Some acknowledgements

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

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!

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

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

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

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"

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!!