The Plaster People

I needed weird inspiration, so I decided to go to the sculpture garden. A coffee shop or a library wasn't going to cut it unless they were floating in the sky.

Writing The Water Door Magician has been challenging in a way that writing the other books haven't. Usually I write about people who could be real and the real things that could happen to them. But now I'm writing about a 16 year old locksmith super hero who travels to different worlds by picking locked doors. The most normal thing about her is that she's gay.

The other day when I was making edits, I was struggling too much in the real world to be creative in another. I needed to get out of the house, but I knew I needed something other than the normalcy of a coffee shop with its stuffed chairs and students who possessed no super powers other than the ability to function on two hours of sleep and a hang over.  I needed to be outside - in a garden. A really weird garden. Some place where when I turned a corner, I'd potentially see a bronze monkey holding a baby smoking a cigar.

That's when it hit me - the sculpture garden in City Park! Of course!

And so I went. At first it seemed like a great idea.  I walked into the garden like a hitchhiker, with my backpack on and my eyes scanning for a place to go. I felt different from all the other visitors who were there on a clear, sunny day, touring the art and moving on. I was looking for something I could sit next to and type away, fueled by the art's complexity and other worldliness. It made me feel interesting, and I spent a while walking around high on my own intellectual superiority, which I mistook for being cool.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for. There's some great stuff out there, like the statue of a naked lady poised on one foot, pulling back a bow and arrow. I think it's a goddess or something. Then there's this other one I've always liked that looks like a giant, black chess piece. It's a soldier beating a drum and it looks menacing and vulnerable at the same time. But these things weren't calling me to write next to them.

There's a semicircle path lined with hedges, and a few statues only two of which I clearly remember. One of them is a man in a coat with letters sticking out of his back like porcupine quills and it's called, "Standing man with radiating words." Another one is "Ruth and Naomi," two women standing together, one with her arm around the other. On the edge of the semi circle are two benches, back to back, and on one of them is a life-sized plaster man sitting with his arms folded. On the other side are two plaster women sitting next to each other. These three people look so human, like those plaster molds you might have seen a picture of Pompeii - people caught in a moment in time. Only the plaster Pompeii people are locked in the moment of their deaths, whereas these three are in moments of contemplation. They look so real, with pants that wrinkle at the waist, and arm fat. 

I decided to sit next to the man because he was facing Ruth and Naomi and the Man Radiating With Words. He was so human looking but not human at all, which I kind of respected him for. I opened up my laptop and began to write.

I only ended up staying for an hour. I hadn't accounted for the other live people at the park, how they felt about my plaster friends, and how loud they would be about it. People had two reactions - fear and too much bravado. 

The first person to pass was a lady who looked at the women and said, "That’s too scary.” The guy next to her said, “Oh, these things are all over the place. You get used to 'em.” He sat next to the plaster man and said, "Hey bud, how's it going?" and the lady laughed.

People did that a lot with the plaster man. Men and women would sit next to him and talk to him like they were old friends, or pretend to accidentally sit on him and say, "Oh excuse me." One woman accused the him of groping her.  Then they'd take pictures with him. No one asked me to move and I didn't say anything, I was just trying to write. There are probably a lot of pictures of me now, that those people will look at later and remember that weird girl who bent over her laptop and tried to ignore everyone. Which was impossible.

No one sat next to the plaster women and called them "bud." The men who talked to them said things like, "Hey babe, mind if I put my hand here?” And the women who weren't too afraid to sit next to them or touch them accused them of being bitches or sluts. 

And really, that's what made me go sit somewhere else. The sexual harassment of plaster women actually began to make me feel sick. I know that they're not real and they don't have feelings, and honestly if I saw someone joking around like that in passing I might have laughed too. But after an hour of a variation on the same joke it became disturbing. This is what people will say to someone who can’t move or talk back. This was unbridled human social behavior and it was just mean.

So I went to a coffee shop. It was loud there too, but if anyone was harassing each other it wasn't obvious. There was this one weird, older lady who was giving bizarre life advice to a woman who seemed to be in her early twenties. Older lady was making way to many hand gestures and her blond, gray-streaked hair was falling out of the ponytail on top of her head with every wild jerk. She told her, “Your resistance gets photo transparent.”

I wrote it down because I didn't know what that meant. The young woman she was talking to nodded as if she got it and I wondered if she really did, and if she thought that the loud lady was just as bizarre as I thought she was. I imagined the three of us as plaster people, frozen as we were, Loud Lady with her hair falling and her hands in the air, Nodding Lady leaning forward to listen, and me looking up from my laptop at the two of them.

I wanted to go over to the young woman and tell her how weird everybody is, really. "These things are all over the place," I'd say. "You get used to 'em."

Bags With Big Damn Polka Dots

I often feel threatened by ladies who carry cloth bags with big polka dots on them. Especially at work. The bag says, "I am filled with work things, like maybe a laptop," and the polka dots say, "I am fun and fanciful." This is a mixed message.

My job is not fun. The people I work with are fun, but not the job itself and I am often confused by it. Therefore anything containing work materials should be covered in pictures of "The Scream" or snapshots of the Ebola virus eating a clown. I've seen pictures of the Ebola virus and they pass it off as this squiggly line that looks more like fish bait than something that could kill you. I imagine it looking more like a raccoon with rabies, holding knives. A rabies-infected, armed raccoon would also make for an appropriate picture on a laptop bag for my job.

The polka dot bag (which often comes in pink or teal dots, against a brown background - a color scheme that I also do not understand) hints at femininity that I don't have, and I just automatically assume that women who are more feminine than I am are judging me. This is wrong on my part. For all I know they're thinking, "What a lovely young woman, so proud an unafraid to wear the pants that have been lying on her floor for three days." Or maybe Polka Dot Bag Lady is thinking, "Thank God we don't have the same laptop bag. I really stand out now, which was my goal. I think I'll sew more polka-dots onto this bag when I get home."

My laptop bag is the black one that they gave me at work. It holds the following: 1 laptop, 1 writing notebook, 1 copy of "Courage to Change," 1 pen, and 1 watermelon scented highlighter. I don't carry spare polka-dots, but maybe if I did this would be a good conversation starter and perhaps even a peace-offering for these women that I feel irrationally threatened by.

