and dads dragging pouty faced teenagers, kids who looked about ten, tourists who were just there to watch and take pictures. On either side of the dance floor there was a man and a woman playing a washboard on their chests. They seemed to be part of the band, but were in the crowd instead of on stage. Sometimes they took a break and grabbed a dance partner.

Then there was a lady that my friend Jan and I met, the one who was on a date with a guy she met on match.com. Originally I started talking to her because she was a few inches taller than me, and I meet women who I have to look up to maybe once a year.

"Shit," I said, tilting my head to make eye contact with this Greek statue of a woman in a white dress. "You're taller than me."
She smiled and shook her head in a way that I was familiar with. It's that, "Yes, I know. I'm tall. Thank you for pointing it out," kind of response.
"That doesn't happen often," I told her. "What are you, about 6'2"?"
"Yeah, around there."
"Well, all right!" I said, and we toasted to her height, my water to her whiskey cocktail.

My friend Jan asked her where she was from because her accent was different. She was from Florida and she was just in for the weekend to meet a guy she'd hooked up with on match.com.
She looked over at him across the room. He was talking to two other women. Then she looked back at me and Jan.
"I don't think it's going well," she said. "That's his sister and her friend, and I just kinda feel...I don't know. Out of place. I mean, what am I supposed to do go over there with him? Follow him around?"
"Doesn't seem cool, him not making sure you're not over here by yourself when you don't know anybody," I told her.
"Well, he's a nice guy. We went out last night and had a great time, but today it's weird. I don't know what I'm doing," she sipped her drink and looked at him anxiously.
So she, Jan, and I talked it out and we voted that she go over there with her date, and make the best of it. If it was an awkward night all around, then it would be just that, and she could go home to Florida and not have to dread bumping into him at the grocery store.

"God, I hate dating," I thought watching her walk over to him.
I do. I hate it and I'm not even dating yet. I even hate watching other people do it. Folk dancing with the strangers is good for me right now.

You know, Taller-than-me-lady should have danced with Smitty. He would have cheered her up. Smitty was my favorite dance partner, and though I have a hard time remembering names his stuck with me because he said it a few times.

He placed his hand on the small of my back and stood up straight.
"My name is Smitty," he declared. "What's your name, honey?"
"Genevieve."
"Well, Miss Genevieve, I'm gonna show you how to waltz."
Smitty had white hair under his cowboy hat, a red bandanna around his neck, boots, blue jeans and a volunteer firefighter T-shirt on. I did my best at following his steps without looking at his feet. I let my arms go loose so that he could guide them in whatever spin or twist that the dance called for.
"We dance every Thursday at Rock n' Bowl, and every Sunday right here," he told me, while he twist me around. "My name is Smitty, and you can always dance with me."
What's funny is that Smitty hadn't asked me to dance with him. He'd told me he was. He waltzed passed me with another lady around his age, and as he spun around he pointed at me and said, "I'm coming for you next."
Ordinarily a statement like that would have me digging for my pepper spray. But this was Smitty, so I took it in stride.

At the end of the dance before he bowed he said, "I hope whatever man you fall in love with is a dancer and I hope you never stop dancing." Then he bowed and kissed my hand. "Come on back, I'll give you another lesson some time. My name is Smitty."

Am I at the point where I need validation from old men I don't know? Old men who dance like Gene Kelly, but can't remember what they said three minutes ago so they repeat themselves? Yes. I do. My name is Genevieve. And dance lessons from harmless old boys who like to flatter young women was just what I needed. I'm not ready for match.com. Just beginner dance steps.

Writing in a stream of consciousness

2010-05-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

I'm at Z'otz, the dark coffee shop uptown. The girl behind the counter has her hair swept back in a blue bandana, she's wearing an undershirt that has a gray, worn look like maybe it's been washed too many times, or maybe not at all, she's got glasses, black pants and a wallet chain. She's playing punk music that has a harmonica intermingled with it. Somehow those two sounds work, like a funny couple that you wouldn't imagine being good together. There are condoms in a fishbowl on a side table by the front door, and there's a panda bear sitting on top of it. So to get a condom you must move the panda. You must want it that bad, the protection. Or you must really want a panda.

I don't know how to describe this building. I wish I could. I wish I could describe everything I see in a way that would make every detail fascinating and graceful, like the hand I saw resting on a open car window the other day. This truck passed me and I didn't see the passenger's face, just his hand resting on the window. The color of his skin and the cut of his forearm muscle made me think that he worked in the sun, and that hand had been working all day, and maybe had been waiting for hours to rest itself on the door of the truck and feel the breeze of the open window. Such a small beautiful thing a man's hand can be.

It's the next day. I had to leave the coffee shop last night because the wallet chain girl and a friend went outside to smoke and the urge to bum a cigarette was so great that I couldn't think about anything else, couldn't even write anymore. Fucking addiction. So anyway, I took myself out of the situation entirely and felt better when I took deep breaths before I went to sleep last night.

The kids are at Chris's house for two weeks. What am I like without them to take care of? I don't know. I think I'm going to write a lot and go to a lot of meetings. I know, I'm a bucket of rad. Actually, I plan to take super, uber care of myself and try to have a good time. Without smoking, drinking, or sex (this is to be followed by delirious laughter). There will, however, be lots of dirty Rock N' Roll, swearing around the house, and watching of rated R movies.

I started a story a while ago, and the characters are Michael and Betsy. I don't know where it's going, or if it'll be a short story or a book or what, but I like writing it. I just started writing about Michael sitting outside a coffee shop between two smokers. He's the character I've always had in my head, the one with dark hair and Hershey brown eyes, and who's name changes depending on how I feel - the one who's grown up with me and who I've had the hots for since I was seven. Michael's told himself that he wants to stand outside for the fresh air, but the truth is he really wants a cigarette and he's just quit.

So has his friend Betsy. She walks across the parking lot, lighting one up, not realizing he's there. She's a pretty thing with long, strawberry blond hair, wide hips and a sideways smirk. Michael sees her and shakes his head. Somewhere inside he knows that he's in love with her, but he's not thinking about that right now. Right now he only knows that he wants a cigarette.
"You suck," he tells her when she gets close enough.
She frowns, not knowing where the insult has come from, but then she sees him, and rolls her eyes. She takes a drag. "I had a stressful morning."
"It's always a stressful morning before coffee." He sets his latte on the ground and holds out his hand for a cigarette. "If you're cheating, so am I."

There's more to this. That morning Betsy helped her sister who's a single mom, who just had a garage sale hoping that she could make enough cash to cover her electricity bill that's overdue. And her exhusband showed up and began taking things saying that Betsy's sister couldn't sell them. I don't know who this story is about yet. Is it about all of them? Is it from Betsy's point of view or her sister's? Or is it from Michael's point of view? Right now it's all over the place. Something will emerge from it, I think, some sense of order. This is all very rough.

Betsy pulls a cigarette out of the pack and holds it out for Michael. She watches him take it and thinks about what a small beautiful thing a man's hand can be.

L'endroit sur or The Safe Place

2010-05-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

Today I tried to spice things up in the office by sending my manager emails in different languages. She needed me to scan two or three things and send them to her, and each time I time I would write "For you" in Italian, French, or Dutch or something like that. "Per voi," and "Voor u" and "Para usted." After para usted Lisa came up to my desk and said, "What are you calling me?"
"Nothing," I said.
"What are those things you're calling me in your emails?"
"That's 'for you' in different languages."
Awareness clicked. She smiled. "Ooooh." Then she looked confused. "Why?"
"Because it's more fun than sending emails that say 'scan 1' and 'scan 2,' don't you think? And I think the office could use some cultural diversity."
"You're weird."
"I could insult you in other languages if you want me to. I've been getting all of this off the internet anyway. Shall I write, 'For you, camel breath?'"
She walked off. I did some super speedy quick googling of English to French.
"It's 'pour vous, souffle de chameau!'" I hollered.
"How do you say 'you're weird?'" she called back.
I typed away again. "Vous etes etange."
"I was being sarcastic, Genevieve."
Type, type, type. "J'étais sarcastique, Genevieve!"

I love this place. Today, I was able to bring Claire to work. She had a follow-up visit to the doctor because she sprained her wrist last week, so she just spent the day with me. Everyone is so awesome to kids here at the hospital, probably because they're happy to see one that's healthy or one who's not bleeding from the everywhere. Claire spent most of the day reading the 4th Harry Potter book and texting one of her friends who had a half day of school. The big boss and my manager have brought her softdrinks and set her up with a movie to watch. Then the Vice President of our whole department came in, the really REALLY big boss who is not only big in his standing here at the hospital but also stands over seven feet tall, brought her a new pack of cards and a couple of unopened, girly Christmas ornaments that he had lying around in his office for some reason.

Have I mentioned before how strange it is that I tried for months to get a job, just praying that where ever I found something it would be a safe place for me and the kids, and I ended up in the Safety and Security department? Well, in case I didn't mention it before, it is weird. Het is bizar.

And they let me be weird! I once asked the big boss what I was like during my interview.
"Did you know I was quirky?" I asked him. "Could you tell?"
"Oh absolutely!" he said. "That's why I picked ya."

That's funny, I remember trying to act as normal as possible during that interview. Maybe my quirkiness just seeps out. No wonder it took me so long to find a job then. But finally I found a place that takes to my kind! All those other places that rejected me didn't know what fun they were missing with all the confusing emails and the bring-your-daughter-to-work-on-a-day-that's-not-bring-your-daughter-to-work-day! Che cosa imbroglia!

Brain Transplant

2010-05-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Since I work in the hospital, do you think they'd give me a brain transplant if I asked them real nice? Maybe if I went to fetch them all coffee? The people here are big on coffee, you know, like there's the blood bank and then the coffee pot in the cafeteria, and both can be hooked up by IV.

I'm thinking a brain transplant might be good so that I never say anything stupid or embarrassing ever again. This THIS is a foolproof idea. There must be a brain out there that they can tweak, polish up, make nice, clean and, shiny and stick it in my head. Conversations will be a breeze! And awkward ones will never happen! Over thinking will never be a problem! Inappropriate jokes will be appropriately placed in the overhead compartment in an upright position!

Sure, you're thinking that life would be boring, but you'd be WRONG! I'd have the first ever brain transplant! I'd be on the cover of on-line newspapers! There will be tweets about me! Google will have one of their "o"s in the shape of my brain on a day that is a tribute to me. There will be nothing boring about this gig, trust me. Now just to find the right brain. Abby Someone. Abby...Normal (my heart goes out to the ones who just got the "Young Frankenstein" reference).

"Geeeeen," you're saying. "Have you embarrassed yourself recently?"
My eyes dart back and forth, and I start biting my fingernails. "No."
"Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen?"
"Maybe."
"Everybody does that."
I take my fingers out of my mouth and raise them to make a striking point, "That's because no one's had the brain transplant yet!"
"I thought you were working on your self-esteem problem. Remember your blog from the other day when you said stuff like 'I love my heart,' 'I love my hands,' 'I love my pancreas?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Don't you love your brain? Even with its imperfections?"
"Not so much that I wouldn't be willing to trade it in."
"Geeeeeeeen!"
"I'd be upgrading. Like with an iphone."
"You're not an iphone!"
"Not YET!"

I'm infuriating to argue with, aren't I? But not once my transplant is complete! Just wait! It'll be beautiful! It'll be...oh crap. There's a $30 copay. I'm going to have to stick with the outdated model.

I Sit and Sew

2010-05-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I stole that title from the poem by the lovely Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "I Sit and Sew." Hers was about how helpless she felt as a woman watching the men she cared about go off to fight World War One while she sat and, as the poem implies, crocheted something. Mine will be about what I'm doing while awaiting Agent Sarah's review of my book.

I'm writing. Yay! And the day before yesterday I sent off a short story to The Genevieve Cancienne Journal of Rejected Art & Letters. It's all fiction and essays as written and rejected by Genevieve Cancienne, and I think my material fits. I'll probably still get a rejection, and the letter will read something along the lines of this:

Dear Writer,

We thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, your work doesn't fit our needs. Genevieve Cancienne's needs are coffee and a night out, like maybe dinner and a movie, and she doesn't need an essay about how your kids won't eat the pancakes you cook. Try again when you've got something with an actual plot, like the forbidden love story of a zombie and a firefly.

Keep writing!
The Editors

Oo. That's not a bad plot idea. The zombie would look longingly at the bright firefly and groan, "You're so alive!" and as he reaches for her his rotting arm will fall off. The firefly will see this and say, "OMG! That's gross" and fly away, and the zombie will cry, "Rhoda! Come back to me!" And the firfly will say, "No way, Gerald!" This thing is practically writing itself!

Anyway, I sent a short story to The Oxford American. I know. You've never heard of it. No one hears about the names of these magazines except other writers and they long to print in them so that other writers will read it and go, "Damn. I wish I was published," and not to impress actual readers who just read for the joy of it. Ok, well that's why I long to print in them.

The good news is, though, that I'm sending stuff off again. It's good momentum, and it gives me something to do rather than sit and sew and check my email every day waiting to hear back from Agent Sarah.

So what are some other publications that I'll be trying to impress with my unrequited undead love stories? (hee hee, unrequit-dead) Well, I checked out this site called Duotrope's Digest that lists hundreds of publication and these are the titles that appeal to me, that I must look into: "Hobo Pancakes," "Dark Comedy Review," "Laughter Loaf," "Girls With Insurance," "Asinine Poetry," and "Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens." Those I must check out because their titles intrigue me more than say, "The Oregon Review." And then I'll find out which places might actually be interested in my stuff.

There are a few titles I'm curious about, but don't think that my work has a place there. For instance, I don't write murder mysteries and "Short Fast Deadly" sounds like short crime stories to me. Also, I don't write porn or erotica so "Sleep. Snort. Fuck." is out. But "The Rejected Quarterly?" Yeah, I need to check that out.

And now, as a tribute to the lady Alice Dunbar-Nelson, her poem:

I Sit and Sew
by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

Spill

2010-05-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I tried it. After reading about Jeanne Calment the French chick who lived for 122 years I took her advice and covered myself in olive oil. This wasn’t my first choice. At first I considered moving to France. Maybe it was being French that did it, kept her alive until she was a thousand years old, but I googled it and learned that French people generally live to be the same age as everyone else, dying of the usual things. Then I googled the expense of airfare to France and compared it to the price of a bottle of olive oil, and decided to go the cheaper route.

So how was it? Oily. Even more so than I thought it would be because I started off by accidently pouring too much. Even though I’ve been cooking for years somehow I forgot that pouring oil, be it vegetable, olive or other, is a delicate business. You tip the bottle ever so slightly or it gushes out coating everything in its wake – the measuring spoon, the floor, you, the dog. Poor dog. Victim of my frequent kitchen oil spill disasters.

Anyway, I tipped the bottle over my forearm like it was a tube of sunscreen, like I could squirt a little bit on and spread it around my skin. But sunscreen is slightly more pasty than olive oil, and in my defense I do have a lot more experience rubbing on sunscreen than marinating myself in an ingredient that I have mostly used for sautéing spinach.

It went everywhere. Wrist to elbow was coated in the stuff. So, in keeping with the sunscreen mentality, I tried to spread it around a bit. You know when you accidentally squirt too much sunscreen on your leg or something and you use the excess to cover the rest of you? Dude, I am six feet long. And there wasn’t enough of me to use up everything I had spilled on my forearm. Not even my whole arm, JUST HALF OF IT. I stood in my bathroom, looking like a toddler who’d gotten into her mother’s pantry, arms held out to the side because I was so oily and icky and I said, “Jesus Christ, what was this chick like an oiled up wrestler or something? She did this EVERY DAY until she was 122? Fuck it, I’m having an embolism at 75 like a decent human being.”

It took the rest of the day before I finally stopped feeling like a slimy reptile. I guess it finally all soaked in, or rubbed off on my clothes. And, me being me, I began to feel depressed.

I haven’t been taking very good care of myself in the last few weeks. Until Friday night, I hadn’t gotten to any Al-Anon meetings, taken my medication, continued my step work, or anything like that. I go to Al-Anon because I’m the adult child of two alcoholics, so while it’s technically ok for me to drink while I’m in the program because technically I’m not the one with the addiction problem, I’ve noticed that in these last few weeks I’ve been drinking more than usual. And being the child of two alcoholics, it’s not really a good idea for me to drink at all. According to research of an institution that I have forgotten the name of, when you are the child of one alcoholic the likelihood of you suffering from the same addiction is 60%. What could that percentage be when both of my parents are alcoholics? Hmm. My math is rusty. I was a Liberal Arts major. AHH! I was a Liberal Arts major! My chances have gone up 123%!!! So for many reasons, it’s not a good idea for me to drink.

When I stopped to think about it the other day I noticed a pattern. Before I started Al-Anon, I numbed myself from reality with denial and self-torture. When I got into the program I numbed myself with cigarettes and food. I was finally facing truth and reality, but still dealing with problems by causing other ones. When I stopped smoking I started overeating. When I recently stopped overeating (and finally stopped having the occasional post-quitting cigarette) I started buying wine at the store. Just one glass a night.

“Just one glass a night,” was what my mom told my aunt, one night when she was over. I was seven years old and my parents had just separated. Mom was single with three little kids, working and going to school full time. “If I have one glass a night I’m ok.”

That’s how it started. My parents were separated for two years before they got back together, and getting back together didn't cure the other problem that had started. And now as a single mother with three kids, working full-time, I totally understand how it became a problem.

I want to numb myself and forget. I don’t want to lay down in bed and remember how a man’s arms once held me to sleep. While we didn’t have a healthy relationship, that was one of the sweet memories. I don’t want to tuck my kids in at night and have them ask me complicated questions that I can’t answer, or worry about what I’m going to do if I get into my car tomorrow morning and it doesn’t start when I can’t afford to buy a new one. I don’t want to tell the kids to take showers and brush their teeth and then have them argue that it’s not the way they do it at their dad’s house. I don’t want to be awake at all past 6:00 in the evening because that’s when the hard questions start, that’s when the memories come, that’s when all my insecurities sink in, and when I finally get in bed, if I’m awake enough, that’s when I start crying. I don’t even think anything when I cry, it just happens like a natural purging. Like a spill from an overflow.

I think it is natural for me and the kids to be this way in the evening because we’re grieving. All four of us. And when I look at myself with compassion, it’s natural for me to not want to deal with it. This is fucking painful. It’s not the kind of crying I used to do when I was feeling stuck, afraid, helpless, and hopeless, with no sense of who I was anymore. It’s the crying that results from growing pains. And when I numb it with booze or whatever the hell I’m using to put myself to sleep with, I’m not growing. I’m not moving out of this place, I’m just keeping myself there by starting another problem. I’ve watched my parents suffer from this disease all my life. This is not a problem that I want. My children will not wake up to empty bottles of booze in the kitchen, pools of vodka spilled on the counter from clumsy pouring.

My last drink was May 13th.

So how have I been dealing with the questions and the growing pains? I’ve been talking to my sponsor (who is an Adult Child of An Alcoholic AND a recovered alcoholic) every day, and taking very good, gentle care of myself. Physically and mentally. I’ve picked up my step work and started taking my medication again. I started exercising and eating healthy, AND making sure that I do eat. When I overeat, I feel guilty, starve myself, and then get so hungry I binge again. Sound sane? No, I don’t think so either. Also, today I’m going to a different kind of 12 step meeting to see how I feel about it.

Ironically, hours after I’d resolved to try out an AA meeting, one of my friends called and said, “Me and a few other of the girls are heading Madigan’s for 9:30! You need to come!” Madigan’s, for those of you who don’t know, is a bar.

I didn’t go to the bar. Instead last night I took a bath and looked at my legs and my stomach that I was once ok with punching, burning, and cutting. “I love my legs,” I said. Then I rested my hands on my stomach like there was a baby inside and said, “I love my stomach.” Then I listed all the parts of me that I loved, parts that me that I have been hating, poisoning, polluting, cutting, burning, and scratching without caring about what it did to me in the end or how ashamed it made me feel. “I love my hands,” I said, “I love my lungs, I love my heart, I love my brain, I love my throat, I love my nose, I love my teeth…” I was like Whitman, singing a song of myself.

And then I took the cap from my shaving cream, dipping it in the tub and poured a stream of it over my hands, just because it felt good. Have you ever stood in the shower letting the water run over you just because it felt good? That’s what I was doing, only I focused on this one small part of me with a capful of water instead of the gush of a showerhead. One thin river of water streaming down my index finger, over my knuckle and cooling my wrist. I was pouring water on myself like a kind lover, one that knew that I didn’t need sex. Just affection, drop by drop.

After I got out of the tub I went back into the kitchen and got the bottle of extra virgin olive oil out of the pantry. I poured a drop of it into the center of my hand and rubbed it into my shoulder. I repeated it, massaging the oil into my skin drop by drop and when I was done I didn’t feel sticky, just soft. What I needed wasn’t a thick coating, like I was a plucked chicken ready for the oven. Jeanne Calment must have known this, that to keep her body and mind healthy she needed moderation, a gentle pampering every day. Not a bucketful of oil. Just a thin layer, as I discovered.

Then I got into the car and went about my day feeling like a lady. Because I had treated myself that way. And then I popped in a Beach Boys CD and danced in my seat to "Surfin' USA." Surely Jeanne Calment did this too, to prevent taking herself too seriously. Though by the time The Beach Boys were hip she was probably dancing to "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena."

Well, I never! Wait, yes I have

2010-05-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

That was weird. When I tried to log in a minute ago a message popped up that told me I couldn't because my "cookie functionality" had been disabled. My cookie functionality? Now wait a damn minute. A person can accuse me of being dysfunctional in a number of ways, but when it comes to cookies, I'm good. Completely cookie functional...and I am not using cookie as a euphemism for anything. At any rate, the Internet has obviously taken notice of my cookie functionality and deemed it healthy enough to carry on.