Me: Hey there! It looks like one of your pink polka dots fell on the floor.

Bag Lady: (gasps) You're right! Awe, it was my favorite one.

Me: I carry extra. Here...

Bag Lady:....This is a picture of a frothing raccoon holding a knife.

Me: Oh, sorry (rummages through black bag). Here...

Bag Lady: It's even pinker and sparklier than the one I had! This is just heaven! Thank you, Tall Plain Girl!

Me: You're welcome, Bag Lady!

And peace was restored to the land. This is a great idea, I'm gonna go cut some polka-dots out of construction paper. It's what they want me to do at work. REALLY.

Shriek! Gasp!

I can never go this long without logging on again because through the click of a couple of keys, I accidently deleted the post Why Gay Moms Should Play Softball. It's gone. And now no one will know why gay moms should play softball.

This is like some sort of blog trauma. It's NOWHERE! It's like I never wrote it. It makes me want to gather my other blog posts around me and hold them!

Or maybe have another cup of coffee for now because I'm at work and I shouldn't be blogging. I should be drinking coffee and resetting passwords. But just so ya know...I'm back. Que the music and the dancing boys!

PS- gay moms should play softball because I do and everyone should copy everything that I do at all times.
PPS - Except maybe that. No, don't imitate that. Now that I've seen you do it, I think it looks weird on me.

Peaches Does Herself and Taps My Boot

I don't want to give you the wrong impression. I'm not as jaded as I was in that last post, the "Valentine's Day at the DMV" one. It's only been a month, but my perspective on love, dating, marriage, soul mates and all that stuff is way, WAY better. Why, just in the last few weeks I've gone from listening to Elliott Smith's "Everything Means Nothing to Me" to Peaches "Fuck the Pain Away."

No really, this is an improvement! You have to be alive to fuck the pain away, people, you have to have ambition. Did I tell you that I met Peaches, by the way? Like, yeah, actually met her.

Ok, I didn't actually meet her. But I touched her shoe with my foot WHILST her shoe was on her foot! It's a great story, so a couple of months ago I was at the Prytania Theater when...wait...you want to know who Peaches is? You don't know this? Oooooooh! Well, no wonder you weren't as impressed as I thought you should be. Ok so Peaches is a musician who looks like this:



Iiiiiiiimpressed? So am I. But on the night that I touched her shoe, she looked more like this:



I'd gone to see the mock rock opera "Peaches Does Herself" and knowing what little I did about her, I'd decided to go by myself. See, Peaches is sexual in a....in an undefinable way. Which is one of the things I like about her. She's a Tomboy sometimes, and then not other times. Just when she feels like it. "Tomboy" is putting it mildly. Sometimes she wears girly lingerie and sometimes she wears a dildo and a beard. She's boldly freakish. Whatever her sexuality is, and I'm not really sure, it's hers and she doesn't care if anyone understands, accepts it, or thinks she's pretty. There's a line in her song "I U She" that says "I don't have to make the choice, I like girls and I like boys." Her movie has hermaphroditic joy, like it's something beautiful instead of perverse, which is totally different from the message I've gotten about sexuality which is if you stray from being a feminine woman or a masculine man, there's something wrong deeply with you.

From my perspective as a person who's trying to let go of a lot of shame and repression, this is a liberating perspective. And also in the movie a lady lights matches and tucks them into her inverted nipples. That is liberating for a whole heap of reasons, not least of which being that I was always told not to put fire near my breasts. The Half Naked Cow Girl set me free (THAT'S HER NAME).

Anyway, as open-minded as my friends are I didn't know if they'd be comfortable so I went alone, and that's how I ended up in an empty row near the back of the theater. No! Not so that I could do that! It really was a coincidence. Which, now that I think about it would have been a great chance for me to take advantage of myself, but I'm just not the kind of girl who would use a vulnerable person like me in a movie theater. However, it proved to be a great spot for accidentally touching a musician's shoe. BECAUSE near the end of movie this woman and this guy filed into my row, and the woman sat down next to me. I thought it was a little weird that they would pay to see a movie where they'd only watch the last ten minutes of it, but I decided to not judge them or turn my head to look at them. Except for when I crossed my legs, and accidentally tapped the woman's shoe with my boot.

"Sorry," I whispered, glancing at her quick enough to notice that the sides of her head were shaved but in the dark I didn't recognize details of her face.

I don't think she heard me or even noticed that I'd tapped her shoe. Since I'm quiet and hyper sensitive to touch it's possible that only I noticed the tiniest tap of a pin drop point on her foot, and only I heard my squeak of an apology. So I let it go and focused on the last five minutes of the movie, where Peaches rides a tricycle contraption through the streets of Berlin repeating the line "Fuck the pain away."

Just before the lights came on, the man in my row got up and the woman next to me followed him to the front of the theater. And then he introduced her as Peaches.

I'll never wash that boot again.

She was there for a Q&A thing at the end of the movie. I didn't ask any questions, though that would have been a great opportunity to actually talk to her so that I could tell you guys something more exciting than "I touched her shoe and she didn't notice." Though I'd liked the movie, I couldn't think of anything to ask that had anything to do with it.

"Do you ever feel shy or embarrassed?" That would have been my question. But the questions from the audience were like, "Was the mutilated dildo custom made?" "How did that woman stick matches in her tits?" And then something about feminism. "What do you think the difference is between your style and, say, Lady Gaga's?" I don't remember how the question was worded. It was something about female sexuality in main stream pop culture vs. Peaches. You would think that an interesting question like that, especially since I have daughters, would stick with me rather than "How did that woman stick matches in her tits?" but here we are. I do remember, however, the woman starting the question and Peaches cutting in with, "You're going to ask me something about feminism, aren't you?" She didn't say it in an irritated way. It sounded like she could just tell. I guess she gets that a lot.

I've been listening to a lot of girl music that I've lumped into a category called "I don't give a fuck." It's not all one genre, just has that same theme. Joan Jett, The Donnas, Peaches, and The Pack A.D. are a few. I needed raw, dynamic women who are funny and pretty sometimes but not all the time. Just like the rest of us.

So here are the questions I would have asked Peaches if I had no problem speaking in front of a theater full of people:

1) Are you really confident about your sexuality and your body or is that a stage thing, and if you really are then how do you do that?

2) Did you always not care what people think or is that something that you had to work on?

3) What do you think healthy sexuality is?

4) Did you sit next to me because you thought I was cute in the dark?

5) Hee hee.

Valentine's Day at the DMV

I wrote this in the back cover of Singing School by Robert Pinsky while I was waiting at the DMV.

I took the day off of work to come here. I'm sitting in a plastic chair in a row of many other rows with other people who are dressed against the cold. There are red streamers hanging from the ceiling because it's Valentine's Day and I think the government workers love us. I brought this book with me. It's kind of an anthology called Singing School, and I'm finding that only some poems are working with the rhythm of this place.

William Blake's "A Question Answered" - no. Nothing by Emily Dickinson either, or any other poem that sounds like something you might hum to a baby.

But "Howl" is working. It fits somehow with the electronic calling of alphanumeric names and the monotone questions.

"Now serving E414 at counter number 5."

Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch!

"Now serving A016 at counter number 18."

Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!

"Sir, do you wear glasses?"

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!

I look up at the electronic board above my head. It's blinking bright red letters and numbers. A014 is next but that doesn't tell me how soon it will be for me because they're not calling in any kind of order. A015 doesn't follow A014. It's H218 next.

I wonder, because it's Valentine's Day and the streamers are suggesting that I think about these things, if I'll ever have love in my life again. Sometimes I wonder if I'm even capable of feeling it anymore. This isn't something I'm sad about. What's more sad is how detached I feel from the question.

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Nothing makes me feel less human than sitting in a room full of other humans who are waiting to be processed. Sometimes names are called, I guess the ones who are at the end of the process and their licenses are done.

But this is still better than love. This is still better than flowers and behind them all of the uncertainty, and my own bullshit. I am B105, waiting. Which window? Tell me when and which window? I'll wait in my row until the harsh red light flashes B105. It's preferable to chalky, tasteless hearts with alphanumeric codes like "Text u l8r." Staying single sometimes feels like self-love and a public service at the same time - and that perspective seems self-pitying and overly dramatic to me. I'm not really sure how to feel at all.

Dreams! Adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Ok, so maybe I'm not so detached. I'm just not sure that I can feel anything like that again. Maybe I fit with the rhythm of this place today. I'm ok with the little headaches of cracked plastic chairs and Window 11 now serving C135.

real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell. They jumped off the roof!

I was called to Window 18. And the computer is down. Cocksucker in Moloch. I dream Angels.

27 Year Pause

I've written so many things in the last two months but my Vigilantes don't know it. So I'm writing this at work just to say hi, and of course, the phone is ringing. This ringing phone, my loves, is the reason for my great absence from this blog. I put the caller on hold just so I can finish this paragraph. Just a second...

The are times I wonder if I'll only be able to write consistently when I retire at 65. Assuming I can retire. Then I think, "But then I won't be sexy." As if it makes a difference that I'm a sexy writer, but apparently I equate writers with leather-clad rock stars and I just can't imagine myself with high heel boots and spike-studded leather when I'm 65. Though I guess it's good to have long term goals.

This is what I've accepted about myself recently - I hate self care. Regular bathing, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, lawn maintenance, and not quitting my job on the spot are things that just don't jive with my nature. Most of life is the daily maintenance of self and space, and I've just got to face the fact that I fucking hate it. I do those things, but I despise those things, and I can't make myself stop doing them but I'm going to stop expecting to suddenly enjoy or appreciate them. I would like to think that I could evolve into a functional human female who thrives off of pruning, preening, filling in calenders, and praying thanks to God for my 8-5 job every day, but that shit just ain't gonna happen. If left to my own devices I would shower twice a week, never clean, quit my job, take a bat to my cubicle, and spend the rest of my waking days writing, falling asleep, and then going out at night to hear music. I wouldn't even take a lover, and really, with the two showers a week that problem would solve itself.

But since I've committed to the day routine care of my self, space, and those around me, the blog has suffered. I don't have time to do all of those things, finish my book, and blog. The miracle is, even though I'm doing the practical thing for my kids, I don't resent my kids. This is just the time in my life when I have to remain a functional adult for them so that they have the things they need, and that's ok. That's actually the thought that keeps me from taking a bat to my cubicle.

When I turn 65, I promise you guys, more work will pour out of me than you can handle. In 27 years, when I am sitting on my couch, curled up with my laptop, in my spike-studded leather, that's when the work will happen without pause. Right now I have to work around the pauses.

Which is why I'm excited to tell you THAT I FINISHED THE BOOK!!! The Water Door Magician is done! I'm having a locksmith friend read it and make sure I got all of the technical details right, but it'll be ready to send out after that. Everybody get out your leather high heels and celebrate!

Shoeshank Redemption

Holy fucking shitkickers, it's almost been a month since I've written. There's the draft of a post I forgot about on the 6th called "Shawshank Fashion Tips" but it's unfinished. I'll get into that later.

So...how have you been? Feel free to answer in the commentary or just speak to your laptop as if I can hear you. It doesn't make you crazy, it's kind of like talking to the other cars in traffic. If you like my logic because it justifies your insane behavior, feel free to use it. I always do.

That last paragraph made no sense whatsoever.

So you're good? Awesome! What have I been up to the last four weeks? I've stood in my sister's wedding, taken the GRE, and finished the third draft of The Water Door Magician. Oh and I cut my hair. Now I'm impatiently waiting to see if I got into grad school.

What do you mean that's no excuse not to blog? Aaaah! Thought I couldn't really hear you, did you fucker? Well, I did and I will have you know that all of those things take a great amount of concentration and leaves very little time for bloggery. What? No, I haven't been seeing anyone, why do you always assume that's why I haven't written in a while? I've really, actually, genuinely been busy .But now I am back and ready to talk about how the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" helped me pick out a pair of bridesmaid shoes.