But that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to know is why every time I step into the shower my floozy of a shampoo bottle has to say suggestive things to me. When I was washing my hair this morning I noticed this written on my bottle of Herbal Essence, "Let me soak it to you." Then it said other brazen things like, "tousle me softly" and "What are you doing next Friday?"I was appalled. Never have I been spoken to in the shower in such an inappropriate manner. Well, not in a long time anyway. Which is exactly my point, here I am, a single person just trying to wash her hair so that when she gets to work people don't look at her and wonder if she combed it with buttered toast, and what does my shampoo bottle decide to do? Make me feel sexy, that's what. And in the end, will it transform into an attractive human? Noooooooooo. In the end, I will be clean yet untousled, softly or otherwise. Fucking tease.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about either. I wanted to talk about Jeanne Calment- the oldest living human ever from France. She lived to be 122, took up fencing at 85, and rode a bike until she was 100. "She ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to olive oil, which she said she poured on all her food and rubbed onto her skin, as well as a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilo of chocolate every week. (Wikipedia)" Chocolate? Fencing? Port wine, which is my favorite wine because of its intense sweetness? Olive oil bathing? I think I could live like that. I don't know what a kilo is, but I'm sure I could reach whatever chocolate quota they threw at me. Fencing at 85?? Who would fence an 85 year old woman? Maybe she challenged her friends at Bingo games, suddenly drawing a sword when there was a disagreement. Do you think her bottles of olive oil ever said anything suggestive to her like, "Tousle me softly with shrimp and fresh cut vegetables over medium heat?" This woman is my new hero. Or, she was. She died in 1997, but had her wits about her to the end.

Whilst in Wikipedia, reading about Jeanne (insert French word for awesome) Calment, I noticed that the word "olive oil" was high lighted, meaning that it wanted to know what I was doing next Friday. I didn't want to tell it that I already had a date with my shampoo so I clicked on the word and sidestepped what was sure to be an awkward rejection. I found out that the Mediterranean region is the Poppa Bear of olive oil. They're swimming in it, they put it in everything - food, lamps, old ladies. And while I was reading about olive oil's health benefits and medicinal uses I realized that an oil spill in Spain would be completely different from the oil spill that just happened in the Gulf. One is much more delicious than the other, and animals with an olive oil coating would get protection from UV rays and live to be over 100. Chefs might wash the oil off the little crtitters and use it in a pasta dish, but that would be the extent of the damage. Oh sure, the olive industry would take a hit for a while, and people would have to switch from martinis to port wine, but apparently that's not a bad thing.

I'm going to go now. I'm going to draw myself an olive oil bath with a side dish of chocolates.

Donuts and conversations

2010-05-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

The problem with not blogging for a week is that so much material builds up that I don't know where to begin. Do I want to share kid quotes? (Christopher, after my sister told him that she loved him & asked if he loved her, "Well...love is a strong word.") My gripes about leaky airconditioning? (me, staring at the dripping air unit with a blinking red light on it and asking my sister, "Hey, Steph? What do you think that red light means? You think it means everything's ok? Maybe it only blinks when everything's ok.") Or maybe the latest awkward divorce question thrown at me and my exhusband? (Emma, sitting at the table with me and Chris earlier in the week, "Dad, if you marry Michelle [his girlfriend] will she be my new mommy?")

Let's talk about donuts.

One of the traditions I grew up with in my family was that we got donuts for breakfast on our birthdays. Like most people, there are things I grew up with that I've chosen to keep as tradition and others that I've chosen not to. I've kept all the ones involving donuts. Today is my sister Stephie's birthday and so, like a good Rheams, I set out in the predawn hours to get the first box of donuts fresh out the fryer.

The place I went to is the same place that we've been getting donuts for almost 25 years - Take Away Donuts on Highway 90, the little shop with the helpful sign that boasts, "Take Away Donuts - We serve donuts." In my mind the only way to improve that sign would be, "Take Away Donuts - We serve donuts. Take them away." What I love about this place is the other customers. They're all men and all truck drivers so every time I walk in there I hear conversation similar to the one I heard this morning.

A trucker dude swiveled his stool to lean back against the counter. He pointed at the guy next to him with his mug of coffee and in a gravely voice said, "Heeeeeey, Super Cooper! Where you been?"

Super Cooper sipped his coffee and said, "Hmm. Where you been?"

"Woo wee!" he exclaimed, thrilled at the question. "Everywhere. Dallas, Florida..." then low, to himself, "Super Cooper."

The best conversation I've ever overheard was the one at a grocery store near my parent's house. I recently rediscovered this when I was cleaning out my inbox. Some of you guys might remember this from an email I sent years ago:

This middle aged woman and what appeared to be her teenaged escort were standing next to me in line. I couldn't tell what their relationship was. The way she talked to him didn't suggest that she was his mother or his aunt, unless their family is just THAT messed up. He looked about nineteen and she looked old enough to be his mom, but then she also looked like one of those women who could be thirty but looked fifty because she hadn't been kind to her body. Tanned fat rolled over the sides of her jeans, and hung below the edge of her shirt. Her shoulder length, frizzy hair was bleached blond at the tips and dull brown at the top. Her voice cracked in a way that not only told you that she smoked, but suggested that she might actually have a cigarette lodged in her throat. She asked the teenaged boy, who kept a steady expression of no expression at all, about where he went at night and what he liked to drink. The kid had black hair and a wispy mustache. He was only slightly more attractive than the woman who wanted to know all about his night life. After she spotted a bottle of Tequila Rose behind the counter, she said, "Oo!" and poked him in the side. "Tequila Rose, you ever drink that? That's some delicious shit."

He moaned, "No."

"Next time you come over to my house we'll have to get you some. What about you, baby, you ever drink you some Tequila Rose?" she asked the teenaged cashier.

The girl said, "Naw. A stripper cameback to my house once and got all messed up on it. She threw it up and I've never been able to get the smell out. I drink Jaegermeister, me."

I stood in line thinking, "I need to start bringing my notebook with me everywhere I go. This is fantastic."

And do I bring a notebook with me now? No. I've learned nothing. Except not to serve Tequila Rose to strippers, truckers like Dallas, and cashiers dig Jaegermeister.

But more disturbing than that conversation was a talk that my friend had with her son about love. You recall me saying that Chrisopher told my sister that love is a strong word? My friend's son said something similar. She has twin 8 year old boys and one of them, Ben, has decided that he hates love, hugs and kisses. I guess that's pretty typical for a little boy. But Ben's response is not typical.

When tucking her boys in the other night she told one of them, "Good night, Craig, I love you."

Craig dutifully said, "Good night mom. Love you too."

Then when she said, "Good night, Ben. I love you," Ben said nothing.

"Beeen," she sang. "I love you. You love me?"

"Mom," said Ben, exasparated because they'd been over this a hundred times. "I don't know how to love."

"Ben doesn't know how to love, Mom," Craig reminded her.

"Oh," she said, remembering. "That's right."

What is it with this new generation of boys and their complex responses to "I love you?" In my day, if you kissed a little boy they spit and ran. They didn't come back with answers like, "I don't know how to love," or "love is a strong word" or "Mom, I think we need to take a step back and re-evevaluate this relationship."

But bring up donuts, and suddenly you're both on the same page. Usually, getting Christopher out of bed is as easy as scraping old gum off the sidewalk, but this morning all I had to do was say, "I got birthday donuts this morning," and his eyes popped open. He was at the table in a matter of minutes. He sang "Happy Birthday" to Stephanie with us. He answered her when she told him she loved him! Suddenly he knew what love was and how to love in return! And all it took was one fresh chocolate covered sprinkle!

Donuts! The miracle food! I'll set a few on top of my leaky air conditioning unit!

Daily Recommendations

2010-05-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

When the US Health Department recommended a daily allowance of 8 fruit and vegetables a day, do you think they were talking about coffee? Maybe in some veiled way? Because if so, I'm covered.

Today, I think I did a damn good job of staying as healthy as possible. A banana/peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and a tuna salad for lunch WITH low fat yogurt for dessert! I can say with all certainty that am the poster child for some kind of health network that uses posters! And that network would be called, "The Department of People Who Eat Well One Day and Use it as an Excuse to Eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups For Breakfast The Next Morning." I would be all over that poster.

The kids have been asking for fruit gummies as snacks lately. I don't usually keep them in the house because it's one of those foods that if left around, the children will refuse to eat anything else. It reminds me of that experiment they did on an innocent, fluffy creature, it was either a mouse or a rat (the authoress hopes that no steady reading mice or rats are offended by me not knowing the difference between them and hopes not to receive angry letters) where scientists put food pellets in one dispenser and heroin in the other, and the rat/mouse would always go for the heroin, and the real food came second. Further into the experiment, the heroin was taken away and the rat/mouse refused to eat the food. It only wanted the heroin.

I know what you're thinking. Scientists serve heroin in a dispenser? In tiny nibblet forms? Am I sure this wasn't cocaine they were talking about or maybe crack? Well no, I'm not sure. It was some addictive drug served up to an experimental rodent. So does my comparison hold water? Yes, because the point still stands that if my children were in a scientist's lab and there were only three dispensers, the first one containing healthy food, the second one heroin and the third fruit gummies, they would hit the fruit gummy button until it broke. And once it was broken, they would not serve themselves fruits, vegetables, or heroin, they would just whine until the scientist finally broke down and drove to the store to get gummies shaped like Spongebob Squarepants.

So yesterday I thought I would fool my children. [a note to those here without children: this can not be done] Ha, ha! I bought "healthy" gummies. "Healthy" gummies aren't really healthy, they're just not as bad. These things are evil because they seduce parents with all sorts of empty promises. They whisper things like, "No gluten!" "No artificial flavors!" "No transfats which we all know will turn a child into a transvestite upon adulthood!" What this box really seemed to say to me when I read it was, "Buy me. I am not as bad a real gummies, your kids won't know the difference, and my dye contains 3% of the daily recommended amount of riboflavin." I bought it and felt pretty good about myself.

Until Claire bit into one. She made this face I can't exactly describe. It didn't seem to say, "This is gross," so much as, "What have you done to me?" Then followed this stupid conversation:
"These aren't gummies," she said, chasing the snack with a glass of water to drown out the unbearable taste. Perhaps it was the riboflavin.
"Yes they are," I told her. "It says so on the box."
"No. It's healthy food," she explained.
"No, it's not!" I argued.
"Yes it is, Mom. If these were real gummies they would be shaped like fruit. But they're just little squares."
"Hey, you know what else is shaped like fruit that you can have?" I asked her.
"What?"
"FRUIT!"
"OOOOH!"
"That's right!"
"MOOOOOOM!" she moaned, like a lab rat denied heroin.
"What? What's so wrong with real fruit? It's shaped like those gummies you like so much."
"Why can't we just have real gummies?"
"Because you are a hyper psychopath when you eat them."

I made up that last line. I didn't REALLY say that. But I REALLY wanted to.

Earlier today I brought the gummies to work with me. I figured that I might as well take a stab at them rather then let them go to waste. And yeah, they're horrible. they have the most bizarre aftertaste, and I can't compare it to anything else, but I can tell you that I think it's what phoniness tastes like.

Sigh. A snack ruined. That's ok. There are other fruit shaped objects around here, ones with stems and seeds and everything...I sound like I'm talking about marijuana. No, really, there are apples, oranges, and bananas in the cafeteria. Kiwi too! And when I've had my fill of those, there's always my own version of heroin. It's not a pellet, it's a hot liquid but it IS also served in a dispenser and when I am denied a regular dosage of it I squeak in pain.

Agent Sarah reporting for duty in May

2010-04-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Agent Sarah wrote back to me. I don't think I updated that here. She said that she is excited to get the latest draft, and that her work is backed up a mile so she will be able to get back to me in May. This was a couple of weeks ago, when May was further away. Like a couple of weeks away. Now it's 2 days away. What do you think the odds are that she'll read it in two days? And fall in love with it? And meet a publisher the next day at lunch who will also love it and buy it for many, many dollars? Like more dollars than I have now?

Ok, let's do something. READERS OF MY BLOG! We're all going to concentrate on the same thing all at once for a couple of seconds. Are you ready? This is truly exciting. Never before has this been done on a blog EVER! THAT I KNOW OF! Everybody imagine that Agent Sarah says my book is ready to sell...now!... YAY! Thank you thank you! People, you have made blog history! Or blistory!

More on this as it develops.

Hey, and something else I just noticed. I'm blogging more again. This is a good sign of things, I think.

This blog's T-shirt would say "Under Construction"

2010-04-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

I was being a responsible little worker until "Strawberry Fields" came on the radio and my mind snapped into that third place, that dreamy place that makes me want to write.

Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to
Strawberry fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry fields forever

I've heard that "Strawberry Fields" is about drugs, but I don't know. Maybe it's about strawberries. I know The Beatles did drugs, but surely they ate fruit as well. Sometimes I feel like nothing is real and I'm not on hallucinogens. I'm just in serious denial.

For example, four summers ago there was a problem with my washing machine while I was potty training Christopher. He had to be potty trained by the fall to get into pre-K. For two weeks we were without a washing machine so I washed clothes by hand. He went through pants and underwear ALL DAY LONG. I distinctly remember hosing off his soiled pants in the backyard when he tottered up to me and told me that he'd had another accident in the pants and underwear I'd just put him in. First I was tempted to squirt the hose in his face. Perhaps that would potty train him, the ole' blast-them-in-the-face-with-the-hose-when-they-poop-on-themselves technique. But I knew I couldn't do that. So I downshifted into denial. "This isn't happening," I thought. Instant hallucinogen! Strawberry fields! Nothing is real! And nothing to hose off of pants! Sing it with me! "Pot-ty trained children forever." I think I ended up letting him run around the backyard naked for the next two weeks.

Anyway, I go into denial about people too. I was just discussing that with a recovery friend this morning. A friend who (in the spirit of anonymity) I'll call George Harrison. I thought about calling him "Peaches" but that would only make me hungry. I told him about how I like to tell people good things about themselves, even when those things aren't true, so that they'll feel good about themselves. This may sound nice, but it doesn't work very well. One man I fell in love with told me in the beginning that he didn't think he was good enough to deserve me. I assured him this wasn't true, and I thought by saying that I could really make him believe that he deserved goodness in his life. But he didn't and he followed through on that belief and mistreated people he loved. That didn't really help either of us. I loved a girl too who told me repeatedly "I'm such an asshole." I'd say, "No you're not. Don't say that about yourself. You're wonderful." And then I was surprised when she'd act like an asshole. I don't think I was wrong that these people had good in them. But both of them told me things they believed about themselves and then I was surprised each time when they acted accordingly. George Harrison agrees that it is more likely to find people who are able to return love if they believe that they can, and not just because I tell them to. But oh how I do love to believe that I can.

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me

Who do I tell people that I am? Up until now I think I've told people that I'm worthless. I don't think I say that to myself or anyone else anymore. You know what's going to be really hard? The next time someone tells me, "I'm such an asshole," and I shrug and say, "Ok. What are you going to do about it?" It goes against every cell in my brain. What I want to say is, "No, no! Don't say that about yourself! You're a great guy! You're a liar and a rapist and a tax dodger but I love the good in you!" There is good in everybody, but at least I know that it's not my job to force people to see it AND embrace it, no matter how much I want them to. And believe me, I want it to be my job REALLY bad.

So this is probably what it'll look like the next time an emotionally unhealthy person comes looking for me:
I'll be at a coffee shop sipping a medium roast. Cream and a dash of sugar. A big dash of sugar. A dude will come up to me, smelling like whiskey and wearing a hat that says, "I am a prick."
"Give me a compliment," he'll say.
"I don't know you," I'll tell him. "I only know what you're showing me."
A woman with too much makeup who smells like heroin will step beside him. She's wearing a T-shirt that says, "I am a difficult person and I had an abusive mother who I will think of when I look at you." She'll tell me, "But aren't you that girl who makes people feel better?"
"I'm retired," I'll say.
"You can't do that to us," Prick Hat will say.
I'll stand up. I am wearing a T-shirt that says, "Single mother of 3 in a 12 step program with an identity crisis going on - Awesomeness under construction." I'll tell them, "I'm not sure you want to take my advice."

Then I will squirt them with a hose.

Funny Lookin'

2010-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

You might not be surprised if I tell you that you can not eat off of the floors in my house. Well, you could, but then you might not feel very well, and then you might also start to wonder about yourself, about why you would eat off of someone's floor in the first place and not, say, a plate. Oh, by the by, you might not want to eat off of one of my plates.

I clean about as often as I feel that I have to, and you can tell from looking at my place that I don't feel very obligated. Unless someone comes over to visit or if someone tries to eat off my floor and then I have to stop them and say, "Hey, you might not want to do that." "Yes, I really do. I HAVE to," he'll say, because I would imagine that this is how a person who eats off the bare floor would respond. "Ok," I'll say handing them a fork. "If you can find the floor, it's yours. Just kick around the laundry and move those papers. And that dog. There you go. Hey! Look at that! I DO have a floor!"

And to tell you the truth, the kids and I don't wash our hair or brush our teeth as often as we should. Hey look, you asked!...oh wait, no, you didn't ask for that information. I'm just giving you the cold hard facts here. Life is a little crazy lately and sometimes the kids and I fall asleep in our clothes, on the couch, with the dog and the cat and the rabbit. Teeth unbrushed, faces unwashed, pajamas unworn. But we get to school and to work every day. And when we do people are overjoyed to see us! Until they get too close and breathe. Then we might smell a little funny, and truthfully we might look a little funny. The other day when we were running late I told Christopher to put on his socks and he yelled from his bedroom, "Ok, they're on!" He walked into the kitchen with his socks draped over his head. He thought he was hilarious, and even though we were seriously late I still had to laugh. What a smart ass.

We are making each other laugh more. That's been a good change. A few weeks ago I was lying in bed, depressed about something and Emma snuggled down next to me and said, "Hey Mom." "What?" I grumbled back. Then she boasted, "I have 50 electric peanuts in my pants." I smiled. I hadn't smiled all day. "Do you?" I asked. "Yes! Oh - what a minute..." she snuck under the covers and came back up. "I'm not wearing any pants." Somehow Emma knows just what to say to make me laugh. I could be coming home from the funeral of both of my parents and Emma could say the words "electric peanuts in my pants" and I would still giggle. It's not just the ridiculous things that she says. It's that, at age 8, she has mastered a dry tone so she says these things very matter of fact.

The other day I was able to turn it around on her. She, Claire and I went to a mother-daughter yoga class on Sunday and Emma started off class upset about something. She cried quietly for the first 15 minutes. There are so many big changes going on for that little kid and when I saw her crying like that I wanted to make everything better, but I didn't know how. So when we were lying on the floor I whispered, "Hey! Emma!" She looked at me, and she seemed so sad and tired. I probably looked the same way weeks before when she found me in my room. "I've got 50 electric peanuts in my pants," I whispered. She smiled a little, but she didn't laugh.

The class worked on her after a while. The teacher had us doing fun, playful poses and Emma began to giggle a bit. Then in the last ten minutes of class she fell asleep during the meditation. Poor thing really was tired. Since it was Chris's weekend with the kids, he came to pick them up at the end of class. It's always painful to watch the kids get in the car with him and go, just a reminder that our family's split. Even though it's a good thing, Chris and I both agree on that, there's something about it that's just hard. When I was telling them goodbye Emma called me over to her window. She said, in her flat tone, "Hey Mom. I've got peanuts in my pants too." That's true mother-daughter bonding.

We're working on it, this taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally thing. Just a little awkward right now what with all of the peanuts in all of the pants. Atleast we can laugh.

Gen's had a good shot of adrenalin

2010-04-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday night I actually did something other than go to a 12 step meeting, or lie in bed and wonder what my kids were doing at their dad's house and if they were ok, or where the hell I went wrong with everything, and what the hell I'm doing with my life. I mean, I still managed to fit those things in over the weekend, but intermingled with my self-torture I also went to see Roller Derby. I wasn't sure if I would like it. I was hesitant about going at first. But when the announcer described the skaters as "a tangle of fishnets and skulls!" I knew I was in the right place.

Really, I thought I would have grown out of my dark side by now. When I was a teenager I painted my fingernails black and listened to Agent Orange and The Misfits, and that was fine. But I never imagined that at 34 I would be sitting in a college gym full of people who still dressed like I did in 1991, AND ME dressing kind of like I did in 1991 with my Creep Show T-shirt and cut-offs, and getting a kick out of watching grown women with names like "John Cougar Menstrual Cramp" knock each other to the ground. There's something cathartic about the whole thing. And the music! I wish I had the soundtrack to that fucking game! They played Agent Orange, Blondie, The Ramones, and The Runaways! That's the music I try to get away with listening to at work! But I don't!

Anyway, my friend Tricia and I came up with our own Roller Derby names, even though neither of us have skated in years and we don't like getting hit in the head. She is The Velveteen Grabb-It and I'm Gen-O-Cide. This doesn't mean we'll be joining the team, these are just the personas that we'll adopt the next time we go to a game.

Then to complete my juevenille delinquent weekend, last night I saw the movie "The Runaways." It is the story of the all girl rock band in the mid 70's with Joan Jett and Lita Ford. I liked.

When I got out of that movie I started thinking. I'm way too cautious with the way I write. In the movie, when The Runaway's bizarre manager was trying to coach the girls in the band about playing like tough-as-nails rock n' roll chicks, he gave them this constructive criticism, "You ladies need to start thinking with your cocks!" I think it's high time I started doing this with my writing. I'm always afraid of pissing people off, or talking about how I really feel about things.

Inside of me there is a saucy, punchy girl. So far the only way she comes out is in fiction, or when I'm playing a part. If I wore scary face paints, called myself Gen-O-Cide and wore a bad girl clothes then I probably stand up straight, talk unashamedly about how I feel about politics, excessive Facebooking, and how I think that Crocks are the ugliest shoes ever made. Also, I would look like an over-30, mother of three who's trying to look 18. But I don't have to disguise myself to talk or write about how I really feel about things and people in my life. I can just go balls out. Most of my friends do this and people still talk to them. Of course, none of them have published their thoughts. For some reason, that's a little different.