Shoeshank Redemption

It was the morning of my sister's wedding day, and at 7:00 I thought I had everything ready to meet her at the salon where my sisters and I were getting our hair and makeup done. And anyone who reads this blog regularly should know how much I have to love my sister to get my hair done and put on makeup. Anyone who does not, can read this as a tutorial: Femme Failure

No let me say, I really, really love my baby sister. I would have done just about anything she needed me to do for her wedding day. Having said that, I hate getting my hair done. The term "updo" makes me want to shave my head. Because when I have this done to me, someone, usually a loud woman with long, stabby nails, rakes her fingers through my hair, ties it up on top of my head, and sprays it with something that they also use as a pesticide on crops. Then she tells me that I look really good when I honestly I think I would look better if I dropped my hair in a fish tank.

And don't even fucking get me started on makeup.

This was the hesitation I was feeling when I gathered my things to meet my sisters for a morning of artificial beauty before the afternoon wedding. While I was taking stock of everything I needed to bring to the car, I think I might have actually been chanting, "I love Stephanie, I love Stephanie, I love Stephanie" when I realized that I had forgotten to buy shoes.

I hate shoe shopping. Surprise!

But not enough to skip it completely when I'm the maid of honor in a wedding. I spent about five minutes beating myself up. "I can NOT believe you forgot to do this. How on EARTH could you forget the shoes? What are you going to wear? Black Chucks?...well, those would look good, but you CAN'T you just can't! It's 7:00 in the morning, you have to meet April and Stephanie at 10:00. No place is open practically until then!"

On top of a time crunch there was also the matter of my feet. I'm six feet tall. My feet are huge. Well, long at least, just like the rest of me. Shoes can be hard to find. I needed a pair of dress shoes that would match a lavender bridesmaid's dress. In two hours. In the morning.

So I hit Target. There was almost nothing to choose from, and keep in mind that it was about a week and a half after Christmas so I was left to pick through the odd ones that hadn't sold. I was trying not to buy heels, heels make me, at minimum, 6'2." The conversation in my head, while I desperately scanned the shelves for size 11's, went like this:

"Lavender...what goes with lavender? Silver? There isn't anything silver in my size - wait! Sparkly silver Converse rip-offs! YES! No, no, bad Genevieve, bad, choose wedding shoes. White? There are no white dress shoes. Does the fashion industry actually stick to the no white after Labor Day bullshit?...hold on...nude. Nude heels. Heels? No flats? There are no flats. Does that go with lavender? I...I honestly don't know."

I didn't. God help me, I could not figure out whether a nude heel would match a lavender dress. In my moment of crisis I realized three things. 1) I didn't have a choice, I was running out of time, 2) the dress came down long enough to cover them for the most part, and 3) the line from Shawshank Redemption, "seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?"

Let's set aside how ridiculously fitting it is that I would use information from a prison movie to make a fashion decision, and just focus on the relief I felt.

"Yes!" I thought. "That's brilliant!...Maybe I SHOULD get the sparkly silver sneakers! Who'd know?" I didn't. I did the responsible thing and bought the ugly heels, which I think is what I was supposed to do as a maid of honor anyway, since it is my job to make the bride look good. And I got my hair and makeup done. Then we went to my aunt's house to get dressed for the wedding, and my sister brought out her rain boots.

"What are you doing?" I asked April, who pulled a rubber black and white checkered boot onto her foot.

"It's muddy out there, dude. We gotta walk across the grass, I ain't wearing heels."

April let down her dress, which covered the boots completely. Stephanie laughed and took pictures. She thought it was great.

Mother. Fucker.

PS- The wedding was beautiful. And because it was at my aunt's house the three of us hit the trampoline in the backyard during the reception. It's not really a family wedding unless you're on a trampoline in your bridesmaid's dress, trying not to step on the bride's gown while your other your sister does a front flip.

Rain and Leftover Fireworks

The rain's been around for days, not storming but steadily falling and the sky is gray and bleary like its eyes are half open.

When the weather is like that it makes me think that the sky is in a mood. Like it's a person that feels weird. Not sad, well maybe a little sad, but that's what's so weird about it. It isn't depressed and it doesn't have anything to be bummed about, but still it feels kind of eh and it can't shake it.

It fell on my windshield last night like little taps on the shoulder. It was the end of New Year's Day and I was driving from a friend's house with a neat sprinkling of raindrops on the car that fit like a guitar pick tucked between strings or a lighter in a box of cigarettes. They clung to the glass just long enough to let me know they'd been there before they were wiped away. With them gone I could see my neighbors dragging the Christmas leftovers to the trash, and other drivers whose hangovers were almost gone. The rain drops gathered again and splintered in green when a firework exploded. It was even brighter than it would have been at the Ball Drop because it had been waiting since midnight to be shot off, and finally here was its chance.

Maybe the sky's not feeling weepy and weird, maybe it's just wringing out what's leftover like the rest of us. It's a new year but also the end of another day with rain and leftover fireworks. I turned off the radio and listened to the tires splash, with intermittent clear visions of the wet, black road ahead of me through my half open eyes.

Essay or Death

Do you ever not act on something because it means a lot to you and you really love it? Even though you are aware of how little sense that makes?

Yesterday I blogged about how I'm having a rough time writing my statement of purpose for grad school, and today is no better. So I texted a writer friend who's also applying to the program and I said, "I'm afraid that I'm not good enough, that my writing is boring, and that I'm too old to be a writer, like it's too late." She said there's no such thing, and reminded me that I've already been published so I'm actually a writer already. Then I shared the same fears with my coworker James and he said, "If you don't go to grad school for those reasons, I will kill you." Then my writer friend said, "I'll kill you too," and then she texted me a kissy symbol, like "I'll kill you if you don't do this, love ya, bye."

So now I HAVE to apply to grad school or I will die. And my friends will not make this a "she died quietly in her sleep" type of death, no, they're going to toss me from a moving car and into a Miley Cyrus video. So I just gotta do it, I just gotta write it. I'm a writer, I can write this, right? Right? Of course I can!

Why do I want to get an MFA in creative writing? Because...ok. Because I want to learn more about writing, and to become as good as I possibly can. Because I love teaching it and I want to eventually become a professor. Because I would get to share what I know and read other people's work. Because I feel at home at college, I practically grew up on a college campus when my mom went to grad school. Because writing can be so solitary and I want to be part of a writing community, more than just talking to other writers on-line I want to meet them and know who they are. Because it's the career I want more than anything, it's not just a job, it's my vocation. Because my friends will kill me if I don't.