Today when I write I'm just letting everything out. I'm a little afraid of what I might say. Perhaps for the first few days that I do this I should wear fishnets, roller skates and a leather jacket. Just to arm myself. That would be an interesting sight for the kids to see when they wake up in the morning. They'll trudge into the kitchen rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, hear the familiar sounds of the coffee brewing and the clicking of laptop keys, and then the quite unfamiliar sight of their mother in a roller derby helmet and leather pants as she writes at the kitchen table. One of them will say to the other, as she shakes her head, "Mom's thinking with her cock again."

What got me about the movie and really made me think about what I'm doing with writing was Joan Jett's attitude towards music, even as a teenager. She knew what she wanted to do and she was serious about it She still is, I read a little bit about her today. That chick is 52 and she's still performinging live all over the world because she loves to play guitar.

I want to write how that music sounds. Raw and alive. I want someone to open my book, rest their ear against a page and hear one wailing electric guitar.

Two Letters

2010-04-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Cigarette,

You make me feel dizzy and drunk after I smoke you. Why would I want to feel that way? I don't really. So there must be something I'm avoiding. Or maybe something I'm trying to remember.

You taste like someone I used to know. But you also make my breath and hands stink. Your smell permeates everything. You used to taste good but you don't anymore. You are not the person I used to know, you are not a person at all. You don't love me. The second I take you in you begin to disappear. So I have to chase you again, chase this thing that could kill me and leaves me feeling dizzy, lousy, and worried after I have it.

And still, even as I write this, I want you again. Addiction is insane. To want you after all that I've wrriten here is insane. So part of me is crazy. And you're not crazy, are you, Cigarette? You disappearing act, you with no mind or soul at all. You who devolves into tar.

Fuck off,
Lungs

Dear Genevieve,

No more disappearing acts. No more taking in things that don't give back.

Love,
Yourself

Awwe, I wrote "Love yourself." It's nice, I know.

To Agent Sarah, With Love

2010-04-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

I am done. As of 6:00 this morning, I finished editing the last sentence. I knew I was done when I found myself spending a great bulk of time editing one letter in one word repeatedly. The last sentence is (and you will not get this out of context), "I drew pictures of myself." In my early-morning-up-since-three-not-enough-coffee-overediting-to-a-fault haze I couldn't decide if the sentence should be past or present tense. So I kept changing my mind and agonizing over literally one letter that would change "I drew pictures of myself" to "I draw pictures of myself." Finally I decided two things: 1) since the entire book was in past tense it made no sense to traumatize the reader with a present tense verb out of nowhere, and 2) I was seriously overediting. I also decided that it was time for another cup of coffee.

So there it is, children. Off to Agent Sarah! May she be kind. May she read it and say, "You, Genevieve, are done. This is a master piece. And that past tense verb at the end seals the deal. Here is a publisher, an ungodly advance, and a Starbucks gift card."

So what else is going on with me? I'm happy to start writing something else now, for one thing. The kids and I have been reading the Junie B. Jones series the last two evenings and having a great time. I have the absence of cabel television to thank for that. How am I romantically? Financially? Emotionally? My appetite, blood sugar level, and heart rate? Well, I have a storage bin of disposable lovers, money to burn, happiness aplenty, and the constitution and the body of a goddess. That's my official statement, which I have filed away and am prepared to deliver at the next family gathering I attend, where 50 people will all come up and ask how I'm holding together. And then when they walk away I will turn around and bang my head on their living room wall repeatedly.

But atleast the next time someone asks me about the book I will be able to say that it's in my agent's hands now. That I feel throughout my soul that it is truly done, no more changes. Right, Agent Sarah? Right? Pretty please? With Splenda on top? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Old bones over bars any day

2010-04-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

It's official. I don't know how to be single yet. Last night one of my friends invited me out to a bar (by the way, I officially don't like bars) and I felt completely out of place.

Not in the way I felt out of place in high school - not like I was lower than everybody or less attractive or less witty. It's taken me up to this point in my life to get a truly sober perspective on people in a bar. None of us are all that superior, attractive, or witty. So I didn't feel out of place in a ugly-girl-in-a-room-of-prettier-girls kind of way. I felt more like a lamp in a swimming pool. I didn't work in there. You know, I stood there with a beer. Looked at the guitarists on stage who were good, but didn't play anything I could dance to, so I just tapped my foot. There were other drunk couples who danced awkwardly to music with no beat to it, which would have been amusing if seeing couples together didn't make me want to throw tiny cocktail umbrellas at them.

I felt much more comfortable at the cemetery I'd visited earlier that day. My friend Vicky (not the friend I went to the bar with) and I went to Holt Cemetery, which is a potter's field near City Park. It's where the jazz dude Buddy Bolden is buried in an unmarked grave, along with hundreds of other people whose families didn't have much money to bury them anywhere else.

To say that this place is not kept up well is a serious understatement. It's a mess. But that's what's so great about it. The grass isn't mowed on a regular basis, so it's too high. Some of the plots are covered in clover that's long enough to braid. The graves aren't in rows, they're just scattered everywhere, some right on top of each other. There will be a headstone and then less than a foot in front of it, a wooden cross with someone else's name scribbled in permanent marker.

The grave markers are wooden, cement, steel rods sticking out of the ground, and broken off pieces of plastic. The homemade ones have misspellings like "Bourn: 1923 Die: 1960." My favorite one had a misspelling and what seemed like an interesting story behind it. It said "Here lie my husbans" and then gave their names. Her husbands? She buried them together? One at a time, or both at once? There were "in loving memories" of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children and teenagers, their faded names on cheap pieces of anything. My favorite name was a World War One vet named Obadiah Wise.

The two most unusual things about this graveyard was - no. I take that back. The two creepiest things about this graveyard were the things that Vicky and I found lying on the ground. Oh, and the big, crumbly brick construction that appears to be an incinerator towards the back of the graveyard. I wish I had pictures to go with this. We're not sure that's exactly what it was. Neither of us have seen a crematorium before but if we had to bet money we were guessing that's what it was. Judging from the potato chips bags, water bottles, and cob webs inside of it, we guessed that whatever it was, it hadn't been used in a long time.

I just googled Holt to see if there was anything that confirmed our theory and I didn't find anything that mentioned it, but I found a much better description of the place:
"As you enter this graveyard through a ramshackle iron fence, your sweeping view of the cemetery will likely give you the impression of a grim forgotten burial waste land. There is no formal landscaping here at this time; bare dirt, mud clumps, and choking yellow weeds carpet this environment. Well and poorly tended plots intermingle. A narrow ditch of green water stretches the length of the Holt. Sometimes a bone works its way out of the ground as graves are re-dug for a second, third, or more burial in the same site. "http://www.examiner.com/x-17348-New-Orleans-City-Guide-Examiner~y2009m7d23-Visit-and-help-New-Orleans-Holt-Cemetery

And yeah, we found bones. That was the creepy thing. Half of a pelvis, a rib, and what we guessed was a thin arm or leg bone. I wasn't disgusted by it or anything. I was sad that whoever that was had unceremoniously popped out of the ground like that. But at the same time, decomposing is a rather undignified business whether one is in or out of the ground.

The other thing we found was an old glass bottle, like the kind you find at an antique store that once held homemade medicine. Vicky picked it up and read the words on the side "Embalmer's Fluid."

At that point it was time to go.

There really was a sweetness to that place, though. The headstones were like handmade cards rather than store bought. There was a loved one's handwriting, trinkets left behind of the deceased, like stuffed animals and a crossing guard vest. There was a wild parrot that was flying around making all sorts of racket, and it made me remember the city's bizarre wild parrot population. It was morbidly magical, if that makes sense. Not without hope.

So I guess yesterday I felt more comfortable in dead ruins than among living, drinking people. Scene of me talking to some dude the next time I'm in a bar:
"What's your name?" he'll say.
"Genevieve."
"What do you do, Genevieve?"
"I tour graveyards looking for bones."
[grabbing his beer and moving on] "Later."
"What? You don't want my phone number? Hey! It's cool. Want to see an incinerator?"

Ps- Yep. It's an old crematory oven. Just saw a picture of it online.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

2010-03-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

That was good to get out. I think we all feel a little bit better now.

KFKD vs. The Super Human

2010-03-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....(sips coffee)....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....(scowls at the phone as it rings)...grrrrrrrrrrrrr-Safety and Security, this is Genevieve.

That's how my morning is going. I'm not feeling good about myself today, but I'm trying to keep it apart from work.

My boss lent me a coffee cup that says "super human" on it, with lots of exclamation points. I don't feel like an exclamation point, though I am tall like one, and I do exclaim things from time to time. I used to feel like a big question mark, but I don't feel like that so much anymore. Maybe I'm a period at the end of a statement, but I would like to think that I'm something more fluid and less static than a fixed point.

I'm a human drinking coffee. Not super, but not despicable either. Last night I ate a piece of pizza that had cabbage and barbecued pork on it. That was pretty despicable.

Anne Lamott talks about tuning into a radio station in her brain called KFKD, which streams all the most horrible thoughts about herself 24/7 without commercial interruption. KFKD, as you have probably guessed or already know if you've read Bird by Bird, stands for "K-FUCKED" because it's all of her fucked up thoughts about herself, and about her writing. Today mine is saying, "You're a lousy whore who just wants everyone to like you, even the ones who have no reason to. And now you have cabbage breath because you ate that pizza." I think it's interesting that KFKD would call me a whore when I've been celebate for quite a while now. Who the hell is running that station, anyway? Like all bullies, the DJ for KFKD has thrown an insult with a nugget of truth in it. I do want everyone to like me, and I keep thinking that if I just try hard enough I can make that happen. I guess everybody does that, huh? Maybe I do it to an extreme because I'm just learning about boundaries and healthy stuff like that, but maybe that does't make me entirely pathetic.

You're not super bad or super good. Just human. Drinking coffee. Keep coming back to that and get back to work, Cabbage Breath.

character sketches

2010-03-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

I have decided to invent characters for no good reason. Just a little writing practice. These are meant to be ficticious so if you know someone with one of these names or you are someone with one of these names I apologize. As far as I know, I made you up.

Characters:
Lacy Rodriguez
Stormy Malone
Pete Fellows
Carmen Moreno
Biggie Bell (whose real name is Hank Short)
Melvin Gillespie
Babette Fink
Geneva Sinclair

Lacy Rodriguez is a data entry clerk who loves to jog and wishes that she could do it professionally. Someone asks her if that means she wants to be a runner in the Olympics and she says no, that she really would love to get paid just to jog through the park and wear short-shorts. Stormy Malone is an actress who is beginning to believe that her dog is the best man she has ever known. Pete Fellows has red hair, works in a tobacco shop, and is annoyed that people automatically expect him to be pleasant because his name suggests that he is. Carmen Moreno once auditioned for American Idol and has dreams about running over Simon's cat ever since he told her that her voice sounds like a rake in a garbage disposal. Biggie Bell is a trombone player who is in love with Carmen Moreno and dreams about running over her cat because it would give him a great excuse to talk to her. Melvin Gillespie wants to know what it's like to live outside of the country, but thinks he doesn't have enough money to travel. He doesn't realize that if he just stops buying Starbucks every morning he could easily save up for a trip. Babette Fink has worked at the bank for 25 years and has saved every picture that her children have given her. Geneva Sinclair is a romance novelist who recently gave up smoking and has found working on her car to be a wonderful distraction from the cravings because it really pisses her off.

Genevieve Cancienne loves her oddball, beautiful characters, and totally identifies with the guy who spends too much money on coffee.

I'm that chick who answers the phone

2010-03-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

"Safety and Security, this is Genevieve."
"Hi, I need to pick up a new ID. Where are you guys located?"
"We're right between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue."
Silence on the other line.
"I mean, the laundry room."
"Oh ok, great."

This is not how my conversations generally go, but more rather how I would like them to go. I would like to tell people that my department is between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue because it is true and because it is more exciting than saying that we're around the laundry.

I've found time to write again. Saying this gives me the same sensation as splashing cool water on my face. You know, like when your face gets hot and cool water feels nice on it. No? You can't identify with that comaprison? Well, like I said, I've begun writing AGAIN, meaning I've been out of practice, meaning my writing skills are rusty. Rusty like bicycle chain left out in the rain. See what I mean?

Anyway, I need to write so that I can keep appreciating my job. When I answer the phone sometimes I'm tempted to say, "Safety and Security, this is Genevieve and I should be writing, but I need the money." But! Now that I'm writing early in the morning I come to work feeling calm because the writing is getting done. I'm not just that chick who answers the phone. I'm that chick who writes in the morning and THEN comes in to answer the phone. And directs people to the morgue.

And listen guys. Yes, I am addressing you directly. I am doing the LAST changes to my book before I ship it off to my agent for the LAST time. I'm counting on you guys to badger me about this. The next time I say, "Yeah, I heard back from my agent and she said it's great but that she thinks I should change everyone's last name and make the character's T-shirt green on page 107," please, please, pleasey-please tell me to write her back and say, "Nope. It's done." Because it is. I can't write this thing anymore. Time for a new book, a new anything. I have edited to the extreme. My fingers have fallen off. I am typing this with my front teeth.

I would also like to add that I really do like it at Ochsner. I would like to keep working here for a really long time. It's just that (sniff!) nothing compares to writing. This is around the time Sinead O'Connor should pop into your head because of that song, you know that song that she did, "Nothing Compares 2 U" and I'm pretty sure she did other songs and they were probably pretty good but that's the only one I know, which is sad because she had a beautiful voice and should probably be recognized for more and - DEAR GOD! I'm rambling!

See! I'm totally out of writing practice. Run on sentences everywhere! No point to this blog entry! No common theme to string it all together! Just nonsense about my agent's expectations and early 90's music. Don't worry, dear people. I'll work on this. The girl between the morgue and the hazardous materials dump is closer to the laundry than you think - THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!

Let's start over. Hi. I am your Payphone Vigilante for the afternoon. Can I interest you in an analogy or a witty sentence fragment? Splendid! Tune in next time after Genevieve's had a few days of writing vignettes to herself.

Caged narrator

2010-03-10T07:38:00.000-08:00

It's been weeks. Haven't written a word. I'm beginning to narrate things. I'm tempted to pull people aside in the hallway at the hospital and begin telling them short stories, the character-driven kind where not too much happens but there's all of this beautfil imagery and whatnot and it would get mentioned in an obscure literary magazine that only wrters read where it would receive honorable mention.

Do I want to be that kind of writer? The kind that only other writers know about, or the kind that kids groan about when they find out they've got to read it in school? I don't think so. I think I'd like to be sensational. Someone who churns out a novel every year and a half, and writes the kind of books that people can't put down when they read in bed at night. Somewhere a woman will be reading in bed and her husband will say, "Don't you have to get up early tomorrow morning?" And she'll say, "I'm reading The Kinky Sex Mutant Wizard's Disco Inferno by Genevieve Rheams. It's sci-fi, fantasy, western, romance and autobiographical. I can't put it down!"

But damn it, I need to start getting up early again and writing. And sending stuff off! But until I get my ass in gear about getting published, I need to atleast let the narrator out of my head. I love my job here at Ochsner and everything, but there's no writing involved, I don't want to write on work time (like I am right now - eeek!), and my writer's voice is going so stir crazy that if I don't let her out, she's going to chew herself loose of her shackles. There will be no saving the poor medical students in the hallway when I corner them and demand that they listen while I recite Eudora Welty.

"Who is that?" they'll ask.
"She was one of the greatest southern writers of the 20th century. Won the Pulitzer Prize."
"Oh. Do you know any Dean Koontz?"

Things can suck sometimes

2010-02-09T13:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't had the internet at home for a couple of weeks, which is why I haven't been able to keep up with blogging as planned. Hopefully within the next couple of months I will be able to reintroduce my house to the 21st century and the internet will be up and running again. With the budget cuts I've been making lately, it's been a struggle to keep up with 20th century's luxuries. I've been thinking about putting up a sign in the living room as a joke, one of those signs I've seen in pictures of old movie theaters in the 40's and 50's - "Now with air conditioning!" The sign would imply that we are thankful that our electricity is running because we were in danger of losing it before, but I don't think that the kids would get it. And even if they did I think they're still too little to understand that electricity does't run through our television by magic. We actually pay for it.

Anyway, I can blog again this coming Saturday, which is fabulantanastic (I'm creating slang!) because I can use a wireless connetion at a coffee shop AND because I've got a lot of material built up.

Started my full-time job at Ochsner yesterday. So far it's the spleen's knees. Later skaters...

A Brimming Bowl of Genuis

2010-01-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

My friend Lauren and I are here at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse for a writing session and while I was sitting here waiting for inspiration to hit I suddenly thought about JD Salinger and his frozen peas.

I saw a documentary on him a few years ago, you know, about that reclusive writer who had spent the last 40 years or so in a small town not talking to many people. Since he hasn't done an interview practically since The Catcher in the Rye was published, they had to interview people in the town and women who'd lived with him over the years. One of them described his morning routine. He would get up early in the morning, stretch, meditate and then eat fruit or a bowl of frozen peas that he would defrost in the sink.

The peas, more than any other detail, has stuck in my mind about JD Salinger. JD Salinger, one of the best writers of the 20th century. He ate a bowl of thawed peas? For breakfast? From his sink? Were they still cold? Were some cold and watery and thus extra mushy when he bit into them? It's healthy, yes, and not necessarily the creamcheese-laden toasted bagel that one would expect from an old bachelor, but he ate them PLAIN? No pinch of salt? Did he ever fill the bowl with milk and eat it like cereal? You might think I'm gross for suggesting that, but Jesus, the man ate sink peas. How did his lover react when she saw him eating this for the first time?

"Want an omelet?" she would ask, strutting across the kitchen floor in her underwear and a tanktop, because I imagine that young lovers of reclusive, famous writers are always at the ready to be taken to bed. Shit, I would. It's one of the perks.
"Hm. No," he would say, leaning against the sink, holding a bowl up to his chin, and shoveling a spoonful of peas into his mouth.
"How about waffles? I could make waffles."
"Can you put peas in them?" he'd say.
"Excuse me?"
"Frozen peas."
He would open his freezer, which would be stacked from top to bottom with boxes of frozen peas.
"...That would be horrid," she would say, putting her pants back on.
"If you want we could roll them around in the sink first."

And I imagine that the relationship would deteriorate from there. You may think it's in poor taste to assume things about his love life when I didn't know the man, when NO ONE really knew the man, but since he gave us nothing to go on, one must speculate these kinds of things with the information that we have. And all I've got is a sink full of defrosted peas.

I wonder if they've found more of his writing since his death. I can't imagine that he stopped writing just because he stopped publishing. By the same token, I bet they'll find tons of material by Harper Lee, stashed under her bed or something, after her death. On the one hand it seems a shame that people with such distinct voices, whose art influenced countless writers (myself included), would keep their writing from the world. But then, as one of my friends says, you got to do what you can live with at the end of the day. And they couldn't live with the attention.

What will they say about my breakfast habits when I'm gone, assuming I'm ever famous?
"Toast," my former lover will say. "And the blood of her critics."
"That's interesting," the interviewer will comment. "Now, if you don't mind, can you please put on some pants?"
"Genevieve stipulated in her will that I am to never wear them again."
"I see."

Yes. I will be THAT kind of famous person. The kind who makes outlandish requests in her will. "My children may have their inheritance, if and only if they do the following: they must all spend the night in my haunted mansion, which I plan to haunt. And then they must plant a mustard seed garden and then throw a very loud, raucus, costume dinner party and then call the police on themselves." Then I will only leave them 15 bucks a piece. Lord, I'm strange and cruel when I'm dead.

And now, I'm tempted to read Cather in the Rye again. Or his short stories, which I've never read. He was the kind of writer that you could open his book and pick a line out of context and nine times out of ten it would be beautiful. Like this one, "It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road." I wonder what he thought about that line. Did he feel good after he wrote it, like he was having a poetic moment and it was cathardic to write it down? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this line will stick with you more, "All morons hate it when you call them a moron." Damn, that could be a T-shirt.

Sleep well, JD. Ole' Breakfast of Champions. Thanks for the voice.

Read, girl

2010-01-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have to quit the library, even though I love it, even though the other day I met another librarian with a wandering eye, inch thick glasses, and a Boris and Natasha tie on who discussed Anthony Burgess at length and I thought, "I simply love this place. This is the adult nerd's refuge." I mean, I can be openly nerdy there. I am no longer closeted. That's right. I (prepare yourself) am a geek. And goddamn it, I'm proud. I'm here and I'm weird.

But I was offered a full-time job at Ochsner Hospital and the kids and I need the money and the benefits. I'm going to have to be a nerd some place else. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the new job. It's a good step towards becoming a medical writer. But I am going to miss being a professional bookworm and answering questions like "Who wrote A Movable Feast?" To which I dig deep into my superior knowledge and intellect and reply, "Um, Rachael Ray?"

So what can I tell you about this geek's paradise that I shall miss? And I mean that in the most affectionate way. It made me remember some things that I had forgotten. First, book lovers, true book lovers, read EVERYTHING. The other day my manager said she recently finished a book on calculus and that it was just fascinating.
"That would be like reading a foreign language to me," I said.
"Ordinarily me too," she answered. "But this was a young adult book, and it explained it in an easy way. I could really appreciate it, even though I didn't totally understand it."

The woman read a kids' book on calculus and found it fascinating. I love that. These are people who appreciate anything for the sake of its delivery, as long as it's told well it could be about anything.

And it reminded me about something I haven't been doing much of lately. Reading. I've read several times that the best way to learn to write is to read whatever you can get your hands on. But other than reading self-help type stuff, I've fallen behind on the stuff I love. Literature, personal essays, German pornography and stuff like that. So, for some reason or another, the universe has decided to give me a sign. Literally.

If you live in New Orleans, you can drive down St. Claude and see this, and I suggest you do. There is a house that's all boarded up, with four windows on the front of it, like the tall kind of windows you can stand in. Those windows have long boards patching them up, and spray painted on each board, large enough to read easily from the road, is one letter that spells out the word "READ." Below the "D" is the word "girl." So on this broken down, ugly as hell house is the message, "READ, girl."

And I intend to. I'm sorry that I have to quit the library, but I'm so thankful to be reaquinted with an old love. Right now I'm reading Bird by Bird, which I highly recommend. It's by Emeril Lagasse, I think.

A Tillman Conversation Piece

2010-01-22T11:20:00.001-08:00

I have to tell you about my hunt for the perfect 2010 calender. Every year it's a big deal to get just the right one. For me, it's not just a way to keep track of appointments, or due dates for the kids' school projects. It says something about where I am at the beginning of the year, and what the rest of the year will look like.

Through most of high school if you would have walked into my bedroom you would have seen a Green Peace calender, telling you that not only did I love critters, but that I wanted you to think I was liberal. Senior year you would have found a Guns N' Roses calender, which should have been a sign to me that I was going to grow up to be attracted to rude, unstable, and emotionally unavailable people. More recently, last year in fact, you would have found a Sandra Boynton Mommy's calender, complete with large spaces to fill the day with everything that a mom needed to remember. It was helpful and cute in an originally Sandra Boynton-whackadoodle sort of way.

This year is different. This year I'm going through a divorce and I'm broke. So I decided to wait until after New Year's when the calenders were 50% off to find the perfect one that would make me smile when I walked into my kitchen. The unforeseen problem with this was, that since I was hitting the after-Christmas sale, I was also hitting the after-Christmas leftovers. I'd gone to Barnes & Noble excited. It's a nerdy thing to get excited about, but still. What would I pick on my first year on my own? Would there be a single mom's calender? Maybe something to do with writers? A coffeecake of the month calender perhaps? No. There was instead "Sock Monkees 2010." "Trout 2010." And most notably "Outhouses 2010."

I flipped through that last one, which someone had taken out of it's plastic to get a better look at I guess and then decided against it, and I thought, "Hey, I could put this in the bathroom." Then I started giggling at the kind of notes I could fill in at random dates just to further confuse guests who use my bathroom. Maybe I would just make scratch marks to indicate that I was counting something, but not specify what that thing was. I would definitely fill in one of those days with something like 21 marks, some number that would make someone's eyes go wide and suddenly feel uncomfortable. But then, to be taking your pants down in someone else's house is already a bit of a compromising act for whatever reason, and I would imagine that I might have trouble peeing if I was sitting across from such a calender. No, no, I thought. I'm too gentile of a hostess for that.

I left Barnes & Noble without getting anything, but now that I look back on it "Sock Monkees 2010" might have been fun.

When I got home, I decided to look on-line, thinking that there might be more available. And there wasn't, really. I also did a search for "single mom's calender," which produced nothing. But then, what would such a thing look like? "February 14th - Get drunk and cry." "December 25th - get drunk, look at pictures and cry?" Would it come with a skull and cross bones sticker to put on the day of my anniversary? I think I would rather "Outhouses" or "Trout."

What I found, eventually, was what seemed like the perfect one. It was called "Coffee Talk 2010." As you all know I kinda dig on coffee. A lot. Almost more than talking. This was a wall calender of 50's-ish looking men and women, looking polished and super enthused and saying things like, "I'm just plain EVIL without my coffee." I looked at this as something whimsical and different from my usual choices. A conversation piece, perhaps.

It was Claire, my conservative 10 year old, who discovered the flaw in it when it came in the mail and she curiously flipped through the months. She had asked to look at it before I had a chance to and because I was wrapped up in something else, most likely dishes or laundry because that's mostly what I do with my life, I told her to go for it.

"Um...Mom," I heard her say tentively from the kitchen. "Did you know this thing swears?"
"Swears?" I poked my head in the room.
Claire turned the page from February to March. Her eyes widened.
"Moooooooom," she said, uneasily. "Why did you get this?"

The month of February isn't too too bad, though still inappropriate for the kids, I think. It's a dad patting his daughter on the head saying something like, "I love you too. Now where's my damn coffee?" The next month is a secretary at a type writer. She has curly blonde hair, rosey cheeks and a jolly smile. She's lifting her cup of coffee, a toast to you it seems, and she's saying, "Coffee takes away 20% of the shittiness of my day." I decided to donate the calender to my sister, April, who's 2 year old and three month old can not read.

So I was once again without a calender, lost in time. Until I went to my friend Brenda's pet store in the French Quarter and she gave me one for free because she's an awesomely fantastical person. I almost didn't take it. I love animal calenders but I'm partial to the endangered ones, the ones who are hurt, mistreated, or otherwise exotic. In other words, "2010 The Year of the Kitten" would not appeal to me. The one Brenda offered me was different though. It's Tillman the Skateboarding Dog. Cute doggy calenders rank down there with kitten calenders for me. I wouldn't have chosen Tillman or paid for him, though I must admit, that dude can tear it up on a skateboard.

But then I realized that my Tillman calender really is perfect. It's free and I'm flat broke. This is where I am in life, working hard to stabilize life for me and the kids, cutting corners where need be, and relying on the love, generosity and silliness of my friends and family. This month, Tillman is featured at the Rose Bowl Parade, his rosey likeness riding a skateboard on a float. Next month is a picture of an officer giving Tillman a speeding ticket. You get the idea. It does make me smile in the morning, when I get up to brew my coffee. It takes away 20% of the shittiness of my day (smile).

The Dishbreak Bop

2010-01-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

The kids are adjusting ok to all the changes lately. When I say ok what I mean is that they haven't started listening to Rage Against the Machine and smoking dope, which is exactly what I've been tempted to do lately but have not. Their dad and I split up in August, and I think they're doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. There are lots of difficult questions to be answered and intense emotions, but then there is also the usual ridiculousness. This morning I made pancakes from scratch and Claire complained that, though they were tasty, they were too fluffy.

"So what you're saying is," I said, for clarity's sake, "they taste good, but the texture is too light and heavenly?"
"YES!" she screamed, pushing away the plate.
Here is a child, I thought, who would find something to complain about if we won the lottery.
"Well," she'd say, skeptically eyeing the pile of cash. "A hundred million is nice but won't this bump us up to the next tax bracket? Were you thinking about that at all before you wantonly bought that ticket?"

So how am I doing? I'm ok.

Our dishwasher is broken so I've been washing all the dishes by hand lately - and also not washing them at all and letting them pile up, which works for me too. I HATE doing the dishes. Doing the dishes for me is Claire's nightmare equivalent of a stack of fluffy pancakes. So the way I've been muscling through it lately is by playing videos on youtube and dancing while I wash. This is a process that takes longer, exspecially if I'm listening to ska and I have to stop washing for a second to hop in place, but the end result is good. Me and the kids have clean dishes and I'm in a good, peppy mood, despite dish pan hands. How could I not be when accompanied by lyrics like this:
dancin am dancin to the restafarian up--beat,
hangin with ma rude ska brothers in the--street,
our brother oer here say turn up the box-a,
dancin'n'dancin, rock us all the day long!

Can I sing it? No! In fact, I didn't know what the words were until I googled them just now. I only knew that the name of the song is "Skankin to the Beat" and that was enough for me.

And when I'm feeling really angry about having to do the dishes (when the kids aren't home) I'll play Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name." Why is it that's there's something healing about screaming "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" whilst scrubbing a plate of caked-on ketchup? I can't tell you friends. But it works. And if I'm feeling real fiesty I'll play White Zombies "Thunder Kiss '65." I'll try to dance like the girls in the video, all hippy-shaky and sexy, but I'll end up stumbling around like Rob Zombie instead.

When the kids are home, though, the selection changes. It'll be "Rio" by Duran Duran, or "Dancin With Myself" by Billy Idol because sometimes if I play stuff like that the kids will dance with me. Especially is I play "Cool For Cats."

As you can imagine, there have been some dish casualties as a result of this. Cups and plates have broken, sure, but I look at it this way...um, there are now less dishes to do. Yes, that is how I have chosen to perceive it. You could say that my dishwashing process has a Darwinian touch. The strong survive. The weak can't handle hearing Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" one more time, and toss themselves over the sink onto the floor. I'm not just doing the dishes. I'm thinning the herd.

God, I can't wait to get my dishwasher fixed.

Need to write

2009-11-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

I can't find my journal, and I need to write something. I don't care what it is, I just need to get SOMETHING out and you guys are part of my outlet this morning, ok? Good deal.

The other day at the coffee shop I heard someone say something grammatically fucked, and apparently I wrote it down because I found a draft of a post that started a few weeks ago and it just contained this sentence, "That girl just looks the same for years. The whole time I' known her she's had the same way hair." I need to start writing dialogue like this.

My agent is reading my book this week. This is the scene I imagine if she sends me an email with a list of changes I need to make: I'll be sitting at my laptop Monday morning, sipping my coffee, and I'll excitedly click on an email from Agent Sarah (that's what I like to call her), I'll read the words, "This is great! But I propose the following changes before we send it out to publishers," and I will spew coffee onto my computer screen. The computer will short out, I will be unable to make changes to my book, and she will have to sell it as is. This is a winning scenario because it involves both coffee, and the publication of my book.

Thanksgiving was exhausting but overall good. First I went to Chris's apartment, ate with him and the kids, took the babies to my parents', and then to my Paw Paw's house.

Four scenes from Thanksgiving that are in no particular order, and will contain lots of run-on sentences:
At my parent's house-My grandfather slaps me on the back as I'm taking a bite of stuffing and I think, "Why did I sit next to this man?" He says, "What's going on with your book, fella?" I give him the update and he says, "When can I read it?" I laugh nervously and then realize he's serious. I say, "After it's been banned." Then follows a discussion about how some of the finest books in history are outlaws, which is a much less stressful conversation and I'm able to finish my stuffing. There's something unnerving about the thought of my grandpa reading a piece of my work wherein I use words like, "motherfucker" and "vagina breath." Ok, I made up that last one. Still, you get my point.

I'm at Chris's apartment, feeling very awkward that it's our first holiday separated, but we're physically together in the same kitchen, he's stirring the mashed potatoes, I'm carving the turkey, and I'm thinking about how our roles are reversed because usually he carves while I work on the side items, and while I'm thinking about this and starting to feel depressed I cut my finger and though the cut isn't deep, it bleeds a lot. I am relieved of turkey duty.

Early that morning, while I'm roasting the turkey to bring to Chris', I'm standing by the sink and I'm crying, and I remember that there's rum in the house. It's a stressufl holiday, so no harm, right? I take the rum, pour some into my coffee, take a sip or two, then I remember something my aunt told me about my mom. When my mom and dad were separated Mom was really stressed out, and so she would have a glass of wine a day. "Just one glass," she told my aunt. That's how it started. So I call an Al-Anon friend and say, "This is a bad idea isn't it?" He agrees, and I pour it down the sink.

I'm at my Paw Paw's house that night and the kids are running around with their cousins, while I sit at a table with my grown cousins, talking about the obscene amount of food we've eaten. While I'm talking I'm secretly envious because the four people at the table with me are each part of a couple, and they all have jobs. I begin to feel sorry for myself, and then am suddnely sick of feeling sorry for myself. I make a gratitude list in my head: I am grateful for being fed today, I am grateful that my children are with me, I am grateful that I'm sober and not crippled with depression, and I'm grateful that I have arms and legs that work and opposable thumbs. I feel lighter. I am able to eat more carrot cake.

And now I am unable to look at food. But I feel better having written. I'll let you guys know what Agent Sarah has to say. And I'll maybe let you read it after it's banned.

Hell's Bagel

2009-11-03T02:24:00.000-08:00

It's 4:30 in the morning and Emma is awake. I got up at 3:45 so that I could get a head start with writing before the chaos of the day began and there she was, right outside my door at 3:50.

I used to have this theory back when Claire was a baby that the sound of my pen moving across paper was somehow loud enough to wake up children. Every time I tried to wake up early enough to get some good writing done, Claire would sense it, wet her diaper and start crying. The only evil streak that my children possess so far is that each one of them has an innate awareness of when I'm writing and an uncanny desire to stop it.

But onto the church ladies at the Waffle Cafe. There are about seven of them and they come in with this priest who's about 25 years younger than them, and the who is the object of their devotion, like the son-who-is-a-gateway-to-the-afterlife that they never had. What I find classy about them is the way they dress and carry themselves. Dove gray suits, heirloom jewelry, and those diamond pendents on their blazers, like angels or turtles. Hair always done just so. Lots of makeup and bright pink lipstick. I wonder if the AARP deals out pink lipstick to women when they turn 70.

A couple of weeks ago they came in during a busy time and they were insistent that the priest get his bagel as soon as possible, even before other people who had ordered before him. They called him "The Father."

"The Father needs his bagel," one of the old ladies said, creeping up to the counter with severely pink lips.
"The Father?" I asked, thinking that if this woman's father was alive I would be impressed if he could choke down a bagel without blending it first.
She pointed to the priest, who was sitting patiently at a table of old ladies with his hands folded. "Yes, The Father. He's in a hurry, and he needs his bagel, please."
"It'll come out soon. He's got a few orders in front of him."
"But it's just a bagel. Can't you get it out now?"
"It's not a matter of what it is. It's the order in which he, um, ordered."
She frowned and shook her head, possibly thinking, "Say hello to Hell for me."

Two minutes later a lady with a darker gray suit and pinker lip stick shoved her way through the crowd and said, "Excuse me, young lady."
I was pouring coffee out of the thermos and turned around. "Yeah?"
"The Father as been waiting for his bagel. He needs it now."
I handed the fresh mug of coffee to the customer who'd been shoved aside by God's Bagel Police.
"Should be soon," I assured her.
She bore her pink-lipstick stained teeth. "Where's the owner? Where's Brad?"
"He's not here this morning."
"Well, tell your cook The Father needs his bagel now."

So I went over to Henry the cook. "The Father needs his bagel."
"Who's the father?" he asked.
"That dude over there. The church ladies keep calling him 'The Father.' He told me his name was Bob."
I pointed to the order ticket above the stove, the one that said, "side bagel - cream cheese - Bob."
"Tell him he's third in line," said Henry.
"The ladies say he needs his bagel now."
Then Henry said something that I'm sure I'll see him in hell for. He popped a bagel in the toaster and told me to stay put. Thirty seconds later he tossed the half-toasted bread on a plate, threw in a side of cream cheese and said, "There's your fuckin' bagel."
"It's not mine, it's Father Bob's."
"GET IT OUTTA HERE!"
So I delivered it to the table. And there was much rejoicing.

You know, I started this post about a week and a half ago. Now I am sitting in a different coffee shop that I am not working at, where there are no priests, gray suits, or Bobs in sight. I'm at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, the place where the pretty hippies go. You know, ones who bathe, and have jobs and laptops. So i guess I should broaden the term "hippie" to "hippie posers," ones who wear long skirts they make themselves with their sewing machines, and dred locks but also stopped smoking weed five years ago. This person would be more of a hippie fashion kitten. And once I get a sewing machine, that kitten will be me.

I've got to finish the book by the end of this week so I should get started back on it. Just needed to finish this post because it's been bugging me that I left it half done. Been busy lately. But haven't we all?

late

2009-10-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

Woke up an hour late. Have to get the kids up, dressed and fed. Have to brew the coffee. Then take kids to beforecare. It's my first day of work. Um...why am I blogging? Oh yeah, WISH ME LUCK!

Hamsters with jet lag

2009-10-21T19:20:00.000-07:00

I have to rush this morning, but I must share something I read on The Writer's Almanac yesterday. Apparently, there's an an annual ceremony called the Ig Nobel Prizes. They are "held on the campus at Harvard and handed out by real Nobel laureates. The prizes, established in 1991, are a parody of the Nobel awards and are for achievements that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think.'

And they really do! "Recent science and technology awards have gone to Argentinean scientists 'for their discovery that Viagra aids jet lag recovery in hamsters' (Aviation); and a Princeton professor claimed the prize in literature recently for his 17-page cognitive psychology report entitled 'Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.' The awards ceremony, held in early October each year, always concludes with the proclamation: 'If you didn't win a prize — and especially if you did — better luck next year!'"

This is the kind of stuff that rekindles my faith in the silliness of mankind.

Loud music for breakfast

2009-10-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

For the last two months I've been working at a breakfast cafe Uptown on the weekends. I would name the place but I got in trouble for talking about the fire department that I worked for and ended up having to go back and delete every post with their name in it. This makes sense. They're political, they rely on votes to keep them up and running. Their name in this blog can only bring them ruin. In fact, did I say fire department? I mean, the sewage and water board.

Anyway, moving on. This breakfast joint which I will call "Waffle House"...what do you mean that name's taken? Ok, no problem. So "Waffle Cafe" is in a pretty neat part of Uptown. Lots of bohemians and lots of rich people who started out as regular bohemians, but ended up making lots of money and still listen to Phish. There's a piano player who comes in every day and sometimes a dude on a stand up bass will join him. On Sundays there's a guy who come in with a horn, which always makes taking orders interesting.

Customer: I would like a [sudden trumpet blast] with a cup of [blat!]
Me: Did you say an eagle with a cup of syrup?
Customer: No, no. A [blatty! blat! blat!] with a [pianist sets piano on fire, horn player plays with teeth and crowd goes wild].
Me(pretending to write something): Excellent choice.

Five minutes later I bring him a bowl of oatmeal and hope for the best.

My hearing has gotten so bad over the years and the music and the chatter in the place always drown out whatever desperate plea for food a customer is giving me. I should learn to read lips. The only word I can understand by watching someone's mouth move is "coffee" but that's just because coffee and I have a symbiotic relationship. If I was blind and deaf and someone said the word coffee from across the room I would still approach them with an empty mug and demand that they share.

This is my heroin, people, my shameless addiction, and it makes total sense to me why whenever I'm in desperate need of a job I gravitate towards places where I can get it on tap for free. During my interview my boss asked, "So what draws you to the food service industry?" I glared at him with blood shot eyes and said, "Coffee." He said, "But surely the customers-" And I said, "Hand over the coffee and there won't be any trouble." And at that moment he knew I would be a faithful employee with an everpresent mug in hand.

Until this past weekend when I gave him notice. Oy. I hate giving notice. He understood, and he and the cooks are sad to see me go. I always put in the most interesting orders. "That guy over there would like eggs with a side of hammock." "Do you mean ham?" the cook will ask. "Maybe," I'll say, looking hopeful.

This weekend will be my last two days there, then on Monday I start technical writing for a company which I will call "Big Technical Company With Lots of Engineers and No Trumpets." As long as they keep the coffee comin'.

Tune in tomorrow when I share about the cafe's church lady groupees. This is the entourage of a priest who all come in on Saturday mornings, and it is these ladies' goal in life to make sure that the priest is taken care of as if the fate of their souls depends on him getting his bagel in a timely manner. Hopefully the Catholic church will not ask me to delete that post in a couple of weeks. In fact, did I say "Catholic church?" I meant, "Jay Leno Fan Club."

Mmm...that's good cheese

2009-10-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I bought one of those refrigerator magnets that say things. I was never one to boast a magnet or a car decal that advertised my state of mind, other than the name of a band I liked or (in the case of refrigerator magnets) a place I'd been. And the places I've been haven't been too exciting. People don't pass by a refrigerator magnet that says "Biloxi Beach" and say "You've been there too?! Well, goddamn!" Once, I had a sticker on the back of my car that was a silhouette of Bill the Cat from Bloom County. There he was, tongue hanging out of his mouth like Gene Simmons, with his tagline next to his head, "Ack!" That pretty much summed up my state of mind at 18.

So now I've got this refigerator magnet. I saw it at Barnes and Noble and when I read the first few words I thought, "This would be good to read when I get up in the morning. It's cheesy, but I could stand some cheese in my brain food diet." Here is what it says, "Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life keep peace within your soul." It's helped. It helped this morning in fact when I was getting the kids ready for school and there was, well, a lot of noisy confusion. It's the "be gentle with yourself" part that helps me, really. It's so easy for me to beat myself up for not doing a perfect job in the mornings of getting everybody out the door.

I've got some good news. I got a technical writing job! It's like a real full-time writing gig that I can support myself on! This is a first, people!

I'll write about it some more later. My timer is about to go off. Yes, I set a timer for this blog. It was hard to wipe the dust off of this thing and start writing again. The last few months have been really hard and painful. There have been good times, though, and Chris and I are getting along. That's the important thing. I've resolved not to write much about our breakup out of respect for Chris, my kids, and my in-laws. There will be no rants or anything like that. I'll write about how the kids are doing though. They're having a rough adjustment, as expected, but they are still their wonderful little selves. We're falling into a new routine, which helps. Claire starts guitar lessons on Wednesday, Christopher's gonna start basketball in a couple of weeks, and I found art lessons for Emma.

I will leave you with an Emma quote for the day. It's taken out of context, but even put back into context it's still just as whacky: I learned the hard way not to fall asleep on a lamp.

Tadpole kisses

2009-07-13T08:57:00.001-07:00

The day before yesterday Emma asked me to step into the kiddie pool with her and I hesitated because it was loaded with tadpoles. This happens every summer. I fill up the pool for the kids to play in, they have a fantastic day splashing around in the sun, and drinking from the hose, then the pool sits out for a couple of days and WHAMO! We walk outside one morning and find a pool full of tadpoles. It's like a pregnant frog hides in the grass somewhere just waiting for the pool to lie low a few hours so she can jump in there, have her babies, then sit back and say, "Go ahead! Dump the pool! Kill all of my children! I dare you!" And we don't. We just can't.