Ok, I need to say all of that, but say it better and make it two pages long. More coffee is necessary.

UPDATE: This is rough draft is honest, enthusiastic, and so fucking cheesy all at the same time. I might make myself vomit if the words "wisdom" and "experience" end up in my final draft.

UPDATE 2: Can't I just say, "Lemme in your program or I punch you in the face?" No, that won't work, it has to be two pages long.

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this post is to write a rough draft of my statement of purpose. Oooooooooooooooooooh God. I hate writing this stuff. It's for my grad school application. Did I mention that? At statement of purpose for my grad school application for the U.N.O.'s MFA program in creative writing?...That sentence I just wrote was poorly written and boring and there were too many prepositions in it. And the over editing begins...

This should be easy to write. I have a lot to say and there's a whole heap of reasons why I want a Masters in Creative Writing, I just feel squirrely and restless when I sit down to write this thing. I haven't had to do academic writing in six years, I'm used to my own messy style now.

So first I'm going to write this messy. Then I can go back and edit. Ok, here it goes.

Dear Santa Claus,
How have you been? Did you have a nice summer? How is your wife? I have been extra good this year so I have a long list of presents that I want.

Wait, why does that sounds familiar? That's not a statement of purpose! That's Sally's letter to Santa from "A Charlie Brown Christmas!" I'm already plagiarizing! And it's not even applicable! OOOOOHHH, I'm never going to get this! Never! NEVER! (wrings hands, hurls self in front of a train)

Ok. Now that the despair is out of my system I can try again.

Four score and seven-

No. Take three.

Dear U.N.O.,

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the moviehouse, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

(Gives self a long, baffled stare in which I question how I was even able to pass high school.) Genevieve...that is the opening line from The Outsiders. I know that you feel awkward writing this. I know you feel insecure about applying for grad school in the first place because you're afraid that you're not good enough. But all you have to do today is tell them why you want to do it. So write about that and we'll edit it later. Write it, you know, casual.

Casual?

Yes.

Ok. Here I go.

Dear Fuckbuckets,

Please consider me for your creative writing workshop. I love to make up stories and new words, as is evident by my calling you a fuckbucket when I don't think that's a real thing. I just made that up all on my own. That's just a sampling of the many nicknames you'll get from me when I am part of your workshop. I love to write and to learn new things about writing. I have also recently taught a workshop and enjoyed that experience. I like sharing what I know and learning more about writing through my students. That workshop and the tutoring I've done on the side has shown me that I would love to teach, so ultimately I would like to be a creative writing professor, and with the help of you clever bitches I can also become the best writer I can be. I thought I wanted to be a librarian for a while but then I realized that I don't want to shelve books, I want to write the books that people shelve. I want to be part of the writing community and publish all of the time, and have other writers and readers in New Orleans say things like, "Oh yeah, I know Genevieve Rheams, I saw her do a reading at Burger King." And then they'll want to take my class! See how that would work? And I would talk about U.N.O. all the time, like about how I got my undergrad and master's degree there, although I'll probably get my doctorate some place else. But let's not get ahead of ourselves because I haven't even finished my application yet and so far I'm a little freaked out about it. So my purpose is - I get into your program and become the best writer ever. Deal?

Thanks,
Genevieve

Sigh. God help me.

Young Adult Christmas

I haven't written about my kids much because they're getting past the age when I can write about them without disclosing personal stuff. Their issues are different. When they were three and resisting potty training, it might have been funny to write about that, but they weren't reading my blog and neither were their friends. In fact, none of them were reading anything, so they couldn't even accidentally come across it. Now if one of them Googles "gender confusion" or  "prison bitches" they can find my blog. Also now their issue might be staying up at night upset about ___ and though I might find it funny and worth blogging about, they take it very seriously.

Yes, sometimes I find the things that they're upset about funny. Of course they're upset about ___. Everyone gets upset about ___ when they're fourteen, and now that I'm thirty___ years old and not fourteen I find it amusing that I was ever worried about such a thing. I don't laugh while they're upset of course. Just on the internet with you.

This is where fairness comes in. Because if they wanted to they could find my blog by Googling the term "magic space bears," read about how I find some of their anxiety funny, and then write a fair rebuttal in the comment section. Or start a blog of their own called "My Mother's Lies." But I don't think I have anything to worry about because if they Google "magic space bears" the first thing they'll find is Hyperbole and a Half. I can't help it if they prefer Allie Brosch to me. Still, I will leave ___ to them and continue to only slander myself.

But I will say that the mood has changed a lot in my house since the kids turned 10, 12, and 14. There are sometimes when I look at them that I can actually see their hormones chugging Red Bulls and doing mad skateboard stunts all over the inside of their bodies.

The skateboarders inside of them make them sullen and moody. I don't blame them. Their bodies have been high jacked. They're beginning to change from the inside out in ways that they feel their mother never properly explained. Because there, um, might have been some information she skipped.

"Mom, what is __?"

"Oh? ___? That's normal."

(Child looks horrified) "It is?"

"Yeah. I forgot to mention that part."

"How did you forget to tell me about ___???"

"Because I don't really love you."

"WHAT??"

"Just kidding. But you're not worried about ___ anymore, are you?"

For my complete parenting guide tips, look for my new book, When Mom Makes Us Laugh Nervously. 

Though my daughters' moods have been up and down I really thought that Christmas would even them out. Because you know, NO ONE gets bummed around the holidays. But really, it's usually such a fun time for us. We have our little rituals, like getting hot chocolate and going to see the lights in City Park. And running loose through the tree lot. They don't even look at the trees except in passing, they just run like maniacs through the rows and giggle, while I pick out our tree. Then I call them to me when I find one and we all vote on it. It's a giggly time in general I would say. They giggle when I take out the decorations, they giggle when I put up the lights on the house. They giggle when I get frustrated from untangling wires. That's a whole lot of smiling.