So what are we doing with our summer now? A lot of tadpole study. We're watching them grow from little sperm-like things, to much uglier, fatter, tear drop shaped creatures with legs and googly eyes. Emma and Christopher like to step inside the pool with them, a kind of "swimming with the dolphins" experience in our own backyard. When Emma invited me to get in there with them I curled my lip at the idea. Not only is it loaded with tadpoles, but the water is greenish-yellow and there's some sort of fuzzy green stuff floating around, which I think is what the critters are feeding off of. But the kids have been going through so much disappointment lately that I had a hard time saying no.

Chris and I are splitting up. I know it must be strange to announce this on my blog, in the middle of a tadpole post, but really there is no good time to bring this up. And I won't go into details but let's just state the obvious and say that it's hard and painful for all of us. We've pushed back his move-out date a couple of times but now it's officially August 2nd, and in the mean time we're all in this strange, painful limbo.

We're trying to make the things as easy on the kids as possible. Not fighting in front of them, letting them know they're loved and all of that stuff. One thing I need to work on is remembering to not take out the stress on them, or to just walk around constantly stressed out. They're learning right now, right at this very minute, how to handle stress and they're taking tips from me whether I like it or not.

That's why I decided to get into the tadpole pool with Emma when she asked me to. At first I said no and then I thought, "What am I gonna say? No, I'm kinda busy. I'm going to go look at our family pictures, cry, and feel sorry for myself." So I stepped into the pool, and for a few seconds I regretted it. The water was warm, and I imagined that I was wading in an enormous puddle of baby frog pee. As I slid my feet acoss the bottom of the pool, I stirred up all that green fuzzy stuff it settled on top of my feet, like slimy dust bunnies. The tadpoles darted away from me like they were little Japanese people and I was Godzilla.

"Stand still," Emma said. "They'll come up to you if you stand still."

"I'm good," I said. "They can stay over there and I'll stay right here, you know. Diggin' the slime."

"But they tickle your toes!" she squealed. "It's like they give little kisses! Stand still!"

I stood still. She just seemed too delighted by the idea of it to refuse her. And in a few minutes I understood why. The tadpoles got curious about those size 11's standing in the middle of their pool, and they swam up to investigate. The way the tadpoles investigate you is they mosey on over and nibble your feet. And it really does feel like tiny, tickly kisses! In a few mimutes Emma and I were both standing still in the pool giggling while swarms of tadpoles kissed our feet.

Maybe this will be something she remembers. I can't control that though, what my children will rememeber out of all of this, and what they're going to feel and learn. But I'm going to remember it, how on an excruciatingly painful morning, when I was feeling like a failure as a spouse and a mother, I took a break and giggled in the backyard with my daughter. She's a good kid.

Lose 20 pounds by reading this post

2009-06-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you check out MSN but there's an awful picture of the Octomom person, who, in her defense, looks pretty pissed off that a phtographer is leaning into her car to get a shot of her. What's awful about this picture is (if I may edge on catty here) that her lips are absolutely enormous. It's details like this that you can't study on a person when you're face to face because it would be rude to stare. But luckily, there was a rude photographer who took one look at her lips and thought, "I gotta get a shot of these" so that the rest of us can sit on the internet and stare unabashedly. Although we may irrationally fear that she'll suck us up like a vaccuum tube.

So now that I've insulted the lower half of this poor woman's face, I will go on to say that I think it's unfair to lump her and all of the other people who are included in the article entitled "The 10 Most Tiresome Tabloid stories." Why do I call it unfair, you ask? Do I feel that these people who have put themselves out in the public, people like Heidi Fleiss and Monica Lewinski, are treated with less respect than they deserve?...I meant that as a rhetorical question, but now that I think about it, my opinion of the tabloids is pretty damn low. Possibly lower than my opinion of brothels. With the exception of someone who puts themselves in one purposely, I don't think that anyone deserves to be in a tabloid. It's like a human rights violation.

But the point I'm driving at is the irony of an article featuring scandalous people who, according to the writer, are the "most tiresome." So logically it should be the single most tiresome article of all time! WOW! I never thought I'd find it! I thought I'd probably write the most tiresome thing of all time some day but to have it tossed onto my lap like a present from a drive-by Santa is a dream come true!

These are the times I look at news headlines and think, "God, that writer was desperate for a story." That's what I think when I read titles like "Why Aren't Men Calling You?" and "10 Reasons Why Your Child Will Not Grow up to be a Lawyer if You Don't Feed Her Organic Grapefruit." The people who wrote these things needed to write something and they needed to write it now!

Speaking of which, I was desperate for something to submit to my writing workshop for tonight so I took my post from the other day, the one about song lyrics, polished it up and submitted it. But instead of ending it with the Mary Oliver poem I gave you guys, I polished it off with this:

The other thing I think I might be overlooking is that it’s not an entirely bad thing that my children are singing along to a song about love and hope. I shiver and squeeze my eyes shut whenever they insist we listen to Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb,” which is about climbing mountains, or overcoming adversity, or some crap.

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It’s all about, it’s all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa.

Miley Cyrus is sixteen year old millionaire. Her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, is a millionaire. Her greatest adversity is perhaps when her masseuse is late, or when the back up dancer she falls in love with leaves her for her limo driver. Ok, I admit that I don’t know her and that she might have actually gone through some harrowing times. Maybe she didn’t want to be a singer like her dad. Maybe she wanted to be a goat herder, and life dealt her a bum deal.
I don’t know if my children will face a similar struggle, but given the way that life generally goes, they will eventually face some great challenge or journey of self-discovery. Maybe they’ll remember songs like “The Climb” or the rainbow-dream-believe-love song we heard the other day, and maybe they’ll smile at the thought of them. I will try to remind myself of this whenever I hear Miley’s voice on the radio and I develop little facial ticks. The cheesy chick could someday help my troubled children. Keep the faith, baby, keep the faith. Believe that they’ll never lose hope that their dreams will come true. Because they’re lifted up by rainbows of love. Whoa.

The End! I will let you know what my group thinks of it. And speaking of letting people know what people are thinking, I've been very opinionated lately, haven't I? Or am I just noticing it for the first time?

No, not Twitter!

2009-06-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

With Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett's death yesterday I was reminded of 12 years ago when Mother Theresa and Princess Diana also died in the same day. News of Mother Theresa's death came in the morning and everyone was sad. Princess Diana was killed later that evening and the world went crazy. Suddenly everyone was like, "Yeah, Diana and somebody's mother died too."

Now, am I really, seriously drawing a comparison between Farrah Fawcett and Mother Theresa? And if I am, could that still be in any more poor taste than this headline from Tech Crunch: "The Web Collapses Under the Weight of Michael Jackson's Death." This is an article http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/the-web-collapses-under-the-weight-of-michael-jacksons-death/ that talks about how Twitter couldn't take the stampede of searches for information on Michael Jackson. They make it sound like the dude took one last look at his cell phone and said, "If I go I'm taking you with me!" and then died. And now, as if America wasn't already stressed out enough about the deaths of a former Playboy model and a singer who, to my knowledge, hasn't released any music in 20 years, Twitter has let us down. Dark times.

There's something about Twitter that repulses me. It could be the trendiness of it. I've always been repelled by anything way too popular, but this could also be because I've always longed to be popular myself and I'm projecting my own bitter feelings onto something that, God help it, just wants to overload me with information. I think it's also partly the name. "Twitter." It's, well, ridiculous. It sounds like the name of a pepped up squirrel in an ADHD freak out, leaping from tree to tree without pause. And, as I'm sure some comedian has already pointed out, it's got the word "twit" in it. So to turn that term for "stupid dude" into a verb, "twitter" should mean "to carry on like a stupid dude" or "to actively be a stupid dude." Which is ironic for an information resource.

"My," you're thinking at this point, "you're rather uppity for someone who has a blog. Miss Trendiness Sucks." And you would be right. You would be an asshole, but you would be right (I'm kidding - no seriously, I'm kidding. "Asshole" is a term of endearment. Ask my kids - no seriously, I'm kidding). But I'm going to ignore my own hipocrosy to poke fun at the term "lol." One of the comments on the "Web Collapses" article was this: "i did not lol this time." For an internet commentator, this is a grim statement. You know some shit is going down.

What's sad is how long it took me to figure out what "lol" meant. I used to look at it and try to pronounce it as if it were an actual word. "Loll?" I'd think. I could tell from the context that it meant the commentor thought something was funny, but beyond that I was stumped. Kind of like the first time I came across "omg." Five years ago, if you would have looked at the wall above my laptop you would have seen tacked-up slips of paper with web terms I had yet to figure out. "Omg," "imo," "bff," "Google."

Luckily for out of touch people like me there is an on-line internet slanguage dictionary. For the hell of it, I went to the "D" section http://www.noslang.com/dictionary/d and found a handful of terms that I'd always wondered about like "dah" which means "dumb as hell" and "d/w" which means "don't worry." But there are others that are, shall we say, revealing. "Dih" - "dick in hand." Hmm, what kind of chat could that be from? Or how about (and I am not making this up) "dnimb" - "dancing naked in my bra." Now, how often does that last one come up exactly? It confounds the nerd in my head. If she's dancing then how is she typing at the same time? And if she's weaing a bra then technically she's not naked. Most disturbing in the sex slanguage though is this one, "dilf" - "dad I'd like to fuck." Are there words to express my multi-level confusion? No. Keep in mind, this is just the "d's."

And now, if you have any questions about internet slang that eludes you, you may post them to the commentary. I'm curious. Did anyone else not know that "dafs" means "do a fucking search?" Twitter must have come up with that one, and then last night came up with a new one "psfsfrwfdh" - "please stop fucking searching, for real, we're fucking dying here."

Three minute songs

2009-06-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

The other day after I wrote that post about song lines I do and don't like, it got me to thinking about the whole thing. And I thought, "What am I saying? That I'm some sort of writer snob? Do I not, indeed, like The Misfits? With lyrics like 'Flesh ancient monster design/Unlit pornographic sign?'" What does that even mean and do I want to know?

Then I remembered that, really, when it comes to a song it's the energy more so than the words that get me. To quote Joan Jett, "I think there's nothing better than seeing a three-chord straight up rock 'n' roll band in your face with sweaty music and three minute good songs." And as a prime example of a good less-than-three-minute song that I've been listening to a lot lately, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmbzU6DGeno The video is brilliant, especially during the part with the line "trying to pick up a girl."

I'm all twisted and confused today. I'm having racing thoughts, and not all of them are bad, but much like an ice cream cone falling from a sky scraper, anything can become dangerous when it's going sixty miles an hour. The "I'm digging this song" thought becomes as dangerous as the "why don't I still have a job?" thought. I think it's because they run through my head at the same time, along with about fifteen other thoughts and so it all just becomes noise, like being in a crowded train station. Throw in the fifteen times a minute I hear, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" and after a while I become a blubbering mental patient, lying in bed with my hands over my ears. All those thoughts race across my limp, energyless body like angy, frothing cattle.

The "get a job" thought is particularly menacing though. While the others sweep across me, "get a job" will come back and dance on my face some more. Sadistic bastard.

I think I might be feeling too ADD to finish this post. Sadistic ADD.

Lines

2009-06-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and had three consecutive thoughts: I need peanut butter, I need coffee, and I am generally repulsed by songs with the words "dream" and "believe" in them. There was a song that came on the radio the other day and the first four lines (and I am not kidding) had the words "dream" "believe" "rainbow" and "love." I don't know what song this was. It was on a top 40 station that my daughters insist we listen to, and each one of those words hit me like tiny, sappy fists. "Dream" - ouch! "Believe" - ow! Dear God no, not in the next line! "Rainbow" - Aaaaah! Make it stop! "Love" - couldn't you people have spaced this shit out??? It was like someone took the songs "I Believe I Can Fly" and "Wind Beneath My Wings" and put them in a blender.

So in my advanced, lyrical snootiness what words do I prefer? Lately I've been digging some lines form the Black Eyed Peas song "Boom Boom Pow."

I like that boom boom pow
Them chickens jackin' my style
They try to copy my swagger
I'm on that next shit now

The words "Them chickens jackin' my style" and "copy my swagger" make me laugh every time. I swear, if I'm ever plagiarized my statement to the press will be "Them chickens jackin' my style." And there's something so charming about the word "swagger." I imagine a jaunty little man sashaying confidently down the street. It's got dignity with a bit rauchiness to it. One of the next lines "I'm a beast when you turn me on/Into the future cybertron" is also great fun. I think it's the words "I'm a beast" and "future cybertron." What's not to love?

But to step back from my theory for a bit (the theory being that songs about dreams and rainbows that are not sung by Kermit the Frog are lame, and songs with future cybertron beast chickens are infinitely superior), I know that songs about love and hope are meant to speak to a wdie audience who like a direct message. Usually about love and hope.

Al-anon program slogans are like this. At first I cringed at them because they're little cliches, like "One day at a time" and "But for the grace of God" and "Easy does it." But they're not meant for their literary greatness. They're meant to help as many people through the day as possible. I know that the song "I Believe I Can Fly" touched many a soul, even though it made me put my hands over my ears and go, "Noooo! Make it stop!" At the time I much preffered songs Warren Zevon songs like "Something Bad Happened to a Clown." And honestly I think that no matter how emotionally healthy I become I probably always will.

And now, for something seemingly contradictary. The poem that I am about to share (indeed, most poeple have the same reaction to the word "poetry" that I have to the word "rainbowlovedream" but those people have no idea what a raunchy beast a poem can be), does have the word "clouds" in it, which often times implies a cliche, but this does not. Also, do not be turned off by the fact that the title is "The Journey." I was at first. Then I read it and it has now taken a hold over me for reasons that will become obvious if you know me very well at this point in my life. If you don't, then it's still a good poem and might speak to you. It's got a general massage meant for a general audience. If you're an originality snob like I am and don't like thinking of yourself as part of a general audince, then do what I do. Just think of yourself as "The General."

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Emma is hard at work + a job search update

2009-05-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

Emma's standing next to me making a laptop out of paper. One flat page is a keyboard and another piece of paper taped to the top and curved in a way that the "screen" tilts up. She keeps moving my fingers so that she can see what keys go where on a keyboard. So I'm correcting many a typo. I said "Hey! I'm typing here!" and she said, "What?! I'm making a computer here!" Well, pardon me!

Yesterday I took a tour through River Oaks Mental Hospital. Despite popular belief, no, I'm not having Chris commited. One of my Al-anon buddies is a nurse there and she called yesterday afternoon to say that they needed counselors. Like NOW.

"All you need is a degree," she said. "We do the training."
"But my degree is in Enlgish."
"Oh so you have a history of mental illness!" she said, excitedly.

She said that the pay isn't glamorous but the benefits are good, even for part-timers. I told her that I've registered to get my teacher's certification, and that I guessed being a counselor wouldn't be a bad idea in the meantime. Especially if I get to work with kids.

She laughed. When I went to River Oaks yesterday so that I could pick up an application and take a tour, she took me through all the different units (the eating disorder unit, the chemical dependency unit, ect.) and whenever she introduced me to different staff members she'd say, "This is Genevieve. She wants to be a psychiatric counselor. And she wants to work with kids." And then they would laugh. Even the ones who worked in the unit with bordeline people and people with multiple personalities, even THEY laughed.

"I hope you've got a lot of energy," one of them said.

When we got to the children's unit I saw what she meant. The kids were pretty hyper. What was sad was that they reminded me exactly of some of the public school kids I've been substitute teaching. The kids who other teachers would warn me about. "I saw Gerald get off the bus," one of them cautioned, looking grim. "I'll bet he hasn't had his medication. Good luck."

The only River Oaks employee who didn't laugh at me was the lady who was in charge of the children's unit. She was an older, stout black woman with bags under her eyes that sagged like full purses.

"You can start today," she said. She beckoned me with her hands. "Come on."
"I haven't been interviewed yet," I told her.
Her eyes widened. "COME ON."

I'm going to turn in my application on Monday, along with a resume. I really need a full-time gig and this is the first place I've been to where I've heard the words "you can start today." It would be challenging, but I've been looking for a job that will exercise my care-taker personality in a constructive, detatched way. The challenge will be to be constructive and detatched. On the upside, I'd have tons to write about. On the other hand, there was all that laughing. When I expressed concern about this my Al-anon buddy tried to reassure me.

"It's hard, but the good thing is everyone loves this job. The woman [whose name I've forgotten] in the children's unit has been here for 35 years."

She mentioned other staff members that have been there for 20 years and over because they find their job fulfilling. I am looking for something like that.

We'll see. My friend Amanda worked there, so I thought I'd get her opinion. I wonder if she'll laugh.

The Swiss Cheese Post

2009-05-21T04:52:00.000-07:00

To make the most of time I will write this post sporatically while I get the kids ready for school, feed them, and dress myself at some point.

Ok, I really wasn't kidding about this "writing sporatically" thing. It is now 10 hours later.

So to keep up with the randomness of this post, I must share the latest thing that I am in complete shock over. I like the song "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can watch it in all of its pop rauchiness here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M65zI9LH-as Those of oyu who know me know that this is not my typical kind of music. But there's something about this that speaks to me. As far as I can tell, it's a song about a girl who's had too much to drink and is completely disoriented. One of the lines is "Just Dance, it'll be ok." Possibly this touches on my own confusion lately. Or perhaps (if you've watched the video) it speaks to my need to go out and get really trashed, a thing I haven't done in far too long.

And now, Christopher is begging me to go play ball with him. I haven't finished this post, but I promised you guys something, so here ya go. More later. Blame Christopher!

Holy bugs, Splatman!

2009-05-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since I've written? Egad! What's been going on with me?...oh yeah. All that stuff. It's been so very long, my dears. What do I update you on? My daily goings-on? Politics (bleh!)? The way I feel about the term "my bad?" Or maybe speculations about why the words "spinal nervousa" pop into my head for no reason, and I don't think that's even a real condition? How about a literary festival that I'm going to today? YES! That's it! We have a topic sentence for the second paragraph!

Later today I'm journeying to the French Quarter to attend the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. It's a shabang that spotlights gay and lesbian literature, so naturally there's a drag show at some point tonight but I will regretably miss that performance. Because! I am going to see a play! Hooraaaaaaaaaay! It's a mystery called Hand Over Fist and there's a Q&A thing with the playwrite after the show, which I think will be bitchin'. I do so love the theater. Good theater, bad theater, men dressed as Liza Minelli theater, and the list goes on and on. I will let you know how it goes.

In other news, I'm halfway through my edits in the 3rd revision of the book. My agent, Sarah, (may I call her Sarah? Yes, thank you) wants me to give the manuscript one more tummy tuck before sending it out the door. Sometimes I'm happy with the way the edits are going and sometimes I think, "Dear Lord, I want to write SOMETHING ELSE!"

In other big news, which I will save for another post because the children want breakfast and I need to get my ass off the computer, is that I've been substitute teaching. Well, I don't know if I'd really call it "teaching." It's been more like babysitting. But I'm getting some good experience, and it's made my resume look a little more like what a teacher's resume should look like. You know, with teaching experience.

So why don't I like the term "my bad?" The first time I heard it, I think it was in 1994, and I thought, "What an ignorant thing to say." And I still think that. How can someone misuse a perfectly good adjective such as "bad?" It's adjective abuse I tell you! What's next? Adverb abuse? Is my son going to come home one day and say, "Sorry, my badly." Honestly, people, where will it stop? If adjectives are up for grabs why not superlatives, or hyperboles? Quick! Someone hide the gerunds!! It's a language free for all!

Dramatically yours and glad to be back,
Geepers

A thought...

2009-04-09T06:56:00.001-07:00

And now I'm wondering exactly how much I should post about all that stuff because I'm looking into teaching and I don't know how parents would feel about having their children taught by someone who writes about the ocassional schizophrenic nature of sexuality. I don't exactly live in a liberal city. Perhaps if I lived in Austin...mmmmm, Austin. Good live music. Vegetarian foods. Public transportation and a top notch creative writing program at UT....slobber! slobber!

Thoughts?

Girl's Room

2009-04-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

Ok. This is the beginning of my new essay "Girl's Room." Eventually I will post the whole thing here. Lately I've been delving into my life long questioning of androgyne and sexuality, which is difficult whilst in a commited relationship and with three children to focus on first. So I'm talking openly about it with my husband and writing about it instead of sleeping with a lot of people. While the trade off isn't as exciting, hopefully it will make for good writing. (shakes fist) It better!

Oh, and by the way, for those of you who don't know what I look like I'm much more feminine now. Just felt like I had to throw that out there because, damn it, I'm still insecure about the way I look and still feel the need to let everyone know that I'm a girl.
.......

"Girl's Room"

My first hint that I wasn’t a real girl came to me when I was kicked out of the bathroom in the third grade. I remember the little girl who’d gotten the wrong idea. She was shorter and stouter than me, her blond hair done up in a vertical ponytail on the top of her head. She was washing her hands when I walked out of the stall, and in the moment before she screamed we both regarded one another with wonder. She gaped at me because she thought I was a boy, and I stared back at her thinking, “Who did that to your hair?”
“You can’t be in here!” she hollered. She pointed at me and backed towards the door. “Boy! Boy in the bathroom!”
“I’m not a boy,” I said.
She ran out into the hall, and bumped into a teacher. As the bathroom door drifted to a close I heard the girl rat me out, and a second later a teacher who I didn’t know stormed into the bathroom and glared at me through thick glasses.
“Boy, get out of here! You know you’re not supposed to be in here,” she snapped, pulling me by the shoulder.
“No, I’m a girl,” I protested. “I’m Genevieve.”
“Who?” she asked.
She yanked me into the hall. Some kids had stopped on their way to class, and they were laughing and whispering things to each other.
“Genevieve,” I told her. “I’m a girl.”
Looking back I can understand her confusion. I was tall with a pixie cut, a Pac Man T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. I looked like an 80’s version of Peter Pan.
A few minutes later a teacher I knew came around to vouch for me, and the other lady pushed back her glasses and shook her head at me, probably imagining that years later I would shave my hair down to a crew cut and wear my wallet on a chain hooked to my jeans. And you know. Sleep with girls.
All arrows pointed in that direction when I was a kid. Athletic +short hair+ hates dresses+ no makeup+ riot in the girl’s bathroom= lesbian. The devilishly comforting thing about stereotypes like this is that they’re supposed to tell us who we are. When the average person meets a woman wearing aftershave and a tie, they’re going to assume she’s gay because through their experience they have often found this to be true. And when a seven year old girl dresses as Luke Skywalker for Halloween (I looked awesome) odds are she will also march in some sort of pride parade later in life.
But none of this told me who I was. I was crazy about boys. In the third grade I avoided school work by daydreaming about the kid who played Elliot in E.T. There were other girls in my class who liked him too, but that was about the only thing we had in common.
If I was able to get past the roadblock of my shyness, my conversation with another girl sounded something like this:
Me (pointing to an E.T. lunch kit on a girly girl’s desk): I like your lunch kit.
Girly girl (tossing back waves of golden hair): I know. I love it.
Me: Elliot is so cute.
Girly girl (sneering, leaning across her desk, and sniffing at me): Are you wearing aftershave?
Well, maybe that’s not exactly, word-for-word how things went, but it never got much better than that.
Somewhere around that time I began to get the impression that the difference between me and these girls was that they were real girls and I was not. Boys, other girls, and even grownups felt comfortable with the girls who wore cute sandals and barrettes in their hair with ribbons streaming down, or the days of the week written on them. At recess they played Hopscotch, or pretended that they were My Little Ponies or Madonna. I wanted to run on the blacktop with the boys, play Keep Away, or basketball. I had no interest in playing dull girl games, and boys had no interest in competing with a girl who could do more push-ups than they could. So most of the time I just sat around by myself, wondering how to pull myself out of that social slump.

...To be continued

Need to write essay

2009-04-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

I have to work on a personal essay for my writing workshop. I haven't written anything essay-like in a couple of weeks. I'm blocked.

GRRRROOOOOWLLLLL! I don't like blockages! They're never good! Writer's blocks, road blocks, artery blocks, The New Kids on the Block - all terrible! Terrible, I say!

Fields of children and career (slight) changes

2009-03-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Claire started softball practice last week. She'd been looking forward to it from the time I registered her three weeks ago to her first practice last Tuesday when she stepped the the edge of the baseball diamond, looked out onto the field of 9 year old girls tossing softballs to each other, looked back up at me and said, "I want to go home."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I just want to go home," she replied, as plainly and seriously she'd said it before.
"You know some of those girls. Look, there're those twins Candice and Cassidy."
I pointed to two chubby girls whose arms giggled when they threw the ball. These poor kids had been pink-skinned and chubby since preschool. I looked at Claire, doe-faced, blue-eyed, and slender. What did she have to be self-conscious about?
"I'm not good, I don't want to go," she said, getting a little desperate now.
"But you've been wanting to play. We've been praticing. You're good."
"No, no." She stepped back. "I want to go home."
I put my hand on her back, and then followed that consoling gesture with something that didn't help at all. "Claire, I bought you a glove. We've paid for you to play. You have to atleast try."
Now she yelled, "Nooo!"
Luckily, the coach's wife saw the predicament and started saying soothing things to Claire, gradually getting her to step onto the field. I must have looked like one of those moms who forces their kids to play sports. I kept wanting to tell this lady, "No really, she WANTS to play! She likes to play! She's just shy! I'M NOT A CRAZY PARENT!!!"

Christopher was different. Yesterday was his first tee ball practice, and when I pulled up to the field, he jumped out of the car so fast I don't think I'd shut off the engine. (That's an exaggeration. I'd turned off the engine. But I hadn't come to a complete stop. Or something) The difference between the two kids isn't so much their athletic ability. When I play with them in the backyard, they both respond well to the things I teach them. Claire can even throw a football pretty damn good. But when it comes to performing in front of anyone but me, they're night and day. Claire's attitude is, "Oh shit, I'm in the spotlight and now I will wither like an insecure plant. Christopher's reaction is, "When these people see how I can throw this ball they are going to faint with ecstasy." He also believes that any ball hit in any direction is his, and he will knock over other kids for the chance to catch it, even if he's standing in right field and the ball is hit backwards towards the catcher.

So we're working on the teamwork thing. Both teaching Christopher to recognize other players on the field, and teaching Claire not to care so much about the other players on the field. Can a happy medium be reached? (you're all going to make a bad joke about the availablity of a happy psychic, aren't you?) We shall see.

In other news, I just registered to for classes in the summer. I've decided to get my teacher's certification for high school english. Why, you ask? Because I'm into pain. No, it's something that I've been contemplating for a while. I would like to help kids learn to be better, more confident writers. The Catholic school system will hire you if you're enrolled in a certification program, so I've started applying to high schools for the fall. So we'll see. I've been praying for guidance for a while now and I feel that this is where I'm being led. I'm not giving up writing, you understand. Shit, Stephen King was a high school English teacher when he published Christine. Obviously, he was eventually able to retire. I'm not syaing I'll have the same luck. But you know, if I don't that's ok. I want a steady job, but more than that I want a steady homelife. If I'm not the next JK Rowling it won't kill me. And speaking of that such stuff, who knows - maybe I'll get famous after I'm dead. Woo hoo!

Anyway, my mom was a stressed out teacher when I was growing up, so that makes me nervous. That's what's turned me off of teaching in the past, actually. But I look at my friend Christina and I feel inspired. She teaches English, heads yearbook, and the school paper, and she's functional. She gets stressed out, but she handles it in a healthy way. So I've got hope.

Here's hoping,
Madame G

Gorilla Mental Health Professionals

2009-03-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

***Names have been changed to protect the Anomalous****

There was a pretty big group at Al-anon tonight, and I'd been hoping there wouldn't be. I got there about a half hour early, like usual, so that I can brew the coffee, set things up, and kick my feet up a while before people stroll in. Tonight when I sat back and gazed at the clock I was thankful that the meeting started in ten minutes and nobody else was there.

"Good," I thought. "Nobody will show. I'll say the serenity prayer, recite the 12 steps, give myself a hug, and go home."

I really didn't feel like talking to anybody, or even smiling at them really. It'd been a shitty day.

That was before Large Contessa strolled in, walking stick in hand. That's not her real name, that's just the name that pops in my head when I look at her - Large Contessa. She's enormous. Tall, wide like silly putty stretched across your hand, and morbidly obese. That's not a term that I'm fond of using (morbidly obese), but good Lord man, there are just no other words. She wears hiking boots, dirty brown pants, a black T-shirt and a green flannel. All that plus her wide rimmed safari hat and walking stick makes her look ready to hit the trail.

She sat across from me, was silent a moment and then said, "I didn't weed my garden all last summer."
"...No?" I asked.
"Not at all," she admitted. "The whole yard's a mess. I mean you let it go just a little while and..." She lifted her hands and waved them above her head, the gesture implying that if you let the yard go for just a few weeks it could explode.
"Yeah, I know how that is," I said.
"I got those long plants," she said. She sat back and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think. "What are they called? Do you know what I'm talking about? The long plants with the long leaves?"
I waited for more details but she left it at that.
"No, I don't know."
Then another girl walked into the room. Her name was Pipi Longstocking, and she dropped herself into the seat next to Large Contessa.
"Hey," said Pipi. "Do you go to the zoo? Like, often?"
Large Contessa's eyes widened. "YES."
"I think I saw you by the gorillas."
"You must have, I go down there to talk to them a lot."
Pipi squealed with glee. "You talk to them? I talk to them too." Then her smile faded. "I think they're very sad."
Large Contessa gave a large nod. "I know."
There was silence. And then Large Contessa piped up.
"Some people like the orangutans," she said. "But I don't."

And while this conversation was going on I found myself thinking something that I often think at Al-anon, which is, "These are my peers. These are the same people who, when I finish sharing with the group, sometimes come to me, take my hand and say, 'I know eactly what you were talking about. We have so much in common.'" Is this ape conversation real or did they stage this just to fuck with me?

More people came in after that. Lots of people, acually, and I managed to chair the meeting without bitching about my day or losing it because life can be so unfair. I've got anger issues, man.

Looking back I realize that what I should have asked Large Contessa is how the gorilla consultation is working out for her because if it's helping AND it's cheaper than my therapist then this might be something I should look into.

This post meanders - bear with me.

2009-03-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

What bothers me about the term "it is what it is" is that it doesn't describe anything. It's like that Faith No More song "Epic."

It's it!
What is it?
It's it!
What is it?

No it's not. You can't define a term using the same term. What is happiness? It is to be happy. Does this really define anything for you? No.

But my dislike of the term "it is what it is" doesn't just have to do with the fact that it gives you no useful information. It's because whenever I hear someone say it, they're just saying it for lack of anything else to say at a time when I'm looking for a real answer.

"It's so bullshit that I can't find a job. Why is it so hard for people to find a job nowadays?"
"I don't know. It is what it is, you know?"
"...I have no idea what you are talking about."

Why not just say "I don't know?" It is what it is does not sound all that deep and wise. I know that it is supposed to mean "there is not a great, complex answer. It will simply be itself, just as you and I and he and me and we are all together. Coo coo cachoo." Its atempt at simplicity only confuses me more, although it does make me think of John Lennon, which is kind of cool.

Or, and I HATE this, the term is used when someone is really pissed at you and they're being sarcastic. Like the term "Whatever." Have you ever known someone to say "whatever" and really mean it? No. Most of the people I know say "whatever" when what they really mean is, "Yes, what you have suggested and/or just expressed bothers me deeply and I have great concern for how things are going to turn out, however, I'm going to give you a sarcastic response that will make you feel like a selfish asshole who does not consider my feelings to be important."

And now I will completely change the subject. The other day I asked my grandpa if he wanted me to say anything in particular at his funeral. He had heart surgery last week and none of us, including him, were sure that he was going to make it. He's been so weak lately and that big artery in his neck was almost completely blocked. In the days leading up to the surgery he mentioned dying a few times, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask if there was anything he wanted me to say in particular.

I was sure he'd want me to talk about being a pilot in World War 2, which is a half truth (he was a pilot but the war ended before he got to kill anybody, something that's always bothered him), he flew B-52's during rescue missions in the Azores (true), he wrote a book (true) and he invented the six pack (though I don't have confirmation on this one I'm going to guess that's a lie). The things I'm sure that he won't want me to mention are that he beat the shit out of my dad as a kid, he once told dad and his brothers that women were like cows - only good for dropping babies, his mother was a stoic woman who didn't smile and never told him she loved him, his father beat the shit out of him even more than he beat the shit out of my dad, his five children don't like him, he had scarlet fever (or yellow fever, I forget) and was quarentined when he was ten, during which time he was so lonely that he made up stories and characters and lived in his imagination for a little over a month, and the last thing he wouldn't want me to say is that he's a compulsive liar.

He's also not a very good writer. I would have felt awful saying that before, but I don't now. Maybe it's because I've been so raw and angry lately. What I feel bad about saying is that I would rather not read the poem that he handed me when I asked him what he wanted me to say at his funeral. It's called "Sing No Sad Songs For Me." Not only does it rhyme (shudder), but it tells everyone, everyone at his FUNERAL, to stop crying. He says,

"Oh, no, no sad songs for me;
I have always abhorred the weeper."

This is a person who is so terrified of emotions that he even needs to repress people at his funeral. "I have always abhorred the weeper." Abhorred? Dear Lord, what a drama queen.

Anyway, he lived but we've got a deal now that I'm going to read the poem. So what will I actually say at his funeral? Should I just get up there and say "He's dead. It is what it is," and sit back down? Nah. I'll probably say that despite what he told my dad about women, Grandpa always told me that I can do whatever I set my mind to, and he always called me "Number One Kid." My grandma recently told me that he started doing that when my parents were separated and he noticed how down I was all the time. He would call over to me, "Hey, fella! Who's Number One Kid?" and I'd smirk all shy and self-conscious and say, "Me," and he'd give me a hug. He still does that. I will probably talk about how he always quotes poetry, and how incredibly smart he is. I will probably say that he recently told me that he doesn't know how to tell someone he loves them because he was never taught, and whenever he does it now it feels forced and awkward. But he does it anyway. I will probably say that other pilots have told me how beautifully that old guy can fly a plane, and that he saved lives flying rescue missons in the Azores. I will say that he wrote a book, something that he always wanted to do. And I will definitely say that it is because of him that I have a reverence for things that have a quiet grace about them, little things like the slow drift of tobacco smoke and that curve in the hand between the thumb and forefinger. Whatever else he might be, he is a man who points these things out.

In honor of that beauty and grace, here's a poem I read yesterday. I love the word "Madagascar" in the middle of it. Grandpa taught me to say a word and let it melt on my tongue like hard candy.

Trains
by David Shumate

I am seduced by trains. When one moans in the night like some
dragon gone lame, I rise and put on my grandfather's suit. I pack a
small bag, step out onto the porch, and wait in the darkness. I rest
my broad-brimmed hat on my knee. To a passerby I'm a curious sight
—a solitary man sitting in the night. There's something
unsettling about a traveler who doesn't know where he's headed.
You can't predict his next move. In a week you may receive a
postcard from Haiti. Madagascar. You might turn on your
answering machine and hear his voice amid the tumult of a Bangkok avenue.
All afternoon you feel the weight of the things you've never done.
Don't think about it too much. Everything starts to sound like a train.

Fast breaking agent news!

2009-03-07T08:11:00.001-08:00

The agent wrote me back. She says she loves the book!...So she wants me to write another draft [simmering smoke drifts from the top of my frustrated head]. She wrote a long email of suggestions, only a couple of which I have a problem with.

In the book, my main character is a tomboyish, androgynous kid who gets made fun of a lot. Actually, a few of my characters have this problem. A lot of my writing (go figure) has gender confusion themes, and the agent says that she likes the questions I bring up about gender roles and sexuality, but that "androgyne seems a little too complex for 15 year olds." She suggests "raising awareness of stereotypes instead." I cringe at this idea. The whole thing about Judy is that she is NOT a stereotype. She's a boyish girl who wants a boyfriend, but other kids keep lumping her into a stereotype. Tricia, one of my other characters, has a different struggle. She IS more of a stereotype. She's a boyish girl who likes girls, but she's trying desperately not to be. The theme that links these girls is that there's nothing wrong with either of them. Some people are a bit stereotypical and some people aren't. The important thing is that they're themselves.

This theme, the whole people-are-complex-and-difficult-to-define theme, also goes along with the obituaries that Judy and her friend Ana are writing. They write them because they're angry and frustrated, and they want to lash out at these other people but they're too timid to do it in a confrontational way. They don't really want to hurt anybody. BUT when the obituaries are discovered all that the principal and the school's superintendent see is that they are two girls writing stories about other students and teachers dying. The stereotypical Trench Coat Mafia, shy and quiet but deadly, school shooter kid pops into their minds. But the girls are NOT this way.

This is a very long winded way of saying that there are too many stories and after school specials that debunk stereotypes and I don't want my book to be another lame shot at a tired issue. Also, androgyne is not too complex for teenagers to understand. Even a grammar school kid knows what a tomboy is, and a tomboy is an androgynous person. Besides, I'm basing Judy on the way I was as a teenager, and believe me, I knew that sexuality was complex. I didn't understand it, and I didn't like it, but I knew it wasn't simple.

Plus, I don't want my book to dumb things down for kids. Yeah, kids can be stupid, but they understand more than we give them credit for. When I was a kid I read books that challenged me, not books that assumed I was dumber than I was.

So enough about that. That was the only one I had a big problem with. One of her suggestions that I dug in a major way was putting graphic art into the book. Judy is an artist, and Sarah (the agent - I might as well just use her name) said WHEN IT'S PUBLISHED [squeals with girlish glee] it would be good to have Judy's drawings next to the obituaries. I love this idea.

I apologize about my payphone absence. My facebook account has tumbleweed blowing across it as well, with a profile picture of me on the back of a milk carton. Things have been busy and frankly kind of shitty. But for my next blog, which will hopefully be later today (fingers crossed!) I will discuss my Grandpa's eulogy poem, and the way I feel about the term "It is what it is." No, my grandpa didn't die, but he had major surgery a few days ago and he gave me a poem he'd written to be read at his funeral. It's...interesting. Stay tuned! And until then refrain from saying "It is what it is." It causes some of us to go nuclear.

Holy hell, Joan Jett and Lita Ford kick ass!

2009-03-05T18:25:00.001-08:00

I can only blog a moment because the girls are beginning to fight, but I had to share this. I was tooling around on youtube, wondering like all of us do, "what 70's punk bands are there that I haven't heard?" Then I remembered the movie Juno and how she said her favorite bands were Iggy and the Stooges, somebody else, and The Runaways, and I thought, "Oh yeah, I've been meaning to look them up." So I did. And forgive my ignorance if you guys have known this all your lives, but Joan Jett and Lita Ford were in The Runaways as teenagers! It was an all girl punk band! It kicked ass! Observe the link below, and note Lita Ford's guitar playing. You might have to wait for it to load. It's from a concert in Japan and it's not good quality, but DAMN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DNmMbyfFL4&feature=PlayList&p=0DA0DAEEA245D5F2&index=17

A breakfast offering

2009-03-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

I have to hurry out the door this morning, though I have set aside a time later today to blog further. There is so much further to blog. And to read! I haven't caught up with Tom, Billy, or Mel in a couple of weeks. But anyway, I read this poem this morning and had to share it with you. Consider it compensation for my silence at the payphone lately.

In the Coffee Shop
by Carl Dennis
The big smile the waitress gives you
May be a true expression of her opinion
Or may be her way to atone for glowering
A moment ago at a customer who slurped his coffee
Just the way her cynical second husband slurped his.
Think of the meager tip you left the taxi driver
After the trip from the airport, how it didn't express
Your judgment about his service but about the snow
That left you feeling the earth a tundra
Only the frugal few could hope to cross.
Maybe it's best to look for fairness
Not in any particular unbiased judgment
But in a history of mistakes that balance out,
To find an equivalent for the pooling of tips
Practiced by the staff of the coffee shop,
Adding them up and dividing, the same to each.
As for the chilly fish eye the busboy gave you
When told to clear the window table you wanted,
It may have been less a comment on you
Than on his parents, their dismissing the many favors
He does for them as skimpy installments
On a debt too massive to be paid off.
And what about favors you haven't earned?
The blonde who's passing the window now
Without so much as a glance in your direction
Might be trying to focus her mind on her performance
So you, or someone like you, will be pleased to watch
As she crosses the square in her leather snow boots
And tunic of red velvet, fur-trimmed.
What have you done for her that she should turn
The stones of the public buildings
Into a backdrop, a crosswalk into a stage floor,
A table in a no-frills coffee shop
Into a private box near the orchestra?
Yesterday she may have murmured against the fate
That keeps her stuck in the provinces.
But today she atones with her wish to please
As she dispenses with footlights and spotlights,
With a curtain call at the end, with encores.
No way to thank her but with attention
Now as she nears the steps of the courthouse
And begins her unhurried exit into the crowd.

Aaah! The Oscars!

2009-02-22T05:07:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while since I've written and the first thing I have to say is this - tonight I'm going to miss the Oscars!!!!! AHHHHHH!!! I haven't missed it in years. It's the only award/contest show that I watch! Not The Grammy's, not Miss America, not The Biggest Loser, not Survivor, not Top Chef, not The Emmy's, not Who Wants to be My Bisexual, not A Shot at Burnin' Love (a reality show that I just made up in which Elvis impersonators compete to win the love of one woman - as opposed to one man, in which case it would be A Shot at Flamin' Love). And tonight I'm going to miss The Academy Awards because I'm chairing an Al-anon meeting! Whyyyyyyy????!!!! Am I being overly dramatic, or overacting, you could say? Yes. Will it win me an Oscar? Yes. I would kick Kate Winslet's ass.

On top of that, I will also miss Uptown and Metairie parades. It's my mom's birthday and everybody's coming over.

But let's focus on the good things, shall we? First: I finished editing the book! I emailed it to Sarah (the agent) yesterday. Sigh. Sarah...isn't that a beautiful name? It suggests someone well-read, someone sympathetic to struggling writers, with a preference for young adult novels. So hopefully I'll hear something soon. I'm so used to getting on the computer lately just to work on the book. This morning when I fired up the ole laptop I almost went straight to the book and then I remembered, "Hey! I'm done!...for now. Until I have to do more edits." Because I know enough about publishing to know that if Sarah likes it she'll still want me to tweak some things.

Ok, this has nothing to do with anything, but that's the ADD place I'm at this morning. Yesterday Chris and I took the kids to the Luling parade, which is called The Krewe of Lul (take that originality!) We ended up having a good time, but there were a couple of times that I was uncomfortable.

Now, for those of you who have never been to Mardi Gras (ahem - Tom) you must understand that when you take your children out to a parade you run the risk of exposing them to nudity. Even at "family" parades, as The Krewe of Lul likes to strut around bragging about itself. There were people in obscene T-shirts. That, I expected. And I mean both obscene in a sense that there was pornagraphic artwork on T-shirts, and obscene in a sense that some women wore skimpy shirts with cleavage hanging out. It's cool, you know. We're all mammals here. But my tolerance for public nudity was challenged when the woman standing next to my 7 year-old daughter caught a bead with an enormous penis pendant. This woman, who I will call Trixie, was delighted.

"Woooooohooo!" she cried, brandishing the penis bead, and then swinging it over her head like a lasso.

Then she set down her beer so that she could put it on, and I was able to get a good look at it. At this point I was still in the "Is that what I think it is?" phase. She put it on, and adjusted the pendant so that it lay in the center of her boobs. It was, indeed, a large pink penis with a red straw, like a catheter at the tip. It was quite realistic looking if you took away the straw and added testicles. Trixie gave it an affectionate squeeze and the thing squeaked.

"It squeaks, y'all!" she hollered to her friends, like it was a clever pet that could do a trick. Trixie stuck out her chest and waltzed around so that everyone could admire her squeaky penis.