But this year those smiles have been replaced by mostly blank looks. And when it's not blankness it's frustration, as if they are all untangling wires in their heads. Mostly I think I've done a good job with not taking their bad moods personally. I know that they're all changing in complicated ways and it's hard. But I felt hurt when no one showed enthusiasm about Christmas this year. When the decorations came out and no one cracked a smile. When I mentioned stringing lights on the house and no one looked up from their electronic devices. I wondered if I'd done something wrong, or if I'd had more money I could buy cooler stuff instead of the same old stuff that we put up every year.

"The tree will be new," I thought.

I had an idea. I would take us all out to dinner, get some new decorations to replace the old ones that were falling apart and then we'd hit the tree lot. This was brilliant.

This was a terrible idea. First we argued for a half hour over where to eat. Whenever I mentioned a place none of them would agree on anything. Claire doesn't like Mexican, Emma doesn't like sushi or Chinese and Christopher doesn't like any place he's never been to before. I realized that the problem was that I was leaving it up to them so I announced that we were going to Applebees, they groaned about it and I told them just to be quiet and eat it. The main problem with this that I didn't mention is that I don't like Applebees. It was just the only place I could think of that was nearby and had a vast assortment of American and Americanized versions of ethnic foods for the kids to choose from. Which is why I don't like it.

There was minimal groaning during dinner, mostly from my 12 year old. Then we went shopping. More Emma groaning. So much that I couldn't focus on what we were looking for. Then we went to the tree lot.

There was no running. There were no smiles. They browsed through the trees. I watched them walking through the rows and considering the merchandise like grown people and was horrified that they didn't take the time to run wildly. It was a relief when my son finally grinned and said, "I'm going to look over here," and tore off running to the other side of the lot.

We picked a tree and by the time we tied it to the roof and drove home, I was too tired to decorate it. No one protested. So we gave it water and left it bare that night. And the next night. The day after that they went to their dad's for the weekend and I couldn't believe it wasn't decorated. I'm the kind of Christmas woman who has her tree, decorations and lights up within a week after Thanksgiving and here it was well into December and I had a naked tree in my living room. I thought about decorating it myself while they were gone but that just felt so lonely.

It made me wonder why it is I really do what I do at Christmas. Do I do it for them? Is all of this some kind of sacrifice and now I'm feeling like a martyr because, like the Applebees compromise, these aren't things that I really want? What is it that I really like to do at Christmas when left to my own devices?

So I experimented while they were gone. I took out the outdoor lights and began stringing them up. And I giggled. I drank hot chocolate. I played the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. It turns out that the things I share with the kids are the things I really love to do, and I would do them anyway.

But I missed them. I thought about them the whole time I strung up lights. I realized that the things I really like doing might not be the things they like. The holidays are just like anything else. They don't have to like what I like. Soon they'll be old enough to make their own traditions and figure out what it is they like to do. I had been trying to force them to enjoy the same old stuff and it wasn't working.

I spent Saturday afternoon fixing up the house, and took pictures of the end result and texted them to people. I was like a kid proud of a drawing. I had decided to decorate the tree that Sunday before the kids came home, and then I got a phone call from Claire.

"What's up, kid?" I said.

"I miss you," she said.

"Awe. Well, I miss you too. Hey, did you see the picture of the lights I sent you?"

"Yeah, they look good! You haven't decorated the tree yet, have you?"

"Well, I was going to. You want me to wait?"

"Yeah, don't do it without me."

So I waited until they came home. It's a rare day when all of their mood swings line up in the same direction, but that day it was happy. We decorated the tree while the latest episode of "Once Upon a Time" played in the background, which is a little different for us. Usually it's something like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, and not something with evil wizards, but that's ok. All four of us were smiling.

Unexpected Expectations

Earlier today, out of nowhere and for no reason, I had the following thought, "When I get into a relationship again, I'm going to need a therapist and a tranquilizer gun." I don't know what that means and so I don't know whether to take that as a sign of progress or psychosis. I guess it would depend on whether or not the tranquilizer gun would be for me or the other person. Scratch that, neither scenario is good.

A tranquilizer gun, really? Do I expect to be with a lion? Do I think there's a chance I might become a werewolf? Exactly how much do I think I'll need to tone shit down? Sex jokes aside, really, seriously, what kind of problem do I think will arise where the only solution will be to shoot someone unconscious? I'm not planning on dating a fledgling vampire or a circus bear.

What bothers me is that I'm the one who had the thought and I don't know what it means. I started out wanting to blog about getting a Christmas tree with my kids and then BAM! relationship epiphany with guns. This is why the therapist will be necessary.

All this reminds me, there was a quote by Gustave Flaubert in The Writer's Almanac the other day that I must share. He said, "Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." So maybe my relationship thought was me...working? Was I writing it? Was it a character's thought, a character who's nothing like me, who's short and loud and good with math, three things that are totally and utterly unlike me? Except for the one thing we have in common which is that we're terrified of relationships? Oh dammit!!!

Oh well. Christmas tree post to follow tomorrow, a story in which no one will be tranquilized.

Open Note to Self

Dear Genevieve,

You can not expect to get up at 4:30 in the morning if you keep going to bed at 11:30 at night. It is both unrealistic and demented. I know that you pride yourself on your ability to function on very little sleep, but I'm afraid that your perspective is horribly flawed. Mostly because of the term "function."

Sure, you're as capable of not sleeping as the next person, but the image you have of yourself as some kind of super human who can power nap between 3-5:00 in the morning, fix breakfast, clean the kitchen, write for two hours, shower, get the kids to school, put in a full day's work and then come home to do it all over again in the evenings is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. You will die.

I know how this misconception got started. Remember when you were 18 and you would stay up until 5:00 in the morning with your friends, and then show up to work at the coffee shop at 6:30?  You have this memory of how you were able to open the shop, work until 3:30, and then go back out again the next night. In reality what happened was you staggered around deliriously sipping iced coffee, which did nothing to curb your exhaustion, and then told your boss you were sick and had to go home by 10:00 am. And then you went out again that night. Perhaps if you had become addicted to cocaine you could have pulled off the kind of bad ass social life that you think you accomplished, but you didn't. If your manager at the time hadn't been constantly stoned you would have definitely been fired, and so the only way you really succeeded in this scenario is that you didn't lose your job because the cafe was run by substance abusers who were passive about their dysfunctional employees.

Your only responsibilities in the fall of 1993 were to serve coffee, pay your car insurance, party, and listen to Nirvana, and you barely had the energy to do those things. You weren't even in college yet! You had almost NOTHING to do, and you were tired.

This is the person that you are thinking of when you imagine yourself as someone who can get a whole lot of stuff done on a few hours of sleep. If you hadn't been so sleep deprived at the time, you might now have a clearer memory of how you really were but this is not the case. Your memory of yourself is a lie.

This brings us up to speed. It is 20 years later and I know this might come as a shock, but your body has aged. And your workload has fucking exploded. You to go to work, come home, cook dinner, help the kids with homework, force the kids to help you tidy the house, and then force them to go to bed. Then you have time for yourself, but if you're going treat yourself to some you time until 11:30, then you need to sleep until 6:00 and not 4:30. While it's admirable to try to wake up with the Amish and get an hour's worth of writing in before chaos of the day begins, it just ain't gonna happen unless you go to bed for 9:00. And that's not happening if you decide to start watching "Dr. Who" at 10:00.

But that's what you did last night, and so now you are on your lunch break and you are ready for bed. This is not good. I suggest that you go to a Starbucks and have a stoned 18 year old serve you a latte.

Stoned 18 year old baristas. The circle of life continues.

Code: Face Pain

I work for a large, unnamed hospital. I would name it but then I'd have to kill the internet. I don't want to do that, so I'll just tell you about me, James and Brian.

James and Brian are my coworkers, and we survive our positions as Data Stewards for the unnameable hospital, which I've decided to call Blinky, by acting like 3rd graders. This involves a lot of these kinds of conversations, that always center around the same insult:

Me (approaching them): What's up?

James: Your face.

Brian: Oh! Burn!

So to back up here for a second, or actually, to back up a number of years, the three of us are college graduates. None of us majored in the thing that would have prepared us for the job that we do. In fact, none of us are sure what we do. When people ask me what I do for a living the following conversation ensues:

Stranger at a party (he is standing across from me wearing a suit and holding a martini. I don't go to parties where classy people stand around holding martinis, I'm just making up that scenario because I go to swankier parties in my mind): So what do you do?

Me: I'm a Data Steward One.

Stranger at a Party: What's that?

Me: I think it's something to do with medical information.

And I think I'm right. I am also right in that there are levels for whatever it is that I do. Me, Brian and James are "Data Steward One." One of our other coworkers is a Data Steward Two. We don't know how she got to the next level. And we also don't have a clear understanding about what she does so we don't know how she's stewarding the data at a higher level than we are.

So not only are we unable to describe what it is that we do, we don't know what anyone else around us does either.

"James," I said the other day. "How do I find a patient's last x-ray in the new system?"

"I dunno, I don't work in that system. Ask Latasha, I think she does."

"Right! Latasha, she knows everything!...What does she do?"

"Um...she knows shit."

Latasha is the person in the office who is a treasure trove of information. She's familiar with all of the database systems, she knows key people in other departments, and she can switch out toner in the printer. But none of us know what she really does except that she knows everything. So we have decided that that is her job. Omnipotent Coworker One.  Every office has one. Find out who this person is and bake her cookies.

Just as an aside, I can tell that I am pretty much useless at my job because when I typed out the term "database systems" in that last paragraph, I became confused. I'm not really sure what a database system is. It's one of those terms that alludes me like "patient encounter" and "EMR." You know what an EMR is? It's an "electronic medical record." I just gave you information that I learned a year after I started working with EMR's. Do you know what a patient encounter is? I don't know either, but I can tell you that it doesn't involve aliens as (I feel) the word "encounter" clearly implies.

Anyway, it wasn't Latahsa who taught us the code for face pain, which has been the single most useful piece of information that me and my boys have learned at Blinky. Our coworker Pete does something with medical codes. We don't know what that thing is, but he's at a Level Two with it so we're impressed but we don't know why.

One day I was stewarding the data and I came across a patient encounter where the chief complaint was "Pain in the Face." As sympathetic as I usually am whenever I have to read a diagnosis, I could not stop laughing at Pain in The Face. For one thing, it's just funny to imagine saying.

"What brings you in today?"

"My face hurts."

No reason. A brick didn't land on it. This pain is mysterious.

Secondly, there's an accusatory nature to the diagnosis as if this patient is a pain in everyone else's face.

"What brings you in today?"

"I'm a pain in the face."

Now I swear, I really do care about other people's pain. I also care about their privacy so I didn't tell anyone who this patient was. But I did run up excitedly to Brian and James and said, "Guys! Guys! Face pain is a real thing. It's a real diagnosis!"

"No!" said James.

"Yes!" I said.

"It's a medical condition?" asked Brian.

"Apparently so!"

Pete did some quick typing in whatever program it is that he uses. "There's a code for it," he told us.

"NOOOO!" we said.

"Yep. Medical code 784.0. Pains, face."

We were delighted. Pete then emailed us the different medical listings for face pain.They are:

Pains, face 784.0
Pain in the face 784.0
Chronic pain in face 784.0
Atypical face pain 350.2

Our minds boggled. How different is "Pains, face" from "Pain in the face?" Why is Chronic pain in the face the same code as (what we assume is) occasional pain in the face? And! And! What is atypical face pain? Is "atypical" describing the pain or the face?

The fact is, people, that we just don't know enough about face pain.

We have, however, taken our 3rd grade sense of humor to a whole new level of geekiness.

"What's up James?"

"784.0."

"Oh! Burn!"

We are at Geek Level 16. Though it's not reflected on our employee badges, you can tell when you talk to us just how advanced we are. We are not 784.0. We are definitely 350.2, and we're not looking for a cure.

Days Are People Too

Monday has really been living up to its reputation lately. It's like it's not even trying. It's saying, "Everything you have heard about me is true. I'm going to start off difficult, become more complicated, make the hours go by slow, and end unsatisfactorily." This means that you are going to be late for work, your pants will tear, your boss will fuss at you, and you will get your period early. Even if you are male. ESPECIALLY if you're male because that's what kind of a bad ass Monday is becoming.