The problem was that Emma was standing on a cooler next to her, placing her at a height at which put her face to face with the crazy thing. I had to do something. Sure, Emma has taken a bath with her brother and knows that boys have those things, but I felt uncomfortable with one in her face. I also didn't know what to say to Trixie. Mardi Gras is a time of freedom in which anyone can act like a complete ass. They're encouraged to, actually. Trixie was drunk, loud, and crass. Maybe I was being a coward, but to avoid a confrontation and to rescue my daughter I grabbed Emma and moved her to another spot.

"Hey!" Emma cried. "I wanna stand on the cooler."

The cooler made her tall enough to see the floats passing by and gave her a fighting chance to catch something in a crowd of taller kids and adults.

"Why don't I hold you?" I asked.

This worked. And so Emma's purity remains intact. But honestly, and I don't mean to sound like a prude, but why are there exposed body parts in the middle of the day at a family parade? Can these people not make it downtown? Yes, drunken, crass nudity is kind of part of our culture, but must it rear its head during the same parade where Winnie the Pooh and Tigger march down the street?

I sound so old.

Movie for one

2009-02-03T03:18:00.000-08:00

In my annual attempt to see as many Academy Award nominated movies as possible, later tonight I'm going to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I'm as equally enthusiastic to see "Slumdog Millionare" but my friend Libby (who will be joining me) said that feelgood movies make her feel like crap. Libby has a way of putting things that bewilder me and win my sympathies at the same time. So "The Button" it is. I plan to see the "Slumdog" later in the week by myself.

Before you go feeling sorry for me, you must know that I love seeing movies alone. It's something I started doing when I was 13 because The Outsiders was my favorite book, and that's what Ponyboy Curtis did. The first movie I saw by myself was "Scrooged" and I remember feeling weird about it at first. During a funny part there was no one to look over at to see if they were laughing too. Laughing at a scene just because I alone thought it was funny felt kind of like talking to myself. I think it's because when I'm with another person or a group, seeing a movie is a true social experience. I'm more likely to laugh if the person next to me is laughing too and not because I don't have my own sense of humor. It's like I'm saying, "I think this is funny. Do you too think this is funny? Excellent. We are having a marvelous time."

But there are some movies that for me to fully experience them, I need quiet. "Schindler's List" comes to mind. God, after I saw that alone I don't think I spoke for the rest of the day. I don't think it would have been the same experience if I'd gone with a friend or one of my sisters. I would have felt pressured to talk when we stepped out into the daylight, and I probably wouldn't have felt like talking at all. A movie that is done well, or hell any art form that is done well, leaves me with too much to think about. Only, unlike most of the things I overthink, the thoughts and emotions I have after a good movie are not a burden. It's a storm that I leaves me happily soaked.

And yet for all this love of movies, I don't think I've seen a single one this year that I really wanted to see. Like "Rachael Getting Married," "Changling," "In Bruges," "Slumdog Millionare," "Schenectady, NY" and "Tropic Thunder." Yes. That last one was a joke. See how funny I am on my own? Ha. I need to get crackin' on the ones I can rent. Only 19 days until the awards (bites nails with anticipation)! I hate watching it without knowing a single thing about the movies that are nominated. Sure I could watch it for the fashion, the the social commentary, the tense moments when someone legendary like Peter O'Toole is run offstage by the symphany for talking too long. Because, damnit, there are commercials to think about.

And at the moment there is breakfast to think about. What does a sophisticated moviegoer like myself have for breakfast, you ask? Fancy bagels? Homemade grits with bacon puree and a slice of papaya on the side? No, no, nothing that Hollywood. Oatmeal and coffee. Not sheek enough, you say? I'll bet you a hundred dollars that Anne Hathaway wishes she could have a Pop Tart while she walks down the red carpet. Now, whether I see any of the nominated movies or not, THAT would be worth watching.

For someone who needs it...possibly

2009-01-29T14:06:00.000-08:00

****(In this post names have been changed to protect the anonymous)****

This is a brief update! I met with my sponsor (who I will call Maryl Streep) today for about two hours. I've just done the third step and am gearing up for the fourth where I make a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of myself. Heh heh- fearless! Waaaaaaaahahahahahahaha! I'm scared to death! Ah ha ha! [laughter dying down] Ha..ha!...oooh.

So what I am about to write is for those of you out there (Al-anon, AA, or NA) who might be going through the steps too.

Just in case you're shaking constantly, feeling raw and terrified most of the time, I'm right there with you. And when I saw "raw" I mean really, really raw. I'm a sushi roll. And I mean, like, not even the rice is cooked. On my Sunday night meeting I trembled the entire time. But Meryl Streep told me today that she thinks I'm doing awesome. She said she's seen a lot of growth in me since I showed up in Al-Anon last summer. Hooray! Approval from the big sister I never had! She said that the first three steps are really a daily continuing practice - admitting I don't have control, that a higher power can help me, and then giving my problems up to God.

On Sunday I met a new person, named Pat Benatar who is also new to the program. She said she was scared too and we bonded over that for a while. Then, without thinking about it, I volunteered to help for the next meeting.

The group moderator, Ulysses S. Grant, raised his bushy eyebrows. "Awesome," he said. "What do you want to do?"
"Uhhh...what do you need?"
He was unclear about this so he said he'd call me.

The group leader (I don't remember exactly what they're called) of the Wednesday meeting, Sophia Loren, was much more specific. That meeting is in the middle of the day, and it attracts mostly retired old ladies. This is a sharp contrast to Sunday's meeting which is mostly bohemian. Anyway, Sophia Loren, like most small old ladies I know, had a list of things I could do.

"First, honey, if you could lift this suitcase for me that would be wonderful," she said, beaming.
There was an entire suitcase of new books and meeting materials that needed to be carried back into the supply closet. So I am now the brute strength of the group. Feels good to be doing service.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell you if you happen to be new to all of this like me is that it is the most painful and wonderful thing I've ever gone through. Even right now I'm shaking and my stomach feels sick, but I wouldn't go back to the way I was before if you paid me. (of course, you never know, I'm willing to take offers) There's a new voice that's talking in my head, and it's the parent I never had. She's cool and calm, and maternal, and I think she's the person I'm turning into. I hope she is. She's so strong and groovy.

And amazing things are happening! My mom apoloized to me! She's on the 9th step and she said I was the first person she wanted to apologize to. At first I was nervous. I didn't know what she was going to say, and I was afraid for her to bring up really painful things. But she didn't get specific and I was glad. She just said, "I'm sorry for how much I've hurt you. I know it's a lot. I want you to know that I'll do anything I can to make up for it. Is there anything I can do?"

The kid in me thought, "Ask for a Wii!" but the new, stronger voice in me came out and said, "Take care of yourself. You know, I used to have all those nightmares that you were screaming for help and I couldn't help you. You're taking better care of yourself now, and it makes me feel better. You're doing good, just keep it up. It's nice to see you this way." I could have told her never to drink again, just promise me you won't drink or take pills again. But she can't promise that. So I guess I told her the next best thing.

For those of you who don't know my mom this was amazing. I never thought she'd say that. I never even thought she'd stay dry so long, but she's really working hard. I was proud of her because I know that must have taken a lot of courage to admit with your own kid.

Anyway, I just had this nagging feeling that somebody else needed to read this. It could just be the caretaker in me. We're in this together whoever you are, Meryl Streep, Sophia Loren, Ulysses S. Grant and Pat Benatar!

We belong to the light!
We belong to the thunder!

This is not a metaphor

2009-01-29T03:41:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning, dragged myself into the bathroom and turned on the light. My immediate reaction, when I looked in the mirror, filled me with joy. I said (out loud, mind you), "Hey! I'm pretty!" and hugged myself. Then I froze and looked at myself again. There I stood, arms wrapped around myself, an embrace inspired by my own perceived cuteness. "What am I, three years old?" I asked myself.

You see, my darlings, with all of this self-help I'm going through I'm a little worried about how weird and over the top New Agey I could get. April lent me a book on CD called "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay, a woman who survived severe child abuse and poverty, and then went beyond surviving to thriving like a one of those house plants that starts off small and then blooms like mad, with Audrey Two-like vines draping out of the pot and onto the floor. I jived with most of what ole Louise had to say, you know, all the thinking positively stuff, and how if you tell yourself that you deserve nothing then you're likely to get nothing. But there were times I felt that Louise went slightly off the deep end. She was talking about her body and accepting it the way it is - stretch marks, blemishes, wrinkles and everything. All very cool. She would say, "I love my face!" and I thought, "I love your face too, Louise! You rock!" And then she said (and I don't remember the exact quote except for the last four words), "Every part of my body serves me and I love it and respect it. Even my anus. I love my anus!" This is where I felt that our paths split. I feel that I can become a healthy, confident person without giving my anus the time of day. It will go it's way and I will go mine. Does it have a function? Sure. And I respect that. Will I annouce our love to the world? No.

But what if I eventually do? What if I become like some of the people I meet at Wild Lotus who talk constantly about "the universe." Don't get me wrong, I dig the universe. I acknowledge that I am part of it, and I even dig on karma. But I have this fear in the back of my mind that in about ten years I'm going to do something bizarre like change my name to Lilypad Lovinfields and teach a children's yoga class where I also play the lute.

"And now children," I'll say, as I strum. "We're going to learn to chant! Say it with me, "OooooommmmIlovemyanusooooooooooommmmm."

Am I playing on stereotypes just a wee bit? Perhaps. But everyone I know has a fear of becoming some sort of stereotype, and it's high time that I admit that, yes, I'm afraid of becoming weirder than I already am. And why am I afraid of it, you ask? Sigh. Because I worry about what people think of me just a tad much. I think it's healthy to have a little dose of this. It's why I don't do things like expel gas in public. I know a few people like this and I wish that they would worry about what I think just enough to stop, or go to another room.

I will say one thing, though, and if I sound all cheesy and New Agey then so be it. There's a serendipitous quality to all of the messages I'm getting lately. Yoga, Al-anon, therapy, and believe it or not FLY Lady (a website I visit that helps chicks like me get their houses organized) have all been saying the same things. They all tell me to love myself the way I am. When I first joined FLY Lday I didn't know that FLY stood for "Finally Loving Yourself." I thought, "Wait, I just want you to teach me how to keep my house clean so that I'm not embarassed when people come over." But it turns out that it's so much more! The first thing FLY Lady tells you to do is shine your sink, and then make sure when you wake up every morning to get fully dressed and wash your face. In essence, to take care of myself first thing.

FLY Lady sends me motherly reminders each day, and the one from the other day was so fitting it was creepy. She said this, "Each one of us has a light that shines. Some of our lights have been shaded by those negative words we have heard all our lives. We have to remove that shroud of sadness that has dimmed our lights and let our light shine! Let me start this process by reminding you that our parents did all they knew to do! Their little lights were dimmed too. We begin this process with forgiveness. Forgive them because they did not know what they were doing...Now go shine your sink! This is not a metaphor! Take this action and see that little ray of hope for yourself! Your shiny sink is just the beginning! Let your light shine and see the beauty that is you!"

Keep in mind, I originally joined this site to learn how to keep my house clean. So, like, the universe (insert a vision of me with my eyes all wide and trippy cosmic-like) is telling me in every possible way to love myself. Duuuuuuuuuuude! I must totally obey.

I'm off to make silly faces at myself in the mirror. Am I acting like a three year old? Yes. And I love it (insert a vision of me blowing a raspberry).

Boots of Chinese Plastic

2009-01-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

I just discovered this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVPSC321Fg8

Damn, Chrissie Hynde is awesome.

I'm working on the end of the book. Stop me if I've blogged about this. I emailed the agent a synopsis of the new ending on Friday and she wrote back to say that it's "fabulous." Wooooohoooo! Fabulous! Yes, I cherish every nice thing that she writes about the book as if I were reading a love letter. So I'm finishing the damn thing, and then I'll ship it off to her. I've been sitting at the laptop today, writing steadily and youtubing songs that go with my mood.

Back to work, gents.

By the way,
You look fantastic
In your boots
Of Chinese plastic

Damn

2009-01-24T06:26:00.000-08:00

I'm better this morning. Gees, I don't think I've written a post like that before. I think that was a cry for help. Sorry guys, I try not to do that on the internet. I'm trying to compose my raw emotional posts in a way that if someone else indentifies with it they can feel comforted by it. The good thing is that this parental voice has come around in my mind and last night I was able to soothe myself to sleep - no beating myself up physically, or entertaining thoughts of hurting myself. That's a significant babystep I think.

So allow me to be more specific than I was last night. I was upset with myself for the insane way that I handle anger. Whenever someone I like, love, or even if it's just someone who I don't know well but want them to like me I'm extra, super nice. I know, I know, what an asshole right? Well, yes. Sometimes. For example, about six years ago I was a hostess at Houston's restaraunt for a very brief period of time. Like, just a few months. Eventually I was fired and it wasn't because I did anything horrible. I was told that I was not "seating aggressively." When my manager said this to me I imagined a hostesss politely leading a couple to their table, and then suddenly lifting one of them in the air, dropping them, and then body slamming them into their seat. But that's not exactly what he was talking about. Houston's is a busy restaurant and they want waitors and hostesses to be neaurotically fast and OCD on the ball. This is why my sister Stephanie was lead hostess. She was totally on top of things and damn good. I was kind of pokey and joked around a lot. But I also knew that the unspoken reason here was, "we want sexy hostesses who flirt." I knew this because I was told to put on more makeup, even though by more standards I was wearing a lot, and because all of the hostesses were very flirty and sexy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Stephanie is a tease. She's just hot and she's got a good game face. If a regular customer came in who liked to flirt with the hostesses, she was able to handle him even if he was a real slime. I was not able to do this. If a dude was all weird and flirty I would maybe giggle and fall silent, or I would look at him funny before I had time to stop myself.

Aaaaanyway, the manager didn't like me very much. This somehow made me want him to like me more even though this guy was kind of a jerk. I wanted him to see me as sweet and genuine. But these qualities only seemed to aggravate him. A few weeks after I was fired I came into drop something off to Stephanie and when the guy (whose name I don't even remember) came to the podium to tell her something I told him hi and then gave him a hug. When I hugged him he back away and said, "No, no. Good to see you" and scurried off.

I actually hugged this guy, this guy who I didn't like, who didn't like me and who had fired me a few weeks before. Though it was rude of him to push me away atleast he was acknowledging that there was a problem between us. I don't like being angry at people. I don't handle it well. I can even handle them being mad at me better than I can handle my own anger, and that's not saying very much. This reaction is seemingly genuine. A lot of people have been touched by it. They're kind of like, "Wow, you really forgave me fast, what a great, merciful person you are." But how could I have forgiven them when I didn't even acknowledge that there was a problem in the first place? I wasn't being all merciful and wonderful. I was in complete denial, and it's only caused complications in every single one of my relationships.

It's because this stuff tends to build. And build. And build. And then...you know...build. Until eventually I'm an enormous ant hill of supressed anger, like one of those mountain sized African ant hills that you see on Animal Planet. I've said before that it takes a lot for me to completely cut someone out of my life, but that statement is misleading. That makes it sound like the problem is all theirs when the truth is that with all of these people I let them hurt me again and again, and each time I held them closer. Until I exploded. There are times when I've even said "I love you" when I'm extremely angry. I can think of times that I've done that with both family and friends. The reason those moments stand out in my mind is because I remember thinking, "Why aren't I mad? I should be mad." The friend I lost once asked me, "Why aren't you mad at me?" And I thought about it and told her, "I don't know." I wasn't able to let myself feel it. I numbed it with, "She didn't really mean it. I know deep down she respects me," and also "She's aldready so hurt. I don't want to be mad at her on top of that." As if anger is the absolute worse thing I can feel for a person. As if love is "I'm totally cool with you all the time no matter what you do," and "I'm pissed at you" translates into, "I hate you." But that doesn't make sense.

You guys are all wondering if the times I've said "I love you" out of the blue were times that I was pissed, aren't you? :) Well, honestly, I might have been. But to make it up to both of us I'm trying to learn how to bring a problem to light without acting extremely one way or the other. Also remember that the "I love you" wasn't a lie. I love all the people (who I know) who read this blog. It was just beside the point. It was more like a distraction. Like, I could have said, "Oh look, there's a pretty rainbow. Let's focus on that instead of the problem." The reason I felt pathetic last night is because I've done that sooooooo much in the recent past that it makes me feel crazy.

I know it might sound weird that trying to be really nice has made my life out of control and unmanagable, but it's true. I guess I could have done worse. I could have hit you all over the head with a plumbing tool. I could have buried my anger with drugs, World of Warcraft, or alcohol. (right now Christy is totally digging that I lumped World of Warcraft with addcitive drugs)

And now, my lovelies, it is time to face the reality of the day. I need to pick up the cat from the vet, post something for Creature Feature House, and attack the looming pile of laundry. Also accepting that I'm human and that getting mad doesn't make me the devil. And it should be noted that from what I know the friend I lost is doing very well. I'm getting there, I think. May we both have happiness.

I'm having a really bad night

2009-01-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

I'm on step 3 now. I'm supposed to give things up to God. What if I'm mad at God, though? Not always. Just tonight. This process is so fucking slow. The major highs and lows of this whole being-honest-with-myself-trip are terrible. I see things and accept them and then the next day I see them again, the same things, and I run screaming. And I've hurt people and I've lost a friend. I had another meltdown in November. What if I fall apart again next week? I'm supposed to be getting better. I'm looking back on the last year and a half and hating myself, I mean seriously loating the pathetic dweeb I've been. I just read back through my journal and a lot of e-mails I sent this time around last year to get some perspective on where I was when I was falling apart and where I am now. Oh my God, I was crazy. I'm sorry I put you all through that. The list of wrong doings that I'm going to have to write eventually is going to be a bitch. Sometimes I feel like I'm not moving forward at all. I'm just looking back at everything. But I couldn't really look at it when I was in it.

Arrrrrgh. I should go to bed. I know this mood I'm in.

Ok, I just reread my last post for 2008. Leather Fanny Pack Lady said that Al-anon lows are bad shit. I need to get to a meeting tomorrow. I need to get to sleep, it's 1:00 in the fucking morning.

Something rambling that I started writing the other day

2009-01-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

I start to avoid things around the time I wake up. First I avoid changing out of my pajamas. Then I avoid washing my face, but I'll brush my teeth because after I that I can brew the coffee, and I throw myself as enthusiastically at the coffee as I run spedily away from the responsisbility of getting dressed. When Chris is out of town I realize I'll have to brew 4 cups instead of six, and then I avoid the thought of Minnesota and knowing that he'll be there until Saturday. When I walk through the kitchen I see the new puppy chewing a pencil and, sometimes, I avoid stopping her. Then when I get to the living room I begin to wonder if she could get lead poinsoning and I go back in the kitchen to take the ruined thing out of her mouth.

This drains just enough energy that I avoid waking up Claire, even though it's 7:00 and she has to catch the bus at 7:30. Then I remember that it's Martin Luther King Day, which means she has off of school and I relax until I start to really think about the holiday and eventually have to avoid the thought of how many other white people there are who are aggravated that black people are proud of this. That somehow makes me remember Ray Nagin's Chocolate City speech, which is depressing because as a mayor the guy is supposed to represent all of us, the best of us really, and to me that means he should be trying to unify us as a city. Then, before I have time to avoid it, I wonder whether I'm more of a republican or a democrat and I think I might be more of a democrat but I never allow myself to really think it through because I don't want to dissapoint my republican friends. By the same token, I don't want to upset my democrat friends either so I usually avoid politics all together and watch Nickelodeon instead.

My sister April fearfully avoids the news too.

"I watch the Today show to see if there's another 9/11," she told me on the phone the other day. "If there's not, I think, 'oh good, we're not all going to die,' and I turn the shit off. I don't need to know how broken hearted John Travolta is about his son. I feel bad for him, but what good can it do to think about it and then start worrying about my kid?"

April echoed the reason why I generally avoid the news. Sometimes I hear things that are useful like if there's going to be a freeze and I need to wrap my pipes, which in New Orleans happens once about every ten years, and sometimes I hear ways I can help the city like if there's a coat drive or something. But hearing about a guy in the French Quarter who murdered and then cooked his girlfriend before he jumped off a building (true) doesn't really get me anywhere. I can't go back in time and help the girl. I can't help look for the guy on Crime Stoppers because he's already killed himself. I can't offer him cooking recipes. And (feel free to tell me I'm horrible, which you've already done once because of the cannibal recipe joke that was in poor taste - poor taste! Oh!) but when I hear things like that my first reaction is, "Well, that kind of tidys things up. There's no big political, moral debate about whether or not to execute him, and he won't be killing and cooking anyone else." As a freelance journalist I see the newsworthy quality of the story, but as a human being who worries constantly and tries to offset anxiety with a bad, dark sense of humor, I wish they would stop broadcasting this stuff.

There are, of course, ocassional reports of fantastic news, like the recent plane crash in the Hudson where everyone got out alive. I'm sure when they were going down all of them thought they were goners. What immense relief they must have felt when they stopped wincing, touched their faces and arms to make sure they were still attached and thought, "I'm alive!" But as April pointed out, during the same phone conversation, it's disturbing to know that an enormous plane that can carry over a hundred people through the air can be taken down by birds.

"I'm not flying again until they build me a plane that's bird-worthy. I don't mean ducks or geese or anything, I mean I want a jet engine that can suck up an ostrich."

Thinking about all of these things, New Orleanian blacks vs. whites, murderers vs. girlfriends, birds vs. planes, can make a person go back to bed even if they've had a pot of coffee all to themsleves. I'm beginning to realize that it's better to ponder and debate these things, particularly the things I can help. So I'm trying not to go back to sleep, literally and figurtively. Even with Chris being gone for a week, I can't just let it depress me so much that I block everything out. Too much depends on me being mentally healthy.

But there's a balance, and my recent solution to avoidance of thinking and overthinking is this (feel free to roll your eyes): meditation. Last week I went to a meditation hour at the yoga studio, and I must say that when the instructor told us that we'd be sitting there with our eyes closed for three twenty minute intervals I was skeptical. Specifically, I was skeptical about my ability to sit there with my eyes closed for 20 minutes and think NOTHING. And during that time of course I thought of all sorts of things, but every time I did I would imagine that thought as a balloon and I would let it go. Which made me think of the song "99 Red Balloons" so I had to let that go too.

Dude, it's like letting your monkey chattering brain take a break in a hammock. Or something. A recharge, I guess I should say. It's different from blocking things out. I could drink or (much closer to home) become obsessed with needing to help a loved one to avoid my own problems and fears, but that's not giving my brain any rest. When I was meditating I was letting go without blocking anything out. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I could better describe it this way...I can block out things I don't want to know about myself and the world and keeping myself ignorant can give me temporary bliss, but knowing when to shut the thinker down is true serenity. It's a balanced acceptance, somewhere in between overthinking to the point of exhaustion and blocking out reality.

I can't wait to go back this Sunday night and meditate again! Yay! Does this mean that I'm becoming a true New Agey flakey chick? I shall meditate upon it...

Om
shanti
shanti
my
dears

ps- for your serene enjoyment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4

Some acknowledgements

2009-01-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention that Ray and Christina are also responsible for last night's super fun. Christina got up and sang with the band after we all harassed, I mean, peer pressured her enough (beautiful voice, that one), and they did some dancing of their own, which made my dancing with myself look not too strange because I was dancing next to other people. Christy, you were missed, man. Fred (the bassist of Fuzzy Dice and my bud) was also a trooper. With terrible laringitis he still sang "California Sun." Kick ass. Chris was the trusty designated driver who got us all home. Now if we can get him to not be so shy on the dance floor, it would be a miraculous thing. But last night he was feeling considerably out of sorts. He'd been to the funeral of a former and much loved high school teacher...suddenly this post is depressing. Crap. Rock on Mr. Guajaurdo (sp?)! Teach them something in Heaven!

A brief report of happiness

2009-01-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

Friends, I think all of the therapy is finally starting to pay off. I am truly happy this morning. I still have all of my same problems, and I'm hung over from going out to see The Fuzzy Dice last night, but I feel so serene.

I danced all night! I wasn't even done with my first drink before I started dancing and I really didn't worry about what I looked like or what anybody thought (mostly)! Particularly after a few whiskeys, but usually it takes me a few whiskeys before I really start to move. Elvis and Ray Charles cover songs filled me with glee. The screen above the musicians' heads that advertised "fried pickles" and "killer fries" added to the joint's delightfully cheesy mistique. No, actually, it's a cool place. Make that very cool - literally. It was about 20 degrees.

The kids are screaming. Must dash. Stay tuned next time when I blog about last Sunday's meditation hour at Wild Lotus, which was NOT boring! Come on, you miss my yoga posts, you know you do!

EEEEEEEEEEK!

2009-01-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

Guys! (As you read the following, imagine that I am jumping up and down) I heard back from the agent! I heard back from the agent! She read the two chapters where I made the major changes and she said this:

Hi Genevieve,
So sorry it's taken me this long to get back to you! My reading list has been diabolical. But I absolutely loved these pages! If this is the kind of work you're doing on the whole manuscript, I absolutely can't wait to read it. The fight scene is perfect, and Ana's meltdown was wonderful. Completely relatable, and well written.
Hope the rest is coming along well. Be in touch.
Best,
Sarah

Ok, ignore the fact that most of you don't know what the fight scene is about or who Ana is, but you soon may because I'M ALMOST FINISHED EDITING THE BOOK!!!! The major editing, I mean. I know if she signs me on she might ask me to tweak things, as an editor will do as well BUT! she likes it, she really likes it! Yipeeeeeeeeeee! Everyone have another cup of coffee.

Back to the edits.

I can think of 100 other things to do

2009-01-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

Yeasterday I applied for a position at the New Orleans public library. They're supposed to get back to me in a few weeks. I've applied a few other places too. While I've been waiting for these things to pan out, though, there's been a thought floating around in the back of my head, and I've been ignoring it for the last few weeks because I've heard this thought before.

"Um...I'm sorry, but why aren't you sending essays and stories out on a regular basis?"

Like I said, that question pops in up in my mind all the time, and I've resolved to send off on a regular basis a few times over the last few years but I never kept up with it. However, yesterday that question popped in my mind and it was followed by a statement that was hard to ignore:

"You have over seventy of them, Genny. I think that, uh, this writing thing? It might be a chronic condition. I don't think you're going to give it up any time soon. And people seem to like the stuff. You wanna, like, do something about that?"

And for those of you who are wondering, yes, when I address myself in my mind I revert to my childhood nickname. And I sound like a snotty high school girl. Here is the conversation that insued between the wise me and the worried me.

worry: But I've tried full-time writing from home before and I never stick with sending stuff out on a regular basis. I get depressed with the rejections.

wiser: Everybody who writes full-time gets rejections. The ones who are successful aren't better writers than you they just persevere. You know, you say this to everybody else. You should take your own advice.

worry: But I'm too disorganized.

wiser: So was Viriginia Woolf.

worry: But she drowned herself.

wiser: You're not a scizophrenic British realist. You're a depressive American essayist and young adult novelist. There's a difference.

worry: Name one.

wiser (thinking):...Her accent was cooler than yours.

worry: That doesn't help. Look, I can't work from the house. There are too many distractions. There are a hundred other things to do.

wiser: And you do all of those things with the constant stress of "I should be writing." After you write you do those other things better. Writing for you is like eating breakfast. It's a healthy way to start the day. Like Frosted Flakes.

worry: But I want to make a steady salary like other grownups.

wiser: You will make a steady salary.

worry: How do you know that?

wiser: Because this is what you want.

Holy shit, she's right.

A bit of a ramble with a couple of dark confessions, like digging Journey

2009-01-10T17:36:00.001-08:00

As you might have guessed I did not get the editor job at Tulane. They gave it to the guy who I thought might get it. But I've been persevering. I've even applied for a few librarian positions, which I would love to get mostly because at fancy get togethers and things where people drink iced cocktails and ask me what I do for a living, I'd get to say, "Dude...I'm a librarian," with much moxy. Now I just need to get the job and to get invited to those parties.

I'm listening to Nirvana's cover of The Velvet Underground's "Here She Comes Now." As much as I love The Velvet Underground, I think I like Nirvana's accoustic version better. I've read that it's supposed to be about a girl's orgasm, and I guess that's what he's singing about, but I can't tell for sure. It goes:

Ahhh
If she ever comes down now
Naahhh
If she ever comes down now
OooH!
She looks so good
O000H!
She's made out of wood
She says ohhhh

....Ok, it looks like it is about a girl's orgasm. Anyway, it's a good song. If you youtube it, there's a lot of Kurt Cobain tribute type stuff that plays along with it.

Man, he would be over 40 now. You know how if you watch a video on youtube, afterwards it shows you other stuff by the same artist? There's one that pops up by Nirvana called "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die." That's eerie.

There are certain songs that, for mental care purposes, I don't allow myself to listen to. I'm not saying that these songs will make me hurt myself and if that happened it would be their fault. I'm also not saying that nobody else should listen to them. Other people can listen to these songs and they're fine, but I, much like someone with a peanut or shellfish allergy, am sensitive to their self-destructive themes.

First on the list is "Self Esteem" by The Offspring which offers heart wrenching lines like this, "I may be dumb, but I'm not a dweeb. I'm just a sucker with no self-esteem" and "Well I guess, I should stick up for myself but I really think it's better this way. The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care" I mean, just fucking shoot me in the head. Next is "Loser" by Beck. I like that song, but I just can't sing along with it anymore. "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?" That pretty much summed up my mood in 2007 along with almost all of 2008. But the absolute worst is Linkin Park's "Bleed it out."

"I bleed it out, dig in deeper just to throw it away."

The first time I cut my arm was in the 7th grade, and I remember what I was thinking right before I did it. The thought didn't make any sense, but the feeling behind it was strong. I didn't want to die. I wanted to bleed the deepression out, like it was something that could be physically drained from me. I was like a boil that needed to be lanced. It didn't work, and the worst thing about cutting is that once I did it I had a hard time getting it out of my mind afterwards. Whenever I became deeply, mind and body numbingly sad, cutting would occur to me as a solution. Even if I chose to ignore it, which I did most of the time, the thought of it would linger to haunt me, and the thought of bleeding would depress me further as if I'd acutally done it.

But before you go thinking that I must look all marked up like a voodoo doll, as far as being a cutter goes I was pretty whimpy about it. I'm not like some of these people that you see with hideous scars all over themselves. My 3 tattoos are much more prominent than any measly ass cutting scar I ever gave myself.

Holy Jesus God, did I just write, "My tattoos are more prominent than my cutting scars?" Anyway, my point is that I'm trying to parent myself as I parent my children and so that includes keeping away from self-destructive songs while my self sesteem is still fragile and slowly getting stronger.

Journey's "Be Good to Yourself" works. And for some reason so does Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." It's the drums and the kick ass guitar playing in the beginning. Speaking of which, if you have not heard Van Halen's "Unchained" and andrenalin-pumping rock n' roll gets you all worked up, you simply must look up that song right now. "Unchained, and ya hit the ground running."

I don't want to lie there, thinking I can bleed out pain, so depressed that I feel like my insides have turned to slowly hardening wet cement. I want to stay alive and moving, dancing sober and not caring if I do it badly.

And I've decided what I want to do with my writing. What I really want to do more than anything is to bring people comfort or to make them laugh. I don't want to sway anyone's politics or argue my own views or anything. I would just like to be silly. And if I'm not being silly, if I happen to be talking about depression or other disturbing topics like cutting, I want to be able to reach someone who's been through that before or who is maybe going through that now. Maybe, even if it's for a second, I could give them something to identify with and make them feel better. I think I might be good at that, you know?

So, I don't know how many of you guys are still with me. This has been a long, rambling talk. But if you're still there, thanks for reading. Good talk, man.

Creature Feature House

2009-01-02T07:46:00.001-08:00

So my second blog is:

http://creaturefeaturehouse.blogspot.com/

I'll post something new every Friday. I was going to post something new every Thursday because I was supposed to get this thing up and running on the 1st, but there were the usual setbacks. Hopefully next week I won't post a day late and say, "The new blog shall now be updated every Saturday...until next week when it shall be posted on Sunday."

Here is a poem that I discovered yesterday. It's fantastic for the first of the year, and if you're on a self-discovery type road trip like I am:

In the Produce Aisle
by Kirsten Dierking

In the vivid red
of the fresh berries,
in the pebbled skin
of an emerald lime,
in the bright colorsof things made
to be transitory,
you see the same loveliness you find in your own
delicate flesh,

the lines fanned
around your eyes
charming likethe burnish
of plums,
your life like all the other fragile organics, your soft hand

hovering over
the succulent apple,
you reach for it,
already transforming.

Last post of 2008, or "I couldn't come up with a better post title"

2008-12-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

I've decided to start a different blog. Tomorrow something or other will go up. It will be more of a column type deal, the type of thing I've always wanted to do. I'm not getting rid of this one. This one will be reserved for other things, like the occasional Al-anon angst and hard core nudity. No, not really. Just dirty lymricks.

It's been...well, a terrible year frankly. Not all of it has been a heart breaking, grueling monstrosity of a growth period that feels more like the bad kind of growth, like a tumor, and less like the good kind like a kid's shoe size or a bank account. So I'm trying to reflect on the good moments with the bad, and even how the bad stuff had good outcomes in the end. This is all very vague, I know, but trust me it ain't been pretty. To Chris and the kids' credit, they've been pretty good about it all. I imagine that I haven't been fun to live with lately, and this new person who's emerging isn't exactly what everybody is used to.

I'm still doing well with the book. The kids being home for the holidays has seriously cut into writing time, but I know I'll get back into a good routine soon. And the kids and I have had fun this Christmas. I'm still looking for a full time job. Tulane is suppose to get back to me either way in the next couple of weeks, according to the other editor. He said things move slow over there. Yeesh.

And yes, I'm still in Al-anon. Monday night I went to a meeting in the city and I think I like it better than the Metairie meetings. There are more hippies, and truthfully I feel more at home with them. They're bohemians at heart, and they've still got jobs and they're trying to be functional. I'm still going to go to the Metairie meeting, though. My sponsor and a couple of other awesome people go to that one. I'm still working with the steps. I'm stuck on two. I've been stuck on step two for a couple of months. It seems I'm struggling with the "higher power restoring me to sanity" thing. Could it be that I'm not sure that anything could restore me to sanity? This is possible. But I'm beginning to suspect that the problem is I'm angry with God. That and step one keeps slapping me in the face. All of the things I haven't wanted to look at for years and years and years are taking turns revealing themselves to me, and I have no idea how many of them are still waiting behind the door. Jesus. Christ.

So why is it that meetings, any kind of group meeting, is always in the same kind of room with the same kind of smell? When I was a girl scout we met in a multi-purpose church room with old, mismatched furniture, and a musty smell. It's the same with Al-anon, particularly the place I went to on Monday. The chairs are stained and torn in places. There's a jigsaw puzzle of an autumn forest that's been glued and framed on the wall. There are slogans like "It works if you work it" and "Al-anon spoken here" that look like they were pinned up in 1974. There is a plastic vase of dusty, fake flowers on a green coffee table. And somehow the room is comforting. Maybe it's all the people who smile at you and tell you they're glad you're there, and they don't even know you. Or maybe it's the things they say. I was telling one woman, a much older recovered addict-of-everything with long, oily black hair, a long nose, a football jersey, and a brown leather fanny pack (Did you know they came in leather? Yes, the fanny pack just got classy) that during the day, Monday, I was severely depressed, and she offered me a ziploc bag of dark chocolate M&M's and said, "Oh honey...my Al-anon lows are way worse than my AA lows."
"They are?" I asked.
"Shit!" she said. "When I hit bottom in AA, the worst that happens is I drink til I pass out, or I OD and end up in the emergency room. My Al-anon bottom is when my family's fighting, I tell off my girlfriend, I feel guilty about everything, and I just feel stuff. It sucks."

I agreed and took a handful of M&M's. Leather Fanny Pack seriously put things into perspective. It's when I talk to people like that I remember to be patient with myself, and that during this period where I'm learning how to stick up for myself and set boudaries (rotten, fucking, stinking, no good period of dumb ass time) it's not going to feel good. But eventually, as they say, it will. Just keep the M&M's comin'.

So perhaps 2009 will be better. Or perhaps in 2009 I'll be better. More patient, more self-accepting, less "I must mother the world and several dogs and cats." Peace with God would be nice.

Happy New Year, guys. I'll post the new link tomorrow. Rock 2009, my children!! WOO HOO!!

A Wal-Mart poem

2008-12-22T07:15:00.000-08:00

Dig the line "as if he steered a soap bubble." I love poets.

Coming Out of Wal-Mart
by Mark DeFoe

The child, puny, paling toward albino,
hands fused on the handlebars of a new bike.
The man, a cut-out of the boy, gnome-like,
grizzled, knotted like a strange root,
guides him out, hand on the boy's shoulder.
They speak, but in language softer than hearing.

The boy steers the bike as if he steered
a soap bubble, a blown glass swan, a cloud.

On the walk they go still. Muzak covers them.
Sun crushes. The man is a tiny horse,
gentle at a fence. The boy's eyes are huge
as a fawn's.

He grips hard the orange and pink,
and purple and green striped handlebars,
smiling the fixed sweet smile of the sainted.

The Interview

2008-12-21T06:59:00.000-08:00

I'm typing this in the front room of my house where the dessert table is still littered with crumbs of fudge, chunks of cakes and a punch bowl of eggnog left over from the Christmas party last night. It went well. There is much to clean, but as I told Chris, I have to just sit down and blog for 15 minutes before today's craziness ensues. Ooooh, the craziness.

Anyway, the interview went well. It was weird, though. There were three other applicants, and all four of us were scheduled to show up at the same time. So we all met in this library, sitting at a table facing each other and struggling to make polite small talk when, really, I believe that all any of us wanted to do was stare each other down and say, "They's only room round these here parts fer one of us (spit)!" This is actually how editors talk.

We were interviewed by five doctors who called us into their offices one by one. They seemed like nice guys. Some of them asked tough questions like "where do you see yourself in five years," and "what do you think is your greatest weakness and your greateast strength?" I think I answered the questions well, though. If I don't get the job it was atleast a good interview experience. I got along with them all pretty well and I totally hit it off with the other editor, the guy who's so overwhelmed with work that the doctors decided he needed another editor to help. We joked around the whole time, so I hope he has a say in the hiring. Out of my three competitors, I'm only worried about one of them. He's a little younger, good looking, experienced, and has no children. I think I'm a little more experienced than he is, from what he was saying. But, you know. I worry. The other two I'm not too worried about. One of them showed up 45 minutes late and the other was very mousy and quite dull. The editor and I were talking about what we liked to read and, in an effort to include her in the conversation, I asked her what she enjoyed reading.

She adjusted her glasses and said, "Oh, I don't have time to read."

The editor and I were taken aback. She doesn't have time...to read? Editors...they, like, read. Sigh. With my luck she'll get the job.

There was one doctor who was really funny. In fact, he asked me if I had a sense of humor. I asked him if that was important for this job and he replied, matter of fact, "Yes." Then a few minutes later he asked if I play sports because I "looked athletic." I never know how to take that observation. On the one hand it could be a compliment that means, "You look strong and in shape, yet feminine" and it could be "you look like a pit bull." I'm going to assume he meant the former. I told him I play softball, and I don't know why I said that because I haven't played in a long while. But he seemed interested in that and asked me a couple of questions about it, and then there was this silence. He began jotting something down and I felt pressured to say something so, without thinking this through, I said, "I had a sports injury once. I took a line drive in the head when I was pitching and got a concussion. It was cool, I was proud." He looked at me and then he scribbled something in his notebook and said, "Brain damage."

So besides that everything was smooth. I gave them some samples of my writing. They want someone to start by January so I'm hoping I hear something soon. If I don't get it I'll keep trying, but I hope I do.

A pot luck of topics

2008-12-17T05:32:00.000-08:00

We got a new puppy. I know, I know, don't ask. Let's just say that 1) I've put a cap on allowing any other living, breathing, pooping creatures in the house, and 2) the next time I go into Wal-Mart and there's a man standing near the door with a box of puppies that he says he'll give to the pound if they don't find homes, I will turn around, get back in my car, and not allow myself to leave the house until I'm sure that I can shop without homeless puppies being waved in my face. Her name is Caramel because she looks like caramel. Sometimes I call her Mello. I must say, Chris and the kids are doing a wonderful job taking care of her. Claire even cleaned up after her this morning. They take turns taking her outside and everything. I told them that a new puppy means there will be more responsibility so things have to shape up around here. (notice that I included Chris in this number) It's like the puppy was a catalyst to make them all more responsible for picking up after themselves and helping me take care of the pets. I was kind of beating myself up over the weekend because I thought, "Damn it, just when I reduce the stress in my life, I invite more back in," HOWEVER I've dealt with it well! By putting other people to work!

Here are random thoughts I've had lately:

I wonder if either Emma or Claire will grow up to be one of those girls who gets breast implants and then walks around asking everyone to feel them. If they think their father and I are buying them breasts they're crazy. I didn't eat well for nine months of gestation, nurse them, and take them to the doctor regularly just so they can shove silicon up their chests, they need to work with the boob DNA they got.

Last week's snow has taught us some things. First, snow is wet. Second, snow is cold. Third, cotton gloves and tennis shoes provide no protection from the cold, wet snow, and I can only enjoy a snowball fight for so long before my hands and feet go numb.

Tattoos are great, but honestly, there's a limit. Man who went through tattoos and surgeries to become a tiger, I'm looking at you! http://freaksblog.com/stalking-cat/

Sometimes, do you ever, like, just stand there in the middle of a room and look down at how far your feet are from your head and think, "Jesus, I'm tall. It's almost like my legs don't stop at the toes, they just keep on going." Yeah, I have those thoughts sometimes too.

Sometimes I can't enjoy good writing because it makes me jealous. There, I said it, it's out.

IT'S SNOWING!!!

2008-12-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

It's snowing!!!! I know you yankees are probably going, "Duh, it's December," but it never snows here! It's coming down in sheets! The kids and I have just come in from playing! We're soaked and freezing! It's glorious!!!! Have I typed enough exclamation points????!!!! No emoticon can express what I'm feeling! I'm freezing my ass off!

Some good newses

2008-12-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

First the fantastic news. One of my short stories is going to be in an anthology! During the Faulkner Festival, a Canadian editor approached my writing instructor (who, by the way, just won this year's Faulkner Award! Yay James Nolan!) and said that she wanted to do an anthology of New Orleans writers. She asked if he could send her some of his students' work. I wasn't surprised to hear this. The whole reason I took this workshop is because James constantly encourages his writers to submit their work so over the years his students have had many short stories, essays, and even a few novels published. He asked if he could have one of my short stories to add to the anothology! It's been rejected a few times, but he liked it. The super cool thing about it is that it's going to be printed in English and in French. I'll get to see my story in French, dude! When is this going to happen? I have no idea! Will it now all fall apart because I'm telling people about it? Probably! But James had a lot of good writers to choose from so I'm honored that he asked.

Secondly, I went to a good al-anon meeting last night. Afterwards, my sponsor and I went to get a bite to eat and we went over some questions about the second step. She asked me if I pray differently now than I did before, and I had to think about it. At first I didn't think so, but then I realized that something was very different in the way I pray now than before. I say thank you more often. I say it all the time, and I think it has a lot to do with the serene way I've been feeling (for the most part) lately.

I have to get back to book edits. The kids are in school and the day goes by too fast, man. I will blog again later about nothing in particular, but I just wanted to share the joy.