This is partly Sunday's fault. I've been listening really close on Sunday afternoons and based on my rising anxiety level, I think that Sunday is thinking up evil stuff for Monday to do and she's giving him ideas. This covers Sunday's reputation perfectly because Sunday can continue to look peaceful and devout, but really she spends all day being nice to your face while she silently plots for you to have a terrible tomorrow. Sunday is the kind of person who will shake your hand at church and then tell everyone about that one thing you did in high school. You remember that thing you did that one time? No? Well, Sunday does and she's blogging about it. She didn't even go to high school with you! She just dug this stuff up!

The guy you want is Tuesday. Tuesday is that guy who doesn't call a lot of attention to himself because he doesn't need to. He's always there after Monday, compassionate and forgiving. He says, "I know it's been hard. We're going to get through this." Tuesday would lend you money and tell you not to worry about it, and if you told him a secret he'd never tell anybody, not even his best friends, Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday and Thursday give Tuesday shit sometimes for being such a quiet goody goody but then they remember that time that Saturday relapsed and OD'd in the bathroom and he was the only one who kept it together until the ambulance got there. Saturday has been madly in love with Tuesday since he saved her, but she's too much of a party girl for his taste.

Wednesday doesn't like to take sides. She reads a lot and you can talk to her, but you can tell if you look into her face that she's not really listening. She's wondering if she wants beans with dinner. This isn't because she doesn't care about you, she just doesn't know how to handle things. Her inability to handle conflict makes it nice on a day when there's not much going on, but if something comes up you'll look at Wednesday,  and she'll shrug and tell you it's almost over, and you'll spend the rest of the day wondering when Friday's going to get here.

Thursday has gender confusion. If you are going to have a random, out-of-character sexual experience it's going to happen on a Thursday and it's going to be amazing.

Then Friday is here. Friday wears no shoes. He doesn't want you to worry about anything at all, even the stuff that you should probably be worried about, like that itch you've developed since your random sexual experience on Thursday. Friday will bake pot brownies for you and if you don't eat them, he doesn't get his feelings hurt - more for him. He's endlessly supportive, and a good listener like the hippie dad you never had. But you probably shouldn't take his life advice.

Saturday is a really good person which is why it's hard to be mad at her for throwing up in your car. She tries to be just a regular 9-5 job, stand up kinda woman who balances her checkbook and eats right, and sometimes she does, but then out of the blue she'll toss back three slices of cheesecake and a bottle of tequila. She's funny, she's beautiful, there are songs written about her, and sometimes you wish a Saturday night would never end, but inevitably it does and if Saturday's not careful she will show up drunk on Tuesday's lawn. It's a shame because if it weren't for Saturday's self-destructive impulses she and Tuesday would make a great couple. But it's not a surprise Saturday turned out like she did when sandwiched in between a free-spirited hippie like Friday and a stuck up bitch like Sunday.

Tuesday would like me to tell you that he does have his flaws. He fails to return text messages in a timely manner. If you do miss him, though, it's ok. He'll return in seven days. Unless Monday has anything to say about it.

Schooled in Dr. Who

I watched "Dr. Who" the other day, thus ending my 38 year spree of avoiding it. I wasn't PURPOSELY avoiding it that whole time. I spent the first two years being a baby, the next year watching "Scooby Doo" and the last 35 being irresponsible. Until now.

Inspired by Google's tribute to 50 years of Dr. Who the other day, I finally decided to watch it. I needed to have questions answered, and understand pop culture references that other people seem to know that I did not. And British ones at that! Like, what is a Dalek? What is a Tardis? Is it medicine? It sounds like medicine. "For massive head wounds, I use Tardis Complete." And what is a Time Lord? It sounds cool. But what IS it? Can I be one?

It turns out, for those of you who have also spent the last 38 years spinning a circle with your eyes closed, that a Tardis is a spaceship/time machine disguised cleverly as a Police Box, and a Time Lord is Dr. Who. I'm glad I could clear those things up for you. But don't ask me what those Dalek things are, I've only watched three episodes and none of them have featured Daleks. I can only deduce from the pictures I've seen that they are vending machines that attack.

But Dr. Who relics from the past brought up another question, which postponed my watching it for so long. Which version to watch? There are approximately 58,206 versions of Dr. Who. It's kind of like Sherlock Holmes. Not only are there several different adaptations of Sherlock Holmes movies, mini-series, and shows, but there are 18 of these going on currently.

Here is an average conversation I have with people who watch Sherlock Holmes.

Friend: I've really been getting into Sherlock Holmes.

Me: Oh, that new one on TV?

Friend: Yeah, both of the new ones.

BOTH OF THEM? Why are there two? I know that there's probably one for England and one for the U.S. but can't we share? No? Which one of us got Lucy Liu out of the deal? I'm confused.

So I've started watching the Dr. Who that started in 2005, the one where The Doctor looks like the lead singer from Men At Work. And as confused as I am, because I've only watched three episodes so far, I like it. It feeds into my kind of geekiness.

I knew that it would. I just knew that I would take to it and I would become a quoter, and my conversations would go like this:

Me: I picked a wrong time to shower - HA!

Friend: I beg your pardon?

Me: That was from Dr. Who, Series 31, Episode 5, Minute 41:18. Remember that scene?

Friend: No, I only watch all of the Sherlock Holmeses.

That would be me, the one to memorize lines down to the second when they happen. That's what makes me....Time Lord.  DUN, DUN, DUN!!!!!!!

They still haven't explained the Time Lord thing, but I have a theory. I'm guessing he's called that because he can travel through time? Dammit, Genevieve, you're a genius! I know, I know. I've always been a good guesser. And no one has explained what a Police Box is either, but I'm guessing that's a British thing. That's where they keep all of their police, in that one little box. That's what makes it an effective disguise for the Tardis. No one wants to go in that box, that's where the police are.

I have this whole show figured out.

Now that I understand why people like it, I can rest easy. And now I know what the lead singer of Men At Work has been up to lately. Am I the only one who sees a resemblance there? Look at this:


Maybe it's the noses and the receding hairlines, but Colin Hay and Christopher Eccleston look alike to me. Look, he even wrote a song about it.

I just watched that video. How did I make it through the 80's without noticing that Colin Hay had a wandering eye?

Tune in next time when we further discuss physical abnormalities of 80's musicians